4 questions to ask in interviews to assess codebase health#
There are questions you can ask in your interview to get a sense for the health of the company’s codebase. Many companies have room for improvement, and these answers don’t have to make or break your decision. While they may not have all the best practices in place, many interviewers would be impressed to have a candidate who is concerned and knowledgeable about matters concerning technical debt.
Note: Be mindful of your tone when asking questions. Come from a place of curiosity rather than judgment. You never know where a company or startup is in their growth.
1. What is your strategy for dealing with technical debt?#
This is a high-level question that can give you a sense for how robust a company’s strategy is for managing technical debt. At the very least, your interviewer’s answer shouldn’t deny that their company incurs technical debt. At most, it should show that that leadership balances adding new features with repaying technical debt. We hope you’ll hear a well-rounded strategy ranging from code reviews to communication pipelines and incentivizing programmers to clear debt.
2. Do you conduct code reviews?#
Despite being a best practice for maintaining code quality and scalability, not every company conducts code reviews. We hope you’ll hear a yes. Code reviews reduce bugs, facilitate optimization, and helps peers share knowledge and skills.
If they conduct code reviews, you can ask additional questions:
- What does your approach look like? Some do formal line-by-line reviews, others do informal “check-in buddies,” while others leverage Git to do a code review for all pull requests. It’s worth clarifying if they review code for all projects, as some only prioritize the most “critical” ones.
- How are priorities determined? Ideally, the code review’s priorities are informed by a knowledge of the technical debt they’ve recently incurred. The best code reviews will prioritize code quality and coding best practices such as commenting, rather than simple adherence to company or team coding standards.
- Who is reviewing the code? Gold stars can be given if code is given a most objective review by peers who aren’t involved in the project. If not, that’s okay too. Again, we have an ideal world, and a realistic one.