Job Hunting - questions to ask

Recently I asked a couple of questions openly to a person who posted a job offer* on the alt.net list which I think are important for discovering the attitude and environment of the potential employer.

These are more or less the questions I asked:

• Does the company use OSS?


• How does the company view OSS solutions?


• Are you stuck with basic VS or do you get so use R# or the DevExpress plugins (or other productivity tools)?


• Do your developers get to blog (or is that shunned)?


• Are they allowed to work on OSS projects in their spare time?


• Are they allowed to do so on company time for any projects the company (or even just the group) is using?

I believe these questions provide valuable insight into the employer.

*Note: I am not currently looking for a job, but if an offer comes up and it is significantly better than my current position I will look into it. It had better have a good pay raise, great benefits, not move me from Bozeman Montana, provide a flexible schedule, allow me to work from home when I want to and give me the flexibility to work on the projects I want to be working on. Ok, maybe that is a little exaggerated, but it had better be a very very good deal.