What questions should you ask your newly appointed manager?

Question

As an sort of extension to my query about questions to ask an interviewer, I was wondering about what sorts of questions can you ask a manager?

I mean for the newly appointed manager who'll now be your boss. What can you ask him during the usual familiarisation one-on-one meetings to get a feel for their coding mindset, abilities, etc.?

This topic is discussed in Michael Lopp's excellent book "Managing Humans" (sanitised Amazon link) in Chapter 2 in the section "Where does your manager come from?".

He suggests the following as a starting point:

1. What was their last programming assignment?
2. What piece of code are they really proud of?
3. Is their degree in computer science?

To this list I might add:

1. When was their last programming assignment?
2. Are they active in any open source projects?

The idea is to help you determine if you've got an engineer with proper coding experience. Or a "buzzword-compliant ... faker" as Michael puts it.

Any other suggestions?

BTW Michael Lopp also has an excellent blog called "Rands in Repose" that is chock full of goodness! Some great articles there.

BTW Thanks Jeff and Joel for the tip from one of the SO podcasts for Michael's site!

cheers,

Rob

Answer 1

What are you going to do to help me be more productive?

Answer 2

I'd be more interested in finding out how the new manager will evaluate me and what they expect from me than I would be in evaluating them.

Answer 3

Have you ever heard of ALT.Net?

Answer 4

Do you play golf?

Answer 5

The most important question to ask of your new manager is:

How will you judge my performance?

Once you know what your manager needs from you, then you can talk about how you can deliver it. In the end, you're working for them and you need to make it work if you want to keep your job!

Answer 6

"Can I buy you a drink?"

It always pays to get on the good side of a new boss. Of course the correct response from the boss would be:

"Thats very kind of you, but I think it should be the boss that buys the drinks."

As a new boss it is even more important to get on the good side of your staff, especially if you plan on asking them to do overtime.