On June 26, Scott and Brian led a session at SRCCON in Minneapolis, at which we asked people to write down the questions they most wanted to ask the community. What follows is what attendees wrote.
These are taken more or less verbatim from sticky notes.
- Seniority within organization (entry level, exec, middle management)
- How long has your job description existed?
- Are you a full-time employee?
- Job descriptions
- Are you having an identity crisis? (i.e., are you clear about what your purpose is at work day-to-day?)
- Are you happy?
- Do people really care?
- What's up?
- How often do you tweet?
- How do you keep going?
- Why are we doing this?
- Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
- Who reads HTML comments anyway?
- Are you a remote worker?
- Do you work remotely?
- Why aren't there more remote positions?
- How did you learn what you know?
- What tool do you use?
- What do we do when we are not coding (aka non-coding free time)?
- What does your boss do?
- Did you have a journo background?
- Current role x aspirte to role
- What is holding you back?
- How do you learn new technologies / languages / frameworks?
- How many other social / data / web / metrics / non-coder generalists are out there?
- If I don't code do I still count?
- Is your org remote friendly? (why? why not?)
- Typical career path(s)
- Educational / training / professional background; basically, how did you learn to do what you do?
- How were the tools / languages / processes you use selected?
- How do you pick workflow / languages / tools?
- Background
- What are you core skills?
- What coding languages are your products in?
- How do you spend your time (coding x reporting x designing x etc)
- What got you "into" news technology?
- Do you have a degree? In what?
- How do you contribute back to open source?
- Why no open source?
- Should we learn this from j-school?
- Python or Ruby?
- What's the worflow of the newsroom?
- What skills are present / needed on your team?
- What does your team need most?
- Are the requirements for your job clear?
- Will there be clearer role definition or more hybrid than now?
- How big is your team?
- How are competing or collaborative interests of biz, tech, and editorial managed at your organization?
- Avg. duration of projects
- What's your typical project timeline?
- When was your last performance review?
- U scared?
- My role is important and respected at my organization
- How do we measure our success?
- What would it take for you to leave New York City?
- How many different roles in your career -- what?
- Would you consider changing jobs if you could use a nicer CMS?
- Worst CMS hatred
- How do you shrink print tastefully, successfully and do / hire more web?
- Why is Derek Jeter so overrated?
- Cake or pie?
- Which is worse? Ninja, Unicorn, Wizard, Jedi, Rock Star
- Do you endorse or hate the use of "unicorn"?
- Hate everyone?
- How do we escape an unhappy situation?
- Do homepages matter?
- How do we be happy?
- How many managers or editors on a project?
- Who does your job / fills in for you when you are on vacation?
- What job could you be promoted to?
- Self perceived level of skill
- Is your manager capable of doing the things you can do?
- Is your manager less technical, more technical or the same as you?
- General department / reporting line (e.g., editorial, product, IT)
- What are the demographics of your leadership?
- When do you wake up?
- What are you paid? $$$
- Avg Pay
- Do you work more than 40 hrs / week?
- How much $ do you make?
- How much are you paid?
- What's the range of salaries on your team?
- What's your current salary?
- Do you have time for outside / volunteer or freelance work? (if you work full time)
- Do you get enough support from your org?
- What is the career prospect for personal development?
- How many times have you changed careers?
- How old are you?
- Demographics by type of job
- Is your supervisor a guy?
- How many women are there in the company, and how does their pay & positions relate to the average?
- How is your org funded / making $$$ (somebody added a +1)
- How much revenue does your company make?
- Millenials are: 1980 ->, 1985 ->, 1990, 1995 -> Snake people ->
- Do you have a budget?
- Average duration at a job
- Do you check email / slack / etc. on nights / weekends?
- What's the diversity like in their team?
- How are women managers perceived?
- Team Structure
- What do people most misunderstand about who you are and what you do?
- What do you see as key values in your work? Way you approach news, tech, etc.?
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
- How long have you been at your current job?
- Are you the first person to do your job?
- Where do you learn?
- What kind of work do you aspire to do?
- How do you measure success?
- Are you part of the newsroom?
- How do you expect your org to change in 5 years?
- How do people see their org in 5 years?
- What is your job?
- Do you see your job existing in 5 years?
- Where you specifically trained for your job?
- Who's your "role model" in the industry?