The startup interview questions that actually matter (most engineers skip these)
Contents
After 2,431 interviews in 2025, we've noticed something: the best candidates ask completely different questions.
Most engineers interviewing at startups still ask generic questions like "What's the culture like?" or "What will I be working on?" These questions get vague answers and don't help you figure out if the company will actually succeed.
In this video, PostHog co-founder James Hawkins shares the exact questions that separate great candidates from average ones—and the red flags that tell you to run.
What you'll learn
- How to evaluate if a startup has product-market fit (without asking directly)
- The "default alive" question that reveals if a company will survive
- Questions that show you're a proactive problem-solver, not just looking for direction
- How to spot if founders view engineering as a cost center
- Red flags in company culture that most people miss
- Why asking about founder motivations matters more than you think
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PostHog is an all-in-one developer platform for building successful products. We provide product analytics, web analytics, session replay, error tracking, feature flags, experiments, surveys, LLM analytics, data warehouse, CDP, and an AI product assistant to help debug your code, ship features faster, and keep all your usage and customer data in one stack.