Hiring a Boss: Looking For The Right Attitude

Question

My current boss has been promoted and we're currently looking for a technical manager to replace him. We (the remaining team) are being given the opportunity to interview the replacement and have a say in whether we hire him/her or not. He/She will be managing a small team in the US and a small offshore team (Java and C#).

What are some good diagnostic questions to ask potential candidates? What are the soft qualities to look for? Are there any Fizz-Buzz-esque questions to ask a candidate about their soft skills / management style etc?

Answer 1

Ask them what their number one priority as a manager is.

The right answer (IMHO) is "I remove obstacles for my team".

If instead you get a bunch of business-speak mumbo-jumbo it's time to look elsewhere. Their goal should be to enable you to do your best work.

If they use the word "synergy" or "paradigm", send 'em packin' :-)

Answer 2

"What is your policy on weekly 'boss-buys-everyone-lunch' menu selection?"

Answer 3

Do they want to micro-manage everything you do or do they give you a task and trust you to take care of it?

Are you able to talk to some of the people they previously managed?

Answer 4

You should also ask if they are going to adapt to the toolset you use — or are they going to insist you do things their way.

Answer 5

Ask them why they want to be a manager and how they became one in the first place.

Ask them what they think their job as a manager is.

Ask them to describe what they think is a good software development process. Ask them what processes they've put in place in the past to make the software dev cycle work better.

Ask them what they think of things like code reviews, source code management, bug and task tracking, agile development methods, design patterns.

Ask them how they make estimates, how they determine how far along a project is and how they deal with projects taking too long.

Think about the things you like and dislike about your previous manager and ask about them.

These don't really have right or wrong answers, but they should start a conversation and you should be able to see what's going to work for your team.

Answer 6

If this person has Project Management duties, then review the 10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation (Alternative Link). Then ask the candfidate some questions about software estimation. See what their response is to fixing a late project or their approach is to estimating tasks that involve a lot of unknowns.

Most of the responses I get to that line of questioning makes want to become a worker on an assembly line.

Answer 7

This question is really a duplicate of this one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/182818/what-should-developers-look-for-in-a-manager

Answer 8

Here are a few things I'd definitely consider important:

Conflict resolution - If two developers come to you and each claims their way is the best way to do something, how do you resolve the issue? If it is between a tester and developer, do you use the same method or something else?

Motivation - What style of motivating people do you use? Do you consider it part of your job to get the best out of people?

Handling techspeak - This is rather domain specific but I'm sure there are some common technical terms that it may be interesting to see if his interpretation is different.

Communication - How well does he listen to a question? Does he answer the question or the perceived question? An example here would be, "What's your story?" type of question that to my mind should get a, "How long would you like my answer to be?" or a "Is there a special focus I should have in an answer?" kind of response as really there are some parameters to note here as you may not care what he did in grade school that made him popular, right?