Hiring Remote Work

Is Your Developer Ready for Remote Work? 14 Key Interview Questions

2022-04-219 min readWritten by Christine Orchard

ask these interview questions to find out if a developer is ready for working remotely

Summary:

Remote developers are everywhere, but not all of them have right skills. The fix: use these interview questions to hire your next great remote-ready developer.

Some developers thrive in the remote-work lifestyle, backed with the right experience and skills to be successful. Others aren’t quite so organized or prepared, and they can actually hinder your project instead of helping it.

If you’ve got an upcoming interview for a remote developer, you’re in luck. We’ve compiled a list of key questions that can help you understand whether your interviewee is remote-ready. Check them out below.

(Big thanks to a few of our Arc developers — Dan, Dave, Marek, Matt, Patryk, and Tomas — for helping us develop these interview questions.)

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Project management

What project management or productivity tools do you use? How do you use these?

Personal organization is critical for remote developers to achieve tasks on time. While you may have project management tools (e.g. Jira, Git) or productivity tools you require new developers to use, they’ll also have their own personal organizational apps/workflows.

To ascertain if they’re ready for remote work, look for answers that include:

Time trackers (e.g. Toggl)
Project management tools (e.g. Asana, Trello, Todoist)
Integrated development environment (IDE) add-ons (e.g. Visual Assist for Visual Studio)
Code testing/CI add-ons (e.g. Mocha for JavaScript, Jenkins)

The developer may also mention practices or apps for staying on task, such as the Pomodoro Technique, RescueTime, or Missive, various different browser or email extensions, and even automation tools.

What strategies do you use to break tasks into manageable pieces?

The answer to this question should be designing the system at hand by components (and their associated APIs or interfaces), before starting to develop the code itself. The same approach can be followed for larger system components: a black box only defined by its inputs and outputs, before working on the smaller pieces that compose the system chunk in the same fashion.

This way, even on a larger remote team, all developers know the inputs and outputs of each others’ system components (and expected behaviors) without needing to look at the other person’s code.

Developers may also answer this question depending on the project management paradigm they usually follow. For developers who follow Agile, they will mention how daily standups help them to define tasks into manageable pieces.

How do you prioritize work?

A remote-ready developer will generally say they start their day by reading emails, Slack, etc. to see if there are any urgent fixes necessary, review new and outstanding tickets, then work through their tasks based on urgency.

Something critical to look out for in this answer is the developer mentioning thorough testing, no matter how urgent the task.

What do you do when you get stuck?

The answer to this question will generally involve some combination of checking StackOverflow, asking the rest of the team, visiting the Arc Community, Reddit, or other communities and online forums for software engineers, and/or trying to figure out another solution to the problem. Developers may mention searching for libraries or tools to do the job for them.

The main thing you want to hear to see if they’re ready for remote work is that the developer has some solutions readily available, and is able to self-rescue when they are stuck.

Communication

What would you do if a teammate seemed frustrated with you? How do you deal with in-team conflict?

No developer in their right mind is going to answer this by saying “Make an immature comment, delete their code, and go offline,” even if these are the people you are trying to weed out.

Basic answers should involve trying to get to the bottom of the issue, speaking carefully and considerately, and trying to be empathic to the other person’s situation.

If there is an in-team conflict that doesn’t involve the developer, they should be attempting to play mediator to defuse the situation before it escalates, or suggest a time out.

Can you explain to me how X works?

It is also important to use a technical question to test a developer’s communication skills, as effective communication is a powerful way to gauge whether they’re ready for remote work or not.

A typical technical question might be something like explaining how encapsulation in object-oriented programming works. It’s a basic concept, but can be tricky to explain to someone else without a thorough understanding. If the developer’s answer sounds like it’s recited from memory, then it probably is; pick another question to quiz them further.

Are you open to regular online hangouts, screen sharing, etc?

The answer to this question should always be yes. Also, check if they are prepared to be online at regular “office hours” (i.e., the same time slot every day), if this is something that is important for your project/communication style.

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Independence

Do you feel confident working on your own without significant input from others? Give an example of a time you worked independently.

Developers often spend hours — even days — at a time working independently, even if they are on-site. What you’re checking for here is their ability to do so in a different environment, without someone directly supervising their productivity.

This answer may involve that they have worked on remote projects before, examples of personal projects they’ve completed at home, remote university/coursework projects, or open-source projects to which they’ve contributed. Ensure that their answer allows them to expand on lessons learned from these previous experiences.

Have you been on a remote team before? What did you like most about being remote? What was hardest, and how did you deal with it?

Ensure your developer has worked remotely before or has done significant independent development via their studies or personal/passion projects. Answers may vary when it comes to what they enjoy the most about working remotely. The main thing is that they actually do enjoy it.

As for the hardest parts, make sure you listen closely as to how the interviewee overcame these obstacles. Their answer should give you insight into whether they may pose a significant future hurdle in a working relationship. Feel free to dig deeper into their answer with follow-up questions.

Do you prefer remote or on-site work? What are the drawbacks? How did you alleviate those drawbacks?

If your interviewee prefers on-site work, and you really want a remote worker, save them the misery and don’t hire — with one exception.

If a developer says they prefer to work on-site, but have been able to replicate the on-site experience by putting in their hours at a great co-working space, then you can feel comfortable in hiring without limiting their ongoing happiness.

Licensing and Regulations

Are you aware of open source licensing and when to use open source libraries and products as part of commercial software?

And the follow-up question to ask: Give an example of when you would/would not use open source libraries/products as part of commercial software.

A developer should be aware of the licensing regulations of the products they regularly use. For instance, if they use Angular, they should be aware that it’s available under the MIT license, which basically means the code used in a commercial product simply needs the Angular MIT licensing preface added to the code.

On the other hand, recent changes to Java SE mean that Oracle now requires paid license subscriptions for commercial development.

If you are letting your developers choose their toolchains, then they must understand the licenses behind each technology, as this impacts the overall cost of your project for commercial purposes.

Generally speaking, open-source technologies are better to use than proprietary solutions. Exceptions include if the commercial licensing attracts significant overheads, or there is a specific proprietary solution that is really the only option for the job (or would significantly decrease development timeframes).

Quality control

What tools or workflows do you use to ensure quality control?

For testing, you are looking for:

Testing methodologies, such as Test Driven Development, or Behavior Driven Development
Testing frameworks, such as RSpec for Ruby, or PyUnit for Python
Continuous testing tools, such as TestSigma, or Selenium
Testing practices, such as code reviews and pair programming (yes, this is entirely possible remotely, with the right setup!)
Following coding standards and naming conventions

Are you comfortable with doing code reviews?

A developer should be able to review another team member’s code, make suggestions and/or fix mistakes, and help their teammate to grow professionally by showing them better ways of organizing their code — without causing offense! That’s true whether they’re ready for remote work or heading to the traditional office environment.

Personal Development

What are you doing to grow your skills?

Technology doesn’t remain static, and neither should your developer’s skillset.

Look for answers that involve things like keeping up to date with the latest updates to their favorite libraries, watching conference talks on YouTube, following developer blogs or industry news, and thinking about their future career path.

A developer may or may not be currently studying something new or working on their own passion project, but keeping up to date with the wider community and having an idea of their future is a necessary foundation for growth.

Ready to Hire Remotely?

Now that you know the right questions to ask developers to check their remote-work readiness, use our platform to find the perfect senior candidates, all rigorously screened by us to ensure a high skill level before you start your search.