Questions that I'd be interested to hear answered by the world's best developers, even without knowing anything about them except that they're above the 99th percentile. Target interview to be 30 minutes, drop dead cutoff of 60 minutes.
Interviewee instructions: Choose X questions (recommended: 10 for 30 min convo, 20 for 60 min) w/ best potential to help people distinguish what makes you unique. Recommended baseline Qs are bolded.
What were the circumstances that led you to start programming?
What was your relationship with coding like during high school & college?
What value do you think you took from your schooling? What classes paid off most and least?
Any wild and wooly stories of coding from your college days?
Aspirational example: Mitchell Hashimoto's I used to do this stupid dumb thing in college story
When did you begin to detect that you might be better at programming than your peers?
What did you do with this knowledge? If "little, initially," did that change in the longer-term?
Did you grow up entrepreneurial? For what reason?
What was the best team you worked on? What made it the best team?
What are the measurements that matter most to you, the ones that you are optimizing your life around?
How are you doing on those, honestly?
What's your take on mentoring? If you are in favor of offering it, how do try to maximize ROI?
What systems do you consult to choose what to work on for a particular day?
Week?
Quarter?
What is your exercise routine? How does physical fitness factor into your productivity?
How do you manipulate (tune) your body to produce the best code?
How does the ideal recipe change over a day and week?
How has the ChatGPT era impacted your programming life thus far?
Any guesses about programming looks like in 5-10 years?
How have your opinions on best practices evolved since you began your career?
If you had to choose 3-5 principles you currently endorse, what would those be?
What's the right percentage of time to spend writing and maintaining tests? How has your opinion on this evolved over the past 10 years?
How do you tune your environment/surroundings to maximize your (per-task?) output?
Who are your role models (besides kin)?
How do you recognize when you've been coding too much and need to stop? (How often does this happen?)
Favorite media you would recommend to other curious people? Podcasts? Books? Games?
Favorite products you would recommend to other productive people? Everyday tools? Planning tools?
What role does the debugger play in your daily life?
How often would you estimate that you solve problems via debug/inspect vs. logging?
What's your philosophy on "when to have a meeting?" or "how many meetings is too many?"
What's the biggest difference between how you approached programming in your 20s vs today?
Most satisfying programming moments: generally?
Most satisfying programming moments: specifically?
How has your life changed since the pandemic? How are you feeling about that change?
Advice for people who would try to follow in the footsteps of the most productive programmers?
How do you maintain a sense of being "connected with the world," in an era where circumstances do no favors?
Do you have a strong sense of "purpose"? If so, what is that purpose?
How much has your sense of purpose changed over the years?
Any personal projects you would like to plug?
How do you foster your creativity? How important is it to your overall output that
linkExtended Qs
Since 20 questions is usually the max that can be covered (and 10-15 more often ideal) in 45 mins, most people are best served picking from the main list, above. But here are some other questions that might make for interesting topics?
Have you had spells where it was challenging to code? How did you push past it/them?
What are your favorite websites?
How/why did you choose the projects you currently spend most time on?
What is your productivity kryptonite (the thing that drags you down)?
What are your tactics to level up your coding skill? How often do you employ these tactics?
Any conferences/meetups that you try to regularly attend?
Personal tool/macro that you've hand-crafted for yourself that was worth the effort?
That failed to be worth the effort (more entertaining Q)? 😂
What's an upcoming technology besides AI that you're excited about?
What are some of the near-term improvements you expect to see from AI in your products?
What was the best advice about coding that someone gave you?
What traits do you think the most productive individual contributors have in common?
What do you rate as the most productive era of your career? What made it so?
Do you play music? Why is it a cliche that programmers often either play music or board games?
What's the meaning of life, as you see it?
What companies do you admire?
What is a programming pain point you wish someone would solve?
Are there any synchronous notifications that you leave on?
How would you like to be remembered?
What are your favorite languages and why?