That they won't do this suggests that there is a lot of mistrust going on, or possibly optics with the investors around turnover -- not sure which is worse.

By taking the role, you will be viewed as having taken sides with the people recruiting you, but if anyone else on the team thinks it was done unfairly, you'll be dealing with the morale consequences, which you may paradoxically also be blamed for.

Look at it this way, the people recruiting you are one or more of the following:

- Afraid to have a grown up conversation with the manager they want to replace.

- Afraid that if they are upfront with the problem manager he/she will leave and it will take them a long time to find a replacement, during which time things may deteriorate. If you think this is the case, be sure to increase your salary/equity requirements substantially.

- Trying to sneakily get the upper hand on the problem manager by recruiting you behind his/her back. Anyone on the team you'd inherit who respected the former manager will likely assume you are part of the problem.

Also, sometimes when a manager is viewed negatively it's because someone on the team has the ear of higher-ups and is badmouthing the manager. So while it's possible that you would be getting a role that was inhabited by someone who couldn't quite pull it off, it's also possible that you're stepping into a situation with a lot of politics and a mutinous atmosphere. Perhaps ask if they are considering anyone on the problem manager's team for the role. If they are that might be a tell.

I'd approach it with caution, especially if considering leaving a role that you enjoy. At the very least, there are enough warning signs that you should only accept if you are ready to re-enter the job market if the culture is truly broken.

You seem to start from this very distrustful premise and never look back.

Would you say the same of someone who gives significant notice of their departure (say, a retirement or medical situation) to the relevant supervisors but doesn't inform subordinates until a replacement is on board? What if that person were a fairly high ranking one in the organizational structure, as it sounds this one is?

Confidential replacement is pretty typical when the outgoing leader has no apparent (temporary) replacement and transitioning duties twice would be difficult/disruptive. It's not broken culture to ensure the wheels keep turning despite a pending high-profile departure.

Not to mention, if a manager and two tech leads are involved, it's pretty likely the outgoing manager is at least peripherally aware of the situation. You could very well be right about this employer, but the presumption that the nature of the search is somehow underhanded or deceitful is pretty one-sided.

The OP writes "they want to replace the existing manager". Chances are this would have been phrased "the existing manager is moving on" if no deceit was involved.

> Would you say the same of someone who gives significant notice of their departure

When to make the information known to the rest of the team should be a management team decision. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer.

> What if that person were a fairly high ranking one in the organizational structure

Finding a replacement before announcing the departure to the team makes sense. It sounds like in the OP's situation the outgoing manager is not aware of his/her status.

> Confidential replacement is pretty typical when the outgoing leader has no apparent (temporary) replacement and transitioning duties twice would be difficult/disruptive. It's not broken culture to ensure the wheels keep turning despite a pending high-profile departure.

Not sure if you are referring to keeping it confidential from the employee being replaced or from the rest of the team.

> ...the presumption that the nature of the search is somehow underhanded or deceitful is pretty one-sided

I think you are suggesting that it is appropriate (not deceitful) to attempt to hire the replacement before informing the current manager. Ideally in situations where something isn't working out, both parties can collaborate to phase things out in a mutually respectful way, especially in a startup.

Yes, in big companies there is an HR department and all sorts of reasons why "typical" HR practices make sense. But a person joining a startup should feel that the team he/she is joining is not typical and has the sort of integrity to act cooperative (in a game theoretic sense) in these sorts of scenarios.

FWIW these sorts of scenarios are inevitable. Sometimes employment arrangements don't work out. How they are handled offers an indication of the character of the management team.

To be clear - I haven't detected any really toxic behavior. It just seems like a good-faith hire didn't work out.

If the manager was "let go" and offered to stick around until a replacement could be found, that's a much better situation.

Ideally the previous employee would feel an obligation (or incentive) to finish as strong as possible, and to help with the recruiting effort for the new hire (and to maximize knowledge transfer).

Mature people understand that sometimes work styles can differ and talented people are not always a good culture fit. So unless the outbound manager is truly immature or unfit to be in the position at all, much is to be gained by being respectful and transparent.

Manager roles often have pretty vaguely defined success metrics, and people manage (and prefer to be managed) in quite different ways, so perhaps someone like you describe would perform better in a role with a much more narrowly defined criterion for success.

Whether it's a scheduled or unscheduled interview, people generally want to speak honestly with you - they just might not feel like they have permission to do so, or feel that airing the company's dirty laundry would be inappropriate. In my experience, it can be hard to get people to initially admit things aren't perfect, but once they've done so, the floodgates open.

I tend to ask things like "so, how would you rate working here on a scale of one to ten?" Unless they're absolutely delighted with their workplace, most people respond with an eight or a nine, which doesn't mean anything - you'll get an eight or nine if the company's pretty great, and you'll get an eight or nine if the company's a total dumpster fire. But then you can say "A nine? Why not a ten? What would make your experience here a ten?" This doesn't always work, but at this point the interviewee figures they've already admitted the company isn't 100% ideal and I've usually gotten an unvarnished opinion.

Telling some random stranger "I hate this fucking company and wouldn't be surprised if it goes bankrupt within a year" gives me no benefits and puts me at a lot of risk; plus it's just awkward.

If you can't tell me why it's fine, it probably isn't from your perspective. And if your answer isn't convincing, likewise.

How much prep would you really put into giving a good, convincing, story about how great the company is that wouldn't be noticable compared to other people's answers?

Solid advice, do try to connect with the junior & overseas staff. Listen to the substance of their answers. Is it an "Us" and "Them" corporate culture?

Areas to explore: Ask, What are things that the group does well and should keep doing? What are some things you'd like to change? What is it you're afraid a new leader might do? Anything else they'd like to discuss?

1. Why are they looking externally for a candidate instead of an internal candidate that is more familiar and has a track record with the company than a brand new leader?

2. What were the specific expectations of the incumbent leader and how long have they been in the position? Someone needs to explain what happened and realize that this very same dynamic could happen to you. If nobody communicates with a person that they think their communication is bad, it's a passive-aggressive culture that won't lead to good outcomes more often than not, especially long term.

3. What's the turnover rate for the team? Don't believe whatever they tell you, but make a note. Then try to assess its veracity based upon Linkedin stalking of both currently employed and past employees.

4. What's the highest level of management that is in agreement of replacing this person? If something came from really high up, I'd ask if there was a specific incident. I've seen people let go because they made exactly one hot-headed executive very angry for flippant reasons and while everyone in management that actually knew these people were fine, their hands were tied. That kind of leadership style is micromanagement oftentimes and the toxicity and blame games will eventually make their way down the longer the leader stays.

1) Ask why the other person is leaving for real. They should be vulnerable and tell you the truth. Sometimes they'll hide behind something like "thats confidential" which you can't really argue with, but I'd dig into it. If they get nervous walk away.

2) Ask them what systems or processes they want to improve or change and why. What isn't working? etc.

3) How will you be evaluated in your role. Sometimes there are unclear expectations from managers or any other "leadership" style role at a company. This isn't OK because it might just take one person to change their mind about how you're doing for you to be "not good enough". Again; dig into it.

4) How is the company doing from a financial perspective. Whats the burn? Whats the revenue? What's the LTV/CAC? If they can't answer or won't, I'd consider that a red flag.

5) How is the product roadmap set. How far out are they thinking? Make sure it lines up with your vision of how to organize groups the right way.

This one is key. Good answer is: "You will have these N observable, measurable KPIs. Good performance means meeting them, excellent performance means exceeding them by P%, etc." Bad answer is if they can't tell you or anything subjective (Your manager vaguely "evaluates" your performance each year).

> 4) How is the company doing from a financial perspective. Whats the burn? Whats the revenue? What's the LTV/CAC? If they can't answer or won't, I'd consider that a red flag.

I've seen business owners take great offense to being asked about these "company health" type questions. Often due to the answer not being pretty. As if I, as a potential employee, am not a stakeholder. If they get cagey about this it's definitely a red flag.

If you're looking for cross-team health, maybe you could adapt it to "Tell me about someone on the other team that you admire?"

In hindsight, I wish I'd had enough experience with the question and possible scenarios to ask for a second answer from people in the first org; I suspect there were more good answers available, but one obvious answer that everyone snapped to first.

Talk to a lot of people in the company. Can't overstate this enough. People you work with/work under should NOT BE ASSHOLES. Assholes are a pain to deal with everyday and will take a toll on your emotional health.

I talked with my interviewer, who happens to be my manager, and asked him what he feels about Docker (not that Docker is the most bleeding edge tech). He said he didn't like it and would never implement it in <my-company> because some other dude in his previous firm introduced it there and he doesn't like that dude. Ouch! I should've taken the hint. Look for people who debate with you based on knowledge/data and not with emotions.

If your interviewer/founder bathes you in startup buzzword crap, RUN! If they say, we're "open", "transparent", "humble", "impact", "growth hacking" etc 5+ times in the conversation, he's just faking it to make it sound hipster. I learned this the hard way.

Boy, I ranted. I should really get a job change. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wouldn't read too much into the fact that you'd be replacing a manager who is already working there. One of the "perks" of being a manager is that you have a big target on your back when it comes to overall organizational goals and morale. Scott McNealy used to joke "one step up, one step closer to the door." because directors and executives don't fire individual contributors, they fire managers when things aren't working out. And there are a ton of reasons that things might not work out, not the least of which is that the manager's manager can't effectively communicate "through" them. It can be a leadership style, it can be mutual respect, it can be different baggage that each of them are carrying from previous experiences.

What is important for you to understand in the interview is the sort of communication issues that got this person into trouble, you need to know that so you can evaluate how likely it is that you're communication style would be compatible. Some senior managers will say "get it done" and some will be very prescriptive about how (aka micromanaging) and some will be open to feedback and others will consider feedback insubordination.

Understand what they expect (both things they expect someone to do, and things they are expected NOT to do in that role) and how they evaluate what they see. Then ask yourself if you feel like you can live in that system or not.

The answers can be telling. If they give an answer like, like, "I wish we would adopt $random_programming_language." That, to me, indicates a fairly healthy organization, because this is just one guy's technical preference.

If they give an answer like, "We need need to stop thrashing", that gives a different picture.

If they say, "Nothing at all", you need to run, because they can't think critically about themselves.

If they use pronouns like "them" and "they" instead of "us" and "we", then the interviewer doesn't feel like part of the team.

Sure, you might think you're the one to get them fixed up with what they need. But there are good reasons that things are they way they are, and it's not always because the ICs are lazy.

"Healthy" can mean different things to different people. Some employees care primarily about work/life balance, and being able to sneak out early on Fridays to hit the slopes. (I'm looking at you, entire state of Colorado.) Others want a high-pressure, high-reward environment, where their colleagues live up to the same high standards they expect of themselves. (cough Amazon cough)

So rather than trying to find a place which is healthy, find somewhere which is healthy for you; with a culture which reflects your values, benefits which support your lifestyle and leaders who help you grow.

No company is a perfect employer and no person a perfect employee, but that doesn't mean there doesn't exist perfect relationships.

Is the office full after 5 - 6 PM? Is everyone looking at the floor when the boss walk in? Is everyone's nails bitten to a bloody mess? Are there any female employees? Are the desk too clean and absent of personal items?

Pretty much, what is the density of the tech-aware crowd in that area?

Another good one: are the near by ash trays in use? If you're a non-smoker (like me) this is a red flag too.

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-strong-anti-smoking-culture...

Not sure if this a good enough criteria, sometimes you just dont find good female techies.

That's a pretty big red flag with respect to organizational behavior. It seems incredibly unprofessional.

I actually enjoy replacing someone who is a poor communicator because you have a real chance to influence direction and growth just by acting like a normal, decent person.

To answer the original poster's question - if you have to ask this question, it's very likely there are organizational challenges. In fact, at every company there are organizational challenges, team challenges, your job as a leader is to address them. If you want to only work for great teams and never have to deal with challenges, you should consider not being a manager/leader at all, then you don't have to worry about them.

I would pay more attention to whether the company itself is financially stable, growing, hiring and innovating. If not, run.

For example, did they not evaluate the manager before putting them into a position where they failed? How do they know it was a communication problem? Remember, this question is not asking the details of what happened (those don't really matter). This question is asking what the organization did and how does the organization improve itself over time.

The last thing I'll say is that it's very difficult to establish the 'health' of a team during a brief interview. 'Health' is often variable in that what I find healthy and effective you may not. Most teams aren't filled with psychopaths. Also, if you have the right tools and a willing team you (that's a plural you) can change and build a team that is healthy and productive.

Once a organisational culture is set, it is very difficult to change [1], especially if you can't replace the head of the beast.

[1] Team Geek - A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman

So, something's changed. Just trying to understand what.

The reason being is its an abstract issue that is hard to define or fix.

Have them clearly define the "communication" issue that led to the person getting fired.

Such as, the team is all over the place you need to do daily standups to get everyone on the same page.

Once the actual issue is defined if the person then does not take simple steps to improve "communication" then at that point they are more in the category of insubordinate, incompetent etc.

Are you being given stock. Ask for a cap table and learn to read it.

Tell them your wiling to sign an NDA, and that you want to look at the repository. Tell them that you may need to ask follow up "who is who" questions to pin checkins. Code never lies. Embattled areas of code, and comments are great targets for your search.

Ask about recent outages and technical issues. Are they having problems keeping things up and running. Ask about how they were identified and how long to resolve.

Do they have documents for requirements? Wireframes, PRD's. Ask to see these as well.

If they raise any objection to any of this, just ask for a reason. It might set off an alarm for you. It might be reasonable.

Since you have some history with the other team leads, make a personal phone call. Start the call off that way (that its a personal call) and that you want to know the truth/history here because you have concerns. If there is something funny going on in the background one of them might just give you an honest answer.

It is much more important to figure out how people communicate, how they are treated, how the other leaders think, what they want their culture to be, etc... If you can believe in a shared future vision, and participate in the process to move towards that vision, then the details of the status quo are far less important.

- Something gets rewritten because requirements were lost or misunderstood.

- The same error is repeated after being corrected.

- A component is revised or eliminated, after having been developed too early based on guesswork and speculation.

- Developer A commonly reverts developer B's code changes without explaining the reasons (or with insults).

- There has been a messy, error-ridden merge between the clearly independent developments of two sub-teams.

- In source code control, commits are allowed to lack a good description; only a few true believers "waste time" with messages nobody reads.

- Unit tests for something that is approaching release were last modified, and left about 15% complete, six months ago.

- After employee X left the company (or when the project devolved into crunch mode, or some other excuse) automation of builds, tests, releases etc. started to rot.

If you expect to inherit fully functional teams I think you're probably not going to enjoy the gig. If, however, you're excited about the chance to get a group of developers firing on all cylinders again then perhaps this is the right job for you.

If you want to ask a question, I'd ask what challenge they have experienced to date linking these teams together to get them working well. What specific things do they expect you to try and fix and improve, etc. I'd also ask how, as leaders at the company, they stay aware of how things are going, touchpoints, etc.

Key symptom for a lot of issues at a company tends to be a lack of transparency (at least this has been my experience). Asking questions that get to employee engagement, involvement, and feedback processes can be good signals of transparency or potential issues.

Mainly, the OPs job sounds like it will be a cleanup / turnaround role since the past person was dismissed for poor communication and has a globally distributed team (remote teams are hard enough to manage even with good communication).

The question asked by the OP indicates that they would not necessarily enjoy some dysfunction among the development teams so... maybe not the best fit unless they're willing to do some repair work.

I'd be more worried about detecting dysfunction from management than from the teams that I would be leading. I know I will have the option to re-shape the team, but I will be dependent on support from management without much leverage there. Sounded like the OP knew the managers already and trusted them so not as big an issue for the OP.

I enjoyed establishing process with a team and iterating on it with a mostly functional team. I don't really care to get between drama and infighting, but I certainly see the value.

It's as much fun as solving any problem. And even more fun if you get paid extra for it.

If you're uncomfortable challenging them, frame it as you trying to be the best candidate you can be. "If I take this position, I want to make sure I have a full understanding from day one of what I need to do to contribute the most to the team. What could I be doing to help you?"

This is a question they really ought to be able to answer; not in terms of why the current person sucks, but in terms of where the team is breaking down currently. A good answer to this question means they've thought about the problems and the personnel change is part of some kind of strategy to solve them, which is a good sign.

If they won't answer that, odds are their internal culture isn't very communicative in general, which is bad. And if they can't answer that, it means they don't know where the breakdowns are and are just blaming someone reflexively, which is even worse.

1) Reach out to people who used to work there. You have to discount the negativity somewhat, but if the response is positive then that's a good sign.

2) Rather than ask "Are there communications problems" you should ask "What are the biggest communication challenges?" Also ask, "What are the 2-3 most important managerial areas for me to fix on day one, and the 2-3 most important areas for me to leave alone"

3) Go to Glassdoor. Again you have to discount the negativity, but that will give you good areas to probe and it's fair to ask, "I see this on Glassdoor, what do you say?"

Good luck tomorrow!

At a prior company, the new head of sales reached out to the outgoing head of sales.

Are developers being issued several ones, and of above average quality?

Do people need to stack object oriented design books to place their monitors at a comfortable level?

Are they using old, low resolution, low refresh rate, 15" TFT monitors?

Is there disparity between monitor quality among employees?

Don't look for "health" indications, try to establish if the leaders established a culture you can live with (and how this current situation might be a result of that culture). I can't think of specific questions, but for me it is about how people interact, especially across the hierarchy:

- How are disputes solved?

- Are people allowed to disagree (especially with higher ups)?

- Are people allowed to make mistakes? Were people fired because of mistakes? Is there a (perceived) "goofy" on the team (can't do anything right according to the team, yet did never really fuck up, thus is still there, but always blamed)

- Is the team allowed to relax and pick up debris, hang loose, enjoy some time together, or is it in constant "sprint mode"?

- Are the managers able to get the team to rally behind the same goals?

- Does everyone solve his own problems, or are people actually collaborating on e.g. features/bugs/ideas?

- Are there leads or managers on the team known to cause issues, yet not removed?

- Is there special treatment for random people?

- Is stuff openly discussed or everything on a need-to-know-basis?

- Does everyone in the company have (at leas read) access to all the code?

This is stuff you most certainly cannot change once it was established, especially if people stick around and even more so if the founders, managers, leads will still be there. If it does not fit your attitude, you will be in constant battle against what happens in the company and why.

You don't want to have to be exposed as a liar once the candidate starts, after all.

For leadership jobs, it might be a bit different.

- Observe and engage with the employees. Asks them tough questions, you specifically want to gauge how passionate are they about the work they are doing not about working for the company per se. - Go beyond the shallow layer (perks, brand, office...) and see whether is a company where people get up in the morning looking forward to get great stuff done or a company where people can't stop looking at the clock.

I have been in companies where everything seems to be great surface level: tons of perks, WFH, free food... But then nobody seems to be excited about the work itself.

And annoy the hell out of the interviewer because you can't time a toilet visit to fall outside of a key event? No thanks

What's the big deal?

I would also ask how they're currently handling three teams on three continents - if you as a manager are supposed to deal with all three teams and at least one of them is "needy", I wouldn't be surprised if the communications issue is that the current manager is speaking in tongues because he hasn't had more than an hour's worth of sleep a night for the past year...

As a lead, are you not confident that you can bring a circle of health with you? Influence and change the environment as you see necessary?

"Communication" is a two-way process.

As they say: Communicate, it can't make things worse.

How many of them red? If tests are red - it's bad. For how long they are red?

If there is a need to "fix approximately hundred tests", it's a bad sign.

I found that amount of tests, tests execution time, test coverage is very important and it answers almost all the questions.

How often did you need to sacrifice test coverage to deliver the software? There is always a need to release, there is always deadline. It depends how company react. For example, during Rails 5 release they don't care, just push deadline. It's a good sign, because folks understand that code quality == developer happiness.