> "What would you say separates the strongest and the weakest members of your team?"

It's easy to reply to this phrasing with a canned answer and very little though. "Experience, skill, and a positive attitude." If someone gave this answer to you and you're the candidate asking the question it is basically 0 information.

I think the better way to ask this question is to ask

"Has anyone been recently let go and why? Has anyone been let go or put on a performance improvement plan for not being a good enough engineer? What are specific reasons why you think they were maybe not good enough? What is your policy when programmers make big mistakes?"

I'm not sure I would ask these questions, but I still think it's a better form of phrasing. You want to know what they think makes a bad engineer.

Hmm...I think if you ask those questions, they might not get the best impression of you -- it would seem like you were getting ready to be a bad programmer.

This is a very interesting exchange because it illustrates the difficulty of forming a question that the company can't turn to their advantage. For example:

> Has anyone been let go or put on a performance improvement plan for not being a good enough engineer?

Few people are put on PiPs for not being 'good enough' at engineering; most PiPs are about people not doing what the company demanded, no matter how unreasonable, which is very different.

But the company could respond to your question with 'sure, we clear-out the deadwood every six months!' because in their view those people weren't 'good enough'

> But the company could respond to your question with 'sure, we clear-out the deadwood every six months!' because in their view those people weren't 'good enough'

And that's the kind of answer that would be really interesting to hear.

> It's easy to reply to this phrasing with a canned answer and very little though. "Experience, skill, and a positive attitude." If someone gave this answer to you and you're the candidate asking the question it is basically 0 information.

Although it doesn't say much about the team, I'd say it provides some information on management and the level of transparency vs image management you can expect on the job.

Aren't they pretty limited in what they reveal about employees who are fired for PIPed, even if anonymized (which may not mean much for a small group anyway)?