So not doing Agile is just the start of the conversation. As long as you can say how you come up with schedules, how you promise things to customers, how you learn from mistakes, etc., it doesn’t need to have a name.

At least that’s for me; for others, I’m sure NOT having any process would make them happy!

Yes, there’s certainly a potential for that, and the questions above could certainly be improved. Discussing specifics can help a bit, e.g. prefer “what happens when a 2 day task isn’t done in 2 days?” to “what do you do when a project is late.”

But it’s still hard. One thing you can get is a sense for what they think the “right” answer is. In a startup, it’s often “work like crazy, speed wins, we’re alergic to process.” That will cloud the answers they give you, because they think it’s the right way to run a startup.

Now, everyone knows the game that’s being played here. Potential employees are expected to give an answer like, “Well, X happened, AND THAT WAS BAD. But then I used my MASSIVE LEADERSHIP SKILLS to solve the problem, so it ALL WORKED OUT FINE IN THE END.” It’s such a game with such well-known answers that I hope no one asks it anymore.

We’re lucky in software: we can ask applicants to solve actual coding problems. It’s not a panacea, but answers are harder to fake than the standard HR question. I was recently asked to debug a problem: “Recently, here at [company X], I ran into a problem that looked like this. How would you start debugging it?” I reply, “Well, I’d look at Y.” He replies, “I did that. Turns out Y was not the problem.” And so forth. Hard to fake.

I’m concerned that management knows all the things they’re supposed to say. “We’re into agile development.” “We believe in transparency in all things.” “All that matters to us is that you get your work done.” *Sometimes* you can see that they’re lying — e.g., your example of the manager who didn’t understand what “agile” meant. In general, that’s an example to me of what interviews — forward or reverse — are really good for: filtering OUT people who don’t know what they’re talking about, rather than filtering IN good candidates.

I am extraordinarily happy with my current company. I knew right away, as soon as I walked in the door, that it was a great place: there was a lot of *energy* in the room; it was buzzing. Contrast this with a former job: a very experienced, brilliant software developer toured the building with me, and noticed that no one was happy. He took the measure of the place very quickly. And he was right. That same developer had taken a job some years before at a startup that was in stealth mode — so stealthy that they couldn’t even tell potential employees what they’d be working on. Under those circumstances, applicants had to judge the company entirely on the basis of how enjoyable their future coworkers and managers would be. Turns out that this company’s managers were brilliant and fun and cool; my friend took the job and worked there for ten years.

I guess what I’m getting at is that, unfortunately for us, there may be no good quantitative or deterministic way to get a read on managers. As much as I hate to resort to gut instinct, there’s a lot to be said for it in this case. Every other method seems easy to fake.

Hey, it’s the interweb so who cares if I’m commenting almost two years late.
-Carl

Recruiters are just the same. You know you can get a car with dealing with used car salesmen. Why not do the same and skip the recruiters?