Usually, we reserve 5 minutes for interviewees to ask questions to the interviewer. Here are some common questions, with my standard replies copied.

How is the remote culture like at Quora?

  • Working remotely provides great flexibility. You do not need to commute, wake up on time, as long as you attend meetings and contribute.
  • We have all-hands most of the weeks, which includes a Q&A where you can ask any questions. The question will definitely be addressed if it has a few upvotes.
  • Admittedly, socially it is not very engaging to work remotely. I guess most engineers have their own family and social life already.
  • However, as a new grad who do not have much friends here, you might want more in-person social interaction, and the office do provide that.
  • Regarding the office
    • Personally I go to the office every day to avoid preparing lunch.
    • Ever since I started going to the office after moving to Mountain View, I have never seen the CEO.
    • The engineer headcount is slightly more than a hundred, the average daily engineer attendance in the office is 12.
    • Half of the engineers who come to the office often graduated from college less than 3 years ago. We are also from different teams.

How is the work-life balance like at Quora?

  • The co-ordination hours is officially 9pm to 3pm Pacific Time. Engineers are expected to be available for meetings during this period.
  • Outside of this time, you are free to decide when to work.
  • You are not expected to work overtime at night or during weekends. Sometimes it might be more convenient for me to deploy at night for easier code reversal.
  • I would say that I work for 7 hours a day on average.
  • After some time in the company, you are expected to do oncall rotations. You are awarded half a day of replenishment for one week of oncall.

Is Quora growing?

  • Quora currently has two products - Quora and Poe.
  • Quora product alone profitable (including salaries for employees working on Quora). Admittedly, Quora usage is currently not going to the moon.
  • Poe is now margin neutral. The LLMs is now fully covered by subscription revenue and we intend to keep it that way.
  • Poe has establish itself as an aggregator of LLM services. However, we still want to do more than just bundle LLM services. Whether Poe will grow depends on how successful we are here.

[Edit: 2024-12-26] Added more questions