This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer.
All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.
This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that.
Unless they explicitly and unambiguously say “tell me about the day your mom and dog died in the same day when you found out you had cancer” they mean “tell me about your worst day _at work_.” And even if they ask about the time your dog died (they won’t), they are not asking you “tell me about the worst day you’ve had in your life”. They are asking “tell me about a time you experienced adversity and overcame it, exhibiting problem solving, resilience, and grit AT WORK. (Or - if you are operating in executive mode or you like to live dangerously - some non-work context that maps obviously and unambiguously to a work context).”
You failed the “knows how to interact with people in a professional setting” part of the interview. Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). Or the “read between the lines” part.
Yeah, inartfully asked questions - but also totally flubbed the answers.
Sorry, chalk it up to you had a bad interview or day or whatever, and never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”.
And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.)
That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you like to hike? Oh, I did that, too. Might I suggest hiking there and there? I bet you'd like it. Anyway, moving on!" Common ground helps conversations flow.
But an employer asking about your personal relationships? Your needs, fears, and desires outside of any technical context? (My needs, fears, and desires from compiler toolchains are totally within scope.) Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory. They have no business of asking.
>Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory
OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions'
asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. Young people often don't have enough other experience to fall back on, and in a context in which you are expected to make yourself look good, the filter that is expected is to emphasize something that you were successful/resourceful at.
Well, I have no idea what they actually specifically asked or didn't ask, because the article is light on details. So I just elaborated on what I consider crossing into unacceptable (which I believe is based on commonly shared conventions), and everyone can draw their own conclusions for any particular situation.
> asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question
Is that true? Is that a cultural thing that I do not get? I am in the same boat as OP and consider these questions, if intended for no-work specific context, very inappropriate. The age is irrelevant. If you are interviewing a young applicant who is not expected to have work experience, ask them about sth in the school context instead of work context.
Young people can still have really bad experiences. Especially when you interview a big number of people, you are guaranteed to fall upon some pretty bad. It seems to me that the right expected way to answer such a question is to find some personal experience that is bad, but not _that bad_, and then try to flip it and show you persevered. It seems to me that you are selecting for people who are better in making up stories this way, than anything else, because there is very often no way to answer such a question in any truthful, factual manner.
Personally I would only give answers in a work related context, and make sure to be clear that this is the way I interpreted the question.
> Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity).
I think that "generally..." is a little harsh.
The person might just not have worked in a stereotypical corporate drone environment before.
Or they might normally have been able to handle the corporate drone interview theatre, but are overextended by the context (e.g., laid off in this job market, which can easily be more stressful and existential than most actual work situations), and a bad interview hazing just yanks on that.
There's going to be more and more overstressed people showing up to tech job interviews, and people on the other side of the table will need empathy and understanding, if they're going to make good assessments despite the context.
>It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.
you are stating your opinion as fact, and I don't think there is a basis beyond your opinion, you simply don't know.
I agree with you the interviewee could have handled the questions better to not be so revealing about himself, setting boundaries the interviewer was crossing, but it might have been precisely the intent of the mental health company interviewer to elicit responses like that to stay away from emotionally wounded people.
I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical — covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes.
You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."
Yeah, OP just unwinded himself, no filter. You can be truthful and open with friends and family, close people to you. You absolutely shouldn't when talking with strangers.
We weren't there, and the article is light on details, so we can only speculate. I see two options here:
a) The potential employer vastly overstepped commonly accepted boundaries.
b) It was totally implied that the questions were to be answered in the context of work. "What was the hardest challenge you had to overcome?" in that context relates to e.g. debugging a hard concurrency problem, not your divorce.
What stood out to me is that whatever interpretation is the correct one, the candidate was willing to give (apparently) deeply personal answers. That's just something to adjust for in upcoming interviews, we live and learn.
But why ask about "the hardest day in your life" instead eg "the hardest day at work"?
Personally asking this kind of personal questions sounds very weird. You can evaluate soft skills and culture fit by asking more relevant, professional questions. Except if the reason to ask this kind of more personal questions was sth else.
You are technically correct. But you must admit it sounds pretty bad to say "Yeah, the idea of the behavioral technical interview is the interviewer asks questions that look like they admit honest answers, but you should actually lie to them, and they expect you to lie, and actually it's a charade you play with your interviewer, and if you don't understand this (which is never explained to you) then you will immediately be rejected."
I can definitely understand the perspective of someone who has done few interviews not understanding this and being upset/confused!
It is also possible that they were trying to see, if the person had traumas that would interfere with their ability to work with toxic content, do red-teaming / etc tasks.
I was excited, it was a game company, and I'd wanted to get back into games - or more specifically, game engines - for a few years. The tech of this particular company was interesting, an in-house engine developed by wunderkind, of course, and they'd invited me for an interview because I had done a fair bit of low-level work, which would be handy for their rough edges. Apparently.
Half way through the interview, I had an epiphany. I really didn't want to work there. It was cultural, it just wasn't going to fit.
I didn't waste any more time. Half-way through a white-board challenge, I put down the marker and said, plainly, "okay, I've seen enough, I don't want to work here - thanks and let me not waste any more of your time", picked up my coat and left.
It wasn't a bad interview. It wasn't a terrible one. Nor was it because of the whiteboard question, or anything like that.
I just didn't like the guys. That's all it was. And I couldn't stand the idea of working for them - just the way the interview proceeded. I don't need to give details.
It was really the only time I ever got up mid-interview and left.
I had something similar years ago. I applied for a job at a company, size around 150 people. Did two rounds of interviews which were great. They wanted me to offer the role. However, as a third round, I was going to do a meet and greet with the CEO and he was going to yay or nay me. At point I dropped out. If a CEO can't trust his delegate managers to hire the people they see fit for a role, then thanks but no thanks. That's not a company culture I want to spend most of my waking hours in.
I don't know your particular situation, so it might be totally different, but I think this is commonly just a formality and a friendly chat.
It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit).
Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decision to hire you has well and truly been made. I don't know what then would need to happen for the actually rather secondary function of giving the CEO the opportunity to veto to become relevant. I'd be curious hearing about anyone who's ever experienced it (on whatever side). I guess it can be a safeguard against vastly unaligned values, but I suspect it's very rare.
But primarily, and effectively, it's usually just a meet-and-greet. And it's hard for me to blame a CEO (or VP etc.) for at least getting to anyone who's going to enter a mutual contract to effectively become part of their company.
If you got to the that point it's just a formality, and unless you somehow blow it the job is (probably) already yours, if you decide you still want it. You seem to have jumped to unwarranted assumptions about the company culture; quite possibly the CEO does want to make sure the culture is good and remains good.
It's not necessarily a binary test of whether the CEO can't trust delegating to their managers; it's also your constructive opportunity to use that conversation to get more insight into where the company, strategy, product/service, customers etc. are going. A good question to ask the CEO is about the broader impact of your role: that should get you some useful insight, also you compare the delta between what the CEO says vs what the senior managers said vs what the recruiter said; they don't need to be identical but they should broadly agree, and it shouldn't reveal any fundamental disagreements or ambiguities (e.g. "your role is incremental support of product X" vs "totally rewrite it in language Y in the next 9 months"). Listening to their response should also give you subtle behavioral cues about who in the company does/doesn't have influence, credibility and where the pain points are: you can't generally get that from the previous interviews, and it can be a faux pas to explicitly ask.
The only (minor) negative I'd take from this is that it still behaves like a small startup scaling quickly, and they haven't yet figured out how to to scale interviewing and hiring for when they get larger... but that's overall a good complaint, it shows they're still growing. It's much better that your signoff interview is with the CXO (or VP) than the Director of HR, or an AI bot.
I have never done what you did, but I am going to take note of the fact that it is something one can do. Because I've certainly had the same moment of realization a few times, and I went through the motions anyway.
I've been working as a dev for over twenty years now and have had my fair share of interviews. The very worst I ever had was about six months ago.
I'd had a fantastic initial interview, it seemed like a perfect fit and interesting tech. Overlapped a lot with some work I'd been doing recently. They made it sound like my experience was a great match and they were exited for me to move forward. I was the most excited I've ever been after a job interview.
The second interview a couple days later was a one-on-one with the CTO. After about five minutes of pretty friendly get-to-know-you chitchat he asks if I have any questions about the position. I ask about what my day to day would look like and he replies "I don't know, and that's the problem. I don't like to lead people on, I'll be honest I don't see a position for you here."
It was such a sudden slap in the face that my brain just completely shut off. I kind of just stammered out an "Oh... Um... Thank you for your time"
I didn't get to talk about my experience ... at all. Not a single mention of my twenty years of across multiple tech stacks my resume doesn't even begin to scratch. I've never been judged so quickly or so blindly.
Later that day, out of sheer frustration I email him back trying to explain that I'd felt like I didn't get a chance to talk about myself and all the ways I'd felt like I was a great fit based on the previous interview and how my experience applied.
My worst interview was at Uber (their security team).
The screening and technical interviews on site were all fine and dandy. At the end of the onsite interviews I spoke with the director in charge of the team. I asked some general questions like, "What's the team's work-life balance like?"
He chuckled and said something like they work 60+ hour works. I looked at him and said flatly, "Yeah, I'm not doing that."
The HR person called me after the onsites and was completely puzzled. She said she never seen a candidate pass technicals and not get an offer. She suggested sending me to another team (I declined).
I feel you. I once had a second-level manager interviewer suggest that I work through the lunch hour while on the job. I terminated that interview process the same day.
Let me preface this by saying, I know this might be a privileged take. However, I've had some bad interview experiences but one thing I have never had happen and I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with.
> hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.
> you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with?
Building relationships with colleagues is possible but I have tried to be careful. I have made some friends over time that were once co-workers. However, they were only able to move to full friend once they moved on to other teams or companies. I don't see someone I work with day-to-day as a personal friend. I compartmentalize them, keep the relationship professional and cordial.
Moving someone to a personal friend has risks, especially if there is a chance you may work for or with them again. Some personal friendships may be able to outlast work drama, but so far I haven't had that happen for me. I've lost a few along the way due to negative conditions at work.
Have you had a personal friend that stayed around after leaving a bad situation at work? Any pointers?
Would be funny if the interviewer wrote the exact same blog post; "I had the worst candidate interview today, I asked him a simple ice-breaker question before getting into more technical stuff, and he just went off about his family and relationships for an hour; weirdest interview I ever gave."
“He kept talking about dead babies, failed relationships and the time he cheated in an exam in grade five. Fifteen minutes in and I wondered not whether I would hire him, but if he would kill me and wear my skin if I didn’t. Or did. Little difference.”
I can share mine. It was a job interview with one of the fastest growing companies. They were expanding sales positions in APEC region, specifically Korea. I am not really into sales, but I thought okay because it was such a big opportunity to work for this company.
I got three rounds of interviews including technical ones, then I had an interview with my potential team lead. The first thing he asked was about my MBTI personality test, which I hate and didn't pay much attention to learn mine. It seemed every encounter in Korea began with this MBTI test, but common in a job interview? I honestly answered him that I don't know my MBTI and just described my personalities in general. Then he started describing his MBTI and told me that I may not be the best fit with him because this and that.
A few days after, I got an email "... sorry". I don't want to believe that his MBTI question attributed a lot to this decision.
After reading your blog : I would say : interview depend totally on candidate on how he/she wants to drive, its never like an QnA, unless you are giving a HR round. its like : you say something : other person asks more about it : you explain more. and this is how an interview is driven.
The feeling you expressed is a true feeling of a candidate after the interview : but you are thinking that you did everything best : I would suggest to think from interviewer's shoes as well : how you gave interview : if you are someone taking interview : and candidate gave this responses : would you hire him or not
I have a lot of interaction with mental health professionals, due to an organization in which I participate. Have, for the last 45 years.
Many, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here.
Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.
There is, and should be, a red flag for these situations. No make that RED flag. If you go into an interview that leaves you feeling the least bit helpless or at someone's mercy then run screaming. Not politely, not quietly. Just say to calmly to the person that you find the situation abusive. It is. As you go out, if you see anyone or have a chance to talk to anyone, just tell them you found that your interviewer to be personally abusive. That you will not be willing to take the position if it is offered, that you will share you perception with others around you and expect an apology.
Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.
I disagree that you'll find "many red flags for any job"
I've interviewed at dozens of companies, received and accepted or rejected at least 20 job offers in my life, and rarely encountered true red flags. This is very different than saying it's a perfect 10/10, all life is about tradeoffs. What GP is saying is that "there are things that are not worth any tradeoff, and you'll know them by ... ", which is good advice, esp for young people, who might be willing to make uncomfortable personal sacrifices to obtain a job.
i agree with you, i've interviewed at a lot of companies, too, and seen only 1 red flag in retrospect. the flag was "we need to hire for budgetary reasons"
There's a difference between "red flags" and "imperfections". Every team has faults, which if you're experienced at interviewing/working many places, are usually pretty easy to figure out. These are distinct from "red flags".
Early in your career it can be hard to distinguish the two, but once you've joined a company where there really were "red flags" you quickly learn to differentiate.
Many people are reading the author's interview uncharitably as simply misunderstanding how to answer non-technical question, but I have absolutely been through loops (thankfully rare ones) that did have a "let's press on sensitive issues and see how tough this candidate is" round (one place brought in a consultant who bragged about his experience working with hardened criminals and terrorists to build out a true psych profile on candidates, I declined after learning he had had some "trouble" at a previous high profile job)
Sounds like you've never worked for a truly toxic org, which is great. But, especially if you're interviewing with smaller startups (as the author mentioned), there is a lot more variance and some truly messed up teams (and some truly remarkable ones as well) out there. I've noticed that HN increasingly doesn't have people that work at startups any more, so many people are probably less familiar with what's out there.
I don't know if they still do it, but the fashion, back in the 1980s, was to give a Myers-Briggs-type test to candidates.
Maybe I'm wrong, but given the type of company it was (and likely, the C-suite people), I guess that they were doing something similar. I assume that they really did want to know about the person's non-worklife stuff.
I would consider that crossing boundaries. It's also possible that some of the questions might have been illegal (in the US).
Sure, but there are some jobs that are so bad that this advice readily applies to. The sort of job that takes you away from your life, family and friends in a way not entirely unlike poverty does. It's good to recognize whether working somewhere will turn into this because it's... hell... working at those places.
Wacky question. But if you shouldn’t be commenting, why did you? Or was that one of those fake ‘I shouldn’t say anything’ that people do when they’re being jerks and don’t want to get called out?
The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering.
If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.
Even if I wanted to, these questions aren't allowed in the company I work for, along with feedback related to "team fit". This is dictated by execs, dictated by legal, because it has nothing to do with proving competence, and opens up for employment discrimination lawsuits since you're persuading them (you have to understand the power dynamic) to reveal potentially protected info. For example, if a man say "Oh, I go hiking with my boyfriend!", he could also say "They didn't hire me because I told them I was gay!". Or, even "I spend time with my kids." since familial status is a legally protected class where I am.
As a person who does interviews, I have exactly zero interest in what people do for fun. I just want competent people that are nice to work with (in a productivity sense), and I only have 45 minutes to prove that, knowing that nearly everyone fucking lies. I see it serving no purpose other than helping enforce some monoculture within the group, because, genuinely, why else would you ask about free time activities during an interview?
Related, the only time I've asked this was early on when I didn't know how to interview. The only time I've been asked this, and answered, was with people who had just started interviewing (small startups and new hiring managers).
I think that's the best you can do for culture fit, cause at the end of the day it's just "can they shoot the shit and are they pleasant to be around". You can't really know a person technically or socially until they've been in the job for at least a little bit though.
Truth is, most people who interview people have no idea how to do it. I know because I've done hundreds and nobody ever trained me or explained to me how to do it properly. Over the years I've seen so many people on both sides of the table that I developed a method and I got semi-functional at it but so many people doing interviews shouldn't that bad experiences should be almost expected by now.
Earlier this year I was told I failed an interview because when asked why I wanted to join a company, my answer "could apply to other companies in the same stage of life." They apparently required me to be _uniquely_ interested in their company. There were other oddities about their interview process.
Assume that every singlemotherfucking breathing human you find in your life wants or at least likes to feel special, and that any company that asks you that question wants you to massage their ego a little bit.
Don't think much about it, just believe what I am telling you. It is going to save you a lot of grief.
That question may be a little bit praise seeking (especially in other contexts), but it's also a way to ask if you did any research on the company, or do you just spray and pray.
If you took time to do a little research and validate that you fit more than 'i need a pay check and you have paychecks' that's valuable for the company. Your judgement may be poor, but you self screened, so that's an extra screening.
I had an interview many years ago, that wasn't nearly as traumatic, but the interviewer asked me about my failures like 4 different ways.
- Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake.
- Tell me about your biggest failure.
- Tell me when you last shipped a bug.
- Tell me when you took down production.
Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistakes, and have a few examples ready to give depending on the job I'm interviewing for, but to get asked so many times in a row was just deflating.
I conducted a few hundred software engineering interviews while working for a non-tech corp. Aside from technical problem solving & programming interviews we'd also ask a few behavioural questions -- including asking about times where the candidate had made a mistake at work, or a time at work where they were very frustrated.
What we were looking for
- people unwilling to admit they'd ever made a mistake -- red flag
- people who could reflect on the situation and say what they'd do differently in the future
- ideally, people who could use their mistake / failure / bad situation as an example of how they then took initiative to improve things by doing blah blah blah
People who were able to give an ideal response had clearly practised for this kind of question & knew how to play this part of the interview game.
Behaviours valued by one type of potential employer may not be valued by another. Small businesses & startups might value folks who take initiative and have a bias for action. In contrast, regulated megacorps might value folks who are great at consulting stakeholders and getting buy in before making changes, and steer clear of people they believe will go off and do stuff unilaterally.
One rule of thumb for handling these kinds of behavioural questions is "STAR" -- situation, task, action, result. Use the prompt for the question as a way to pick an example, then figure out how to frame an answer that shows you doing something to improve the situation. There's a fair chance that your interviewers are trying to mash your response into a STAR format in their own notes, even if they don't hint for you to respond in this way.
I think a lot of technical people interpret interview questions literally. Like yes of course the prompt starts with a negative - but you don't actually have to answer the question fully and literally, this isn't a college exam.
You could for example start talking about how you thought something was a colossal failure only to realize looking back that it was an incredible learning experience and how sometimes the only way to learn big lessons like that is by trying the experiment. And how it's only a failure if you stop. But you kept going so it wasn't really a failure.
Honestly we should probably take a page out of politicians' or media trained people's playbooks and not even answer the question as asked but relentlessly steer towards what you really want to talk about.
I too am capable of waffling to an interviewer. My favourite "took down production" story is a segue into why, when your interns ask you to look over the command they're about to run against the prod environment because they're not 100% comfortable, you should do it, and a broader chat about infrastructure-as-code and review processes.
I don't think it's good practice for the interviewer to require the ability to dissemble from software engineers, though.
I would've ended the interview. "I don't want to waste any more of your time. It's clear to me I won't be a good fit here. Thank you for the consideration." <end call>
Beats my worst interview. For some reason I mentioned that I like reading. The guy then demanded to list the last ten books I read. I just named ten random books that I had read at some point in my life, even in childhood. Pretty bizarre. Glad I didn’t get that job.
Asking you to name a book or two to continue the conversation is fine, but 10 is ridiculous. That interviewer literally pulled the "oh you like _____ band?! name 5 of their albums" meme on you.
I can imagine getting myself into a similar fix. I'd like to think I'd calmly clarify that while I enjoy it I don't get through as many as quickly as I'd like; I'm currently reading blah, and previously blah and blah, but I can't recall the last ten.
Because they're presumably just trying to call bullshit, since it can sound like such an easy probably oft-recomended 'hobby' to say you have, so it's 'oh yeah well what have you actually read recently then', not actually 'I now therefore expect you to have perfect recall over your read catalogue'.
Asking for a list of 10 is a pretty specific version of a natural conversational follow up "what have you read lately?" Sounds like a coder with bad social skills. Like a bad sitcom where I could totally see a Sheldon asking that as a response
I got "tell me what you're passionate about" last time, and I'm curious what a bad reply would be, because I showed them a silly comic I drew on my phone. Apparently that was fine.
A pattern I’ve noticed on high performing teams is that individuals were or are excellent at something, anything. I suppose that could be an interview question, but people may not want to share their competitive barbershop quartet videos with a stranger.
I mean, what's the cutoff for something like that. The last book you read seems innocent enough.
The last 3? No red flag yet...
10 though is kind of a lot.
"Actually, I just pulled up your goodreads profile, and it looks like your eighth-most recent book was 50 shades of grey. In addition to having a faulty memory, you're reading work-inappropriate material. Finally, you read that in 2021, so clearly you don't care about reading /that/ much. Dismissed!"
"The industrial society and its future" - Theodor Kaczinski.
"The communist manifesto" - Karl Marx.
"Rules for Radicals" - Saul Alinsky
"Hitler's War" - David Irving
"The Souls of Black Folk" - W.E.B. Du Bois
"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" - Tom Pickety
"Las venas abiertas da America Latina" - Eduardo Galeano
"The question of Palestine" - Edward Said.
"Grapes of Wrath" - John Steinbeck.
"The conquest of Bread" - Kropotkin
"Problems of Leninism" - Josef Stalin
If adventurous, I'd cite another one I've read that should not be mentioned amongst educated XXI century folks, as they think reading a book means you agree with the author.
Not the last 10 books I've read, but books I've read along my life and that would maybe make the guy think twice before considering making me an offer.
> covering such lovely topics as the hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
> talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments.
I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business.
And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.
Not the OP, but having been in many similar interviews, I feel like it's an easy trap to fall into, especially if you've not developed a good bit of curmudgeonly cynicism.
At least when I've done these interviews, they will be extremely friendly, and they will at least act interested in everything you have to say. It's very easy to overshare when you think the audience is actually interested in what you have to say.
It's a fairly common english phrase that originated out of the gaming culture of the US in the mid 2000-2010s.
"He's so good (plays aggressively) he must be on crack" sort of became "he's cracked", etc. Now that the people who were killing CoD lobbies are writing code full time or running companies, its seeped out.
Actually I think "it's cooked" came from this as well.
"Crack team" long predates video games and even crack cocaine. I think it is related to the phrase "get cracking", i.e., "get working", but I wasn't able to find a clear etymological line. One possibility is it refers to gunfire, but I wonder if it refers to harvesting, cracking corn, etc.
Notably, if someone is "cooked", it's bad. If someone is "cooking", it's often (but not necessarily) positive, most commonly in the form "let him/her cook" or "he's/she's cooking".
I have never seen it used in this way before around 2021, but it has become popular since then among the Twitter and YouTube tech influencer circle. Maybe that's where OP picked it up.
I believe it was emergent from FPS gaming culture, particularly following the popularity of Apex Legends. In Apex Legends you have an energy shield which serves as a buffer of hit points. When playing cooperatively it is useful to communicate when this energy shield is "cracked", thus the line "they are cracked" emerged. This originally meant a target player's shield is down in Apex Legend specifically, but it was then the Fortnite (and broader FPS) community which took this phrase and warped it to mean someone is precise or an excellent shot. Today it is certainly used in the context the original poster intended.
edit: Looking again, this may be overstated. Apex-era gaming culture likely helped popularize the usage, but considering older idioms like "crack shot," the actual etymological root is more likely there.
I'm with you, came here to ask this too. This is how I would have read it:
"Crack engineer" someone who is an excellent engineer, I feel like this goes back to at least the early 20th century, certainly long before gaming culture.
"Cracked engineer" a damaged person who is an engineer
I've met the same type interview recently, but not on the phone, it's a online web forms. I just write those not that important and positive memories, because I don't trust them from the start. Also, on the next step of the form, there's a statement shows they will use AI to analyze my personality. I feel uncomfortable and told them I don't like their way of interview and just end it.
A hiring manager asked me a question like those. I said: "sorry I'm not prepared, I don't remember from the top of my head." Right before that interview I was a solo founder. He said something like: "ok, so you just focus on the work?" "Yes." I got the job.
I think the author was reading too much into these questions. I bet these people came up with random questions they thought were deep, especially coming from a mental health lens, but struck a nerve in the author.
They essentially weren't prepared for the raw human experience that was shared here.
I think regardless of whatever you face during an interview, true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade. If you cannot do it in that context, you dodged a bullet imho.. you wouldn't be able to recognize yourself a few years down the line working there with them daily.
> true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade
Or say "screw that" and go find work that lets you be a human, not a repressed shell. I'm in my 40s now and have followed that my whole life to great benefit. Barring about two months in a open-plan hell hole in my mid twenties which I still look back on and shudder, mostly out of empathy for people who spend their whole working lives that way.
This is hazing, and OP is right to be upset. They were put into a Catch-22 by the interviewer and I see no reason to believe that was accidental.
I see a lot of replies that accuse OP of oversharing, and that's bullshit. In any job interview, the expectation is that you answer questions to the best of your ability. If "I'm not comfortable answering that" is an acceptable answer, that is an exception to the norm and it should be made clear ahead of time.
It’s kinda ironic that after interviewing with a mental health startup, you ended up so emotionally disturbed that you might now need some actual mental health support to tackle the thoughts it brought up. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
I've had that kind of interview. I kept avoiding the questions because it's not their business. He kept asking. I didn't get the job but that's fine.
I've always worked with people I don't mesh with. We fight with each other. We even yell sometimes. But that's ok. We don't need to be a family and in fact I feel major ick at the thought (weird polyamory shit) - they're gross. But they are competent and consistently bring us more customers.
I had one job, where at the very end of the process there was a multi-hour evaluation by a psychologist / consultant they used. Went over my full life history, school, jobs, etc.
It was all disclosed up front, so no surprises. Not really that bad.
Sounds like a behavioral interview that silicon valley sometimes uses - the questions are designed to ascertain how you deal with difficulty, stress, and certain situations which they absolutely can't legally ask about directly - they are looking for you to discuss challenging times where you succeeded by working harder, doing more than peers, etc. It's not about shaming you, and understanding what they are looking for and why is key - they want people who stick with them through difficult times that they anticipate having.
For interview questions like these, they can only tease about what they are really after - finding employees who "go the extra mile" or "stay late" or "don't give up in the face of adversity". They are looking for you to find evidence of these patterns to corroborate your story. If they drove you to the answer they were after, it wouldn't be a passing score in their interview summary write-up.
Agreed. Reading the rest of these comments are makes me feel crazy / like I’m missing something. It doesn’t sound like the interviewer was making the candidate divulge traumatic information - but rather assessing how they deal with adversity.
had a similar unsolicited psych evaluation interview back in 2017 in twitter. There was a VP (or maybe director), who started with "go back in history and tell me what your boss at position X would say about you", and this kept happening for an hour.
One thing I've done in the past when interviewing candidates is to create a hypothetical situation where the candidate doesn't know how to proceed, like some difficult technical issue. I'd also tell the candidate that their manager and peers are all unavailable. Then, I'd ask how they'd go about trying to resolve the issue and proceed. Honestly, I was never looking for the correct resolution. Rather, I was just looking that the candidate had some basic process for troubleshooting and figuring stuff out on their own. If someone said, "I'd search Stack Overflow until I found the solution.", that was usually good enough. However, all too often, candidates just couldn't understand what was being asked, like they independent troubleshooting was an unrealistic skillset. I'd say, "Just walk me through how you'd approach solving this issue." Some candidates would fully melt down, saying, "I don't know. I can't proceed."
Boy oh boy, the shenanigans I saw when it comes to job interviews are enough to write a book, not even joking, it was easier to start a business than getting hired as an employee, because building a business you talk with mature, goal oriented adults, who only care about what value that business will add. In jobs, that’s the last they care about nowadays, from morons in the HR, to power hungry managers, to contracts that I would say borderline exploitation with minimum regulations to protect the employees.
One job they got offended to ask for a negotiation, despite it was them who changed the original job posting. Another job took 4 interviews (plus one redundant, as it seems they forgot they had that interview with me) over 4 months only to send a generic “thank you” email. Another job, the interviewer seems was hostile just to have the interview. Another one the questions in the first interview were stupid, supposedly technical but extremely shallow, like tabs or spaces.. yeah, I got asked that! Another one refused to change a word in the contract because it’s a “template”, it felt like applying to a service rather than a job. And many other stories, like a company sent me a ticket for an interview in another country, only to find the team is disconnected from what the recruiter wants, they paid for the trip tho.
European companies seem slightly better than North American ones, but for some reasons bringing up the money talk early is a taboo topic? Had few calls and noticed that, they got shocked asking such question, even though it’s great to know so we don’t waste our time.
I never negotiated money, funny how that sounds, but it isn’t my no1 priority, all I wanted is a mature workplace and working with goal oriented people where nothing else matters that much than delivering the results, it seems it was impossible.
The mirror side of this is when almost all the intern applications/cover letters we used to receive contained a paragraph about the hobbies of the applicant (all domain-irrelevant). I find that weird but I guess it is sort of common nowadays?
I was involved with picking a candidate for an internship in 1999, we had three candidates and they all mentioned basketball on their resumes. I think it's just something to help the resume fill one page. And help provide a direction for a 'validate the resume' interview.
Sometimes, if the hobby shows leadership etc, it might be relevant even if the domain isn't.
These are essentially sociopath screens where they expect you to memorize some STAR stories and regurgitate them on demand. And I don't mean screen out.
I have a two way tie for the worst interviews I've ever had, for very different reasons.
First, in 2023 I interviewed for a startup as a lead architect.
They had me do some virtual whiteboard stuff, and so I was drawing rectangles and cylinders and mentioning things like "database" and "message queues" as generically as I could.
They would interrupt me and say stuff like "Which message queue? Where do you download that?". The interview went on for a long time, with many bizarrely-specific questions for a whiteboard interview, but I figured that it was just their way to make sure that candidates didn't bullshit them by handwaving away important details.
They did make me an offer a few days later, but not for as much as I wanted. That's fine, no hard feelings over that.
But then a week later the CEO emails me asking for technical help on a question. I was on the train when I got it. I don't remember the exact question but it was something to do with RabbitMQ and Redis, and it was pretty easy, so I just typed out a quick answer to my phone and replied without even really thinking about it. Then another half-hour later he responds back to my reply asking for more detail on everything.
After his last reply I sent a response like "I am happy enough to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I will need to start billing the time it takes for me to reply. Give me a call and we can discuss the rate.
He didn't reply.
And then I realized something: this company was using interviews as unpaid consulting. That's why they were asking for bizarrely-specific stuff during the interview, and that's why the CEO was still trying to get free consulting out of me even afterward.
Really pissed me off, and I am very glad I didn't accept their offer. I am generally a person who is happy to help answer technical questions for free [1], but I felt like my trusting nature was kind of weaponized.
---------
Second was last year at a big bank.
I was really excited for this job, so I showed up to the interview in my best (and only) suit, made sure everything looked nice, and had studied for many of the technical questions I thought they were likely to ask the previous night.
Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.
Once I get in, they start giving me some conceptual algorithm questions on the whiteboard. I don't remember the exact question, but I remember they asked the runtime complexity of my solution and I said "Looks like O(n + log m) where n is the length of list A and m is the length of list B". One of the interviewers very confidently corrects me an says "You got your n and m backward".
I look at the board, go through my solution, and, no, I actually hadn't gotten the variables backward.
I have no idea what you're supposed to do in a situation where you're right and the interviewer is wrong [2], so I just do a trace through my solution and explain that, no, my variables were appropriately assigned. He still confidently "corrected" me again.
At this point I really don't know what I'm supposed to do, because I'm not going to just lie and say "oh you're right", but if I'm wrong, then I do want to know why so I don't repeat the mistake in the future. So I ask him "Ok, let's trace through this again because I really don't think my understanding is wrong here".
It was this bizarre gaslighting experience, because he would agree with every premise of why I thought the answer was O(n + log m), and every reasoning step along the way, but then still insisted I got the answer wrong. I do really know my Big O complexity, I have been doing this for a very long time, so eventually I just said something like "I guess we need to agree to disagree" because my time for that interview was almost up.
Then there was another interview immediately afterward. The interviewer started asking me very specific questions about Java Spring MVC (like about which annotations to use and whatnot)
Now, I don't have Java Spring on my resume, I haven't touched Java Spring in more than a decade, and Java Spring was not in the job listing. I didn't even consider studying Spring MVC because the listing didn't even mention that this would be web-based.
So I tell the guy something like "umm, I don't really know Spring. I know how a web request works so I'm happy to answer conceptual questions on the whiteboard, but I'm afraid I would have to learn the specific syntax".
And he responded "Well this is not a junior role. You shouldn't have to learn."
So of course I get the specific Spring questions wrong, and fine, if they wanted a person who knew Spring, that's ok, even if they should have put that in the job posting.
But then he asked me to, on the whiteboard, design a basic web request where there was a global counter [3]. I use an AtomicLong, which to my understanding is what pretty much every human who writes Java uses for counters.
He asked me why I used an AtomicLong, and I said "because it's what everyone uses, and because it doesn't block and because compare and swap for a small surface area like that is pretty cheap".
The guy then, corrected me, and told me to use a mutex. I said "I don't think a mutex is necessary here, if it's just a counter I think an atomic is fine."
He was very insistent, and told me to rewrite it with a mutex, and at this point I am starting to question my own competence, so I yield and just rewrite it with a ReentrantLock, which he again "corrected" me saying that I should use `synchronized`, and at that I push back and say "no, ReentrantLock is fine".
I left the interview feeling like a moron; I was so sure about this stuff before, but maybe I didn't have the understanding I thought I did.
I'm friends with a few graybeard C and C++ programmers on Discord, so when I got home I told them the questions and asked them how they'd solve them, and they solved the problems in the same way I would have.
Then I realized that this interviewer, who was principal level, didn't know what an atomic was, and I think he also had no idea how to use ReentrantLock, and so when I used them he just assumed I was wrong. Moron.
[1] And that's still true; feel free to email me if you want to geek out about software :)
[2] And it seems like the answer I get for that varies between each person. I'm not sure anyone knows.
[3] With, to be clear, no further arithmetic or anything being applied to it, before someone asks.
All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.
This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that.
Unless they explicitly and unambiguously say “tell me about the day your mom and dog died in the same day when you found out you had cancer” they mean “tell me about your worst day _at work_.” And even if they ask about the time your dog died (they won’t), they are not asking you “tell me about the worst day you’ve had in your life”. They are asking “tell me about a time you experienced adversity and overcame it, exhibiting problem solving, resilience, and grit AT WORK. (Or - if you are operating in executive mode or you like to live dangerously - some non-work context that maps obviously and unambiguously to a work context).”
You failed the “knows how to interact with people in a professional setting” part of the interview. Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). Or the “read between the lines” part.
Yeah, inartfully asked questions - but also totally flubbed the answers.
Sorry, chalk it up to you had a bad interview or day or whatever, and never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”.
That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you like to hike? Oh, I did that, too. Might I suggest hiking there and there? I bet you'd like it. Anyway, moving on!" Common ground helps conversations flow.
But an employer asking about your personal relationships? Your needs, fears, and desires outside of any technical context? (My needs, fears, and desires from compiler toolchains are totally within scope.) Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory. They have no business of asking.
OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions'
asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. Young people often don't have enough other experience to fall back on, and in a context in which you are expected to make yourself look good, the filter that is expected is to emphasize something that you were successful/resourceful at.
Is that true? Is that a cultural thing that I do not get? I am in the same boat as OP and consider these questions, if intended for no-work specific context, very inappropriate. The age is irrelevant. If you are interviewing a young applicant who is not expected to have work experience, ask them about sth in the school context instead of work context.
Young people can still have really bad experiences. Especially when you interview a big number of people, you are guaranteed to fall upon some pretty bad. It seems to me that the right expected way to answer such a question is to find some personal experience that is bad, but not _that bad_, and then try to flip it and show you persevered. It seems to me that you are selecting for people who are better in making up stories this way, than anything else, because there is very often no way to answer such a question in any truthful, factual manner.
Personally I would only give answers in a work related context, and make sure to be clear that this is the way I interpreted the question.
I think that "generally..." is a little harsh.
The person might just not have worked in a stereotypical corporate drone environment before.
Or they might normally have been able to handle the corporate drone interview theatre, but are overextended by the context (e.g., laid off in this job market, which can easily be more stressful and existential than most actual work situations), and a bad interview hazing just yanks on that.
There's going to be more and more overstressed people showing up to tech job interviews, and people on the other side of the table will need empathy and understanding, if they're going to make good assessments despite the context.
you are stating your opinion as fact, and I don't think there is a basis beyond your opinion, you simply don't know.
I agree with you the interviewee could have handled the questions better to not be so revealing about himself, setting boundaries the interviewer was crossing, but it might have been precisely the intent of the mental health company interviewer to elicit responses like that to stay away from emotionally wounded people.
Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes.
You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."
a) The potential employer vastly overstepped commonly accepted boundaries.
b) It was totally implied that the questions were to be answered in the context of work. "What was the hardest challenge you had to overcome?" in that context relates to e.g. debugging a hard concurrency problem, not your divorce.
What stood out to me is that whatever interpretation is the correct one, the candidate was willing to give (apparently) deeply personal answers. That's just something to adjust for in upcoming interviews, we live and learn.
Personally asking this kind of personal questions sounds very weird. You can evaluate soft skills and culture fit by asking more relevant, professional questions. Except if the reason to ask this kind of more personal questions was sth else.
I can definitely understand the perspective of someone who has done few interviews not understanding this and being upset/confused!
Pro tip (for life, not only interviewing): never ask a question you don’t want to hear answer to.
Half way through the interview, I had an epiphany. I really didn't want to work there. It was cultural, it just wasn't going to fit.
I didn't waste any more time. Half-way through a white-board challenge, I put down the marker and said, plainly, "okay, I've seen enough, I don't want to work here - thanks and let me not waste any more of your time", picked up my coat and left.
It wasn't a bad interview. It wasn't a terrible one. Nor was it because of the whiteboard question, or anything like that.
I just didn't like the guys. That's all it was. And I couldn't stand the idea of working for them - just the way the interview proceeded. I don't need to give details.
It was really the only time I ever got up mid-interview and left.
If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.
It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit).
Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decision to hire you has well and truly been made. I don't know what then would need to happen for the actually rather secondary function of giving the CEO the opportunity to veto to become relevant. I'd be curious hearing about anyone who's ever experienced it (on whatever side). I guess it can be a safeguard against vastly unaligned values, but I suspect it's very rare.
But primarily, and effectively, it's usually just a meet-and-greet. And it's hard for me to blame a CEO (or VP etc.) for at least getting to anyone who's going to enter a mutual contract to effectively become part of their company.
The only (minor) negative I'd take from this is that it still behaves like a small startup scaling quickly, and they haven't yet figured out how to to scale interviewing and hiring for when they get larger... but that's overall a good complaint, it shows they're still growing. It's much better that your signoff interview is with the CXO (or VP) than the Director of HR, or an AI bot.
Don't overthink.
I'd had a fantastic initial interview, it seemed like a perfect fit and interesting tech. Overlapped a lot with some work I'd been doing recently. They made it sound like my experience was a great match and they were exited for me to move forward. I was the most excited I've ever been after a job interview.
The second interview a couple days later was a one-on-one with the CTO. After about five minutes of pretty friendly get-to-know-you chitchat he asks if I have any questions about the position. I ask about what my day to day would look like and he replies "I don't know, and that's the problem. I don't like to lead people on, I'll be honest I don't see a position for you here."
It was such a sudden slap in the face that my brain just completely shut off. I kind of just stammered out an "Oh... Um... Thank you for your time"
I didn't get to talk about my experience ... at all. Not a single mention of my twenty years of across multiple tech stacks my resume doesn't even begin to scratch. I've never been judged so quickly or so blindly.
Later that day, out of sheer frustration I email him back trying to explain that I'd felt like I didn't get a chance to talk about myself and all the ways I'd felt like I was a great fit based on the previous interview and how my experience applied.
I never heard anything back.
The screening and technical interviews on site were all fine and dandy. At the end of the onsite interviews I spoke with the director in charge of the team. I asked some general questions like, "What's the team's work-life balance like?"
He chuckled and said something like they work 60+ hour works. I looked at him and said flatly, "Yeah, I'm not doing that."
The HR person called me after the onsites and was completely puzzled. She said she never seen a candidate pass technicals and not get an offer. She suggested sending me to another team (I declined).
> hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.
The real problem is that for many people it takes a while to realize you're being abused, in that case it was only a while after.
I highly recommend learning the basics of persuasion and how to manipulate people. It helps identifying the signs early.
Just in an interview situation, or you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with?
Building relationships with colleagues is possible but I have tried to be careful. I have made some friends over time that were once co-workers. However, they were only able to move to full friend once they moved on to other teams or companies. I don't see someone I work with day-to-day as a personal friend. I compartmentalize them, keep the relationship professional and cordial.
Moving someone to a personal friend has risks, especially if there is a chance you may work for or with them again. Some personal friendships may be able to outlast work drama, but so far I haven't had that happen for me. I've lost a few along the way due to negative conditions at work.
Have you had a personal friend that stayed around after leaving a bad situation at work? Any pointers?
I got three rounds of interviews including technical ones, then I had an interview with my potential team lead. The first thing he asked was about my MBTI personality test, which I hate and didn't pay much attention to learn mine. It seemed every encounter in Korea began with this MBTI test, but common in a job interview? I honestly answered him that I don't know my MBTI and just described my personalities in general. Then he started describing his MBTI and told me that I may not be the best fit with him because this and that.
A few days after, I got an email "... sorry". I don't want to believe that his MBTI question attributed a lot to this decision.
The feeling you expressed is a true feeling of a candidate after the interview : but you are thinking that you did everything best : I would suggest to think from interviewer's shoes as well : how you gave interview : if you are someone taking interview : and candidate gave this responses : would you hire him or not
if not then what could he/she do better...
Reflect like this...
Many, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here.
Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.
Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.
You're going to find many red flags for any job, perhaps severe flags.
But you need a job.
Or you have to roll the dice because you have deep knowledge of the red flags for your current job.
Who finds 10/10 perfect jobs via an application process?
Note: I probably shouldn't be commenting since I don't need to apply for jobs and conditions here are likely different from yours.
I've interviewed at dozens of companies, received and accepted or rejected at least 20 job offers in my life, and rarely encountered true red flags. This is very different than saying it's a perfect 10/10, all life is about tradeoffs. What GP is saying is that "there are things that are not worth any tradeoff, and you'll know them by ... ", which is good advice, esp for young people, who might be willing to make uncomfortable personal sacrifices to obtain a job.
We may be there someday, but we're not there yet.
If they're hiding the many red flags, that's the biggest red flag of all!
Early in your career it can be hard to distinguish the two, but once you've joined a company where there really were "red flags" you quickly learn to differentiate.
Many people are reading the author's interview uncharitably as simply misunderstanding how to answer non-technical question, but I have absolutely been through loops (thankfully rare ones) that did have a "let's press on sensitive issues and see how tough this candidate is" round (one place brought in a consultant who bragged about his experience working with hardened criminals and terrorists to build out a true psych profile on candidates, I declined after learning he had had some "trouble" at a previous high profile job)
Sounds like you've never worked for a truly toxic org, which is great. But, especially if you're interviewing with smaller startups (as the author mentioned), there is a lot more variance and some truly messed up teams (and some truly remarkable ones as well) out there. I've noticed that HN increasingly doesn't have people that work at startups any more, so many people are probably less familiar with what's out there.
Maybe I'm wrong, but given the type of company it was (and likely, the C-suite people), I guess that they were doing something similar. I assume that they really did want to know about the person's non-worklife stuff.
I would consider that crossing boundaries. It's also possible that some of the questions might have been illegal (in the US).
I’d like some clarity. :)
The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering.
If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.
Even if I wanted to, these questions aren't allowed in the company I work for, along with feedback related to "team fit". This is dictated by execs, dictated by legal, because it has nothing to do with proving competence, and opens up for employment discrimination lawsuits since you're persuading them (you have to understand the power dynamic) to reveal potentially protected info. For example, if a man say "Oh, I go hiking with my boyfriend!", he could also say "They didn't hire me because I told them I was gay!". Or, even "I spend time with my kids." since familial status is a legally protected class where I am.
As a person who does interviews, I have exactly zero interest in what people do for fun. I just want competent people that are nice to work with (in a productivity sense), and I only have 45 minutes to prove that, knowing that nearly everyone fucking lies. I see it serving no purpose other than helping enforce some monoculture within the group, because, genuinely, why else would you ask about free time activities during an interview?
Related, the only time I've asked this was early on when I didn't know how to interview. The only time I've been asked this, and answered, was with people who had just started interviewing (small startups and new hiring managers).
Some interviewers just want to feel special.
Come interview time someone will ask why I want to work there. My answer is: "You called me, why should I want to work here."
Don't think much about it, just believe what I am telling you. It is going to save you a lot of grief.
If you took time to do a little research and validate that you fit more than 'i need a pay check and you have paychecks' that's valuable for the company. Your judgement may be poor, but you self screened, so that's an extra screening.
- Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake. - Tell me about your biggest failure. - Tell me when you last shipped a bug. - Tell me when you took down production.
Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistakes, and have a few examples ready to give depending on the job I'm interviewing for, but to get asked so many times in a row was just deflating.
I'm glad I didn't get that job.
What we were looking for
- people unwilling to admit they'd ever made a mistake -- red flag
- people who could reflect on the situation and say what they'd do differently in the future
- ideally, people who could use their mistake / failure / bad situation as an example of how they then took initiative to improve things by doing blah blah blah
People who were able to give an ideal response had clearly practised for this kind of question & knew how to play this part of the interview game.
Behaviours valued by one type of potential employer may not be valued by another. Small businesses & startups might value folks who take initiative and have a bias for action. In contrast, regulated megacorps might value folks who are great at consulting stakeholders and getting buy in before making changes, and steer clear of people they believe will go off and do stuff unilaterally.
One rule of thumb for handling these kinds of behavioural questions is "STAR" -- situation, task, action, result. Use the prompt for the question as a way to pick an example, then figure out how to frame an answer that shows you doing something to improve the situation. There's a fair chance that your interviewers are trying to mash your response into a STAR format in their own notes, even if they don't hint for you to respond in this way.
You could for example start talking about how you thought something was a colossal failure only to realize looking back that it was an incredible learning experience and how sometimes the only way to learn big lessons like that is by trying the experiment. And how it's only a failure if you stop. But you kept going so it wasn't really a failure.
Honestly we should probably take a page out of politicians' or media trained people's playbooks and not even answer the question as asked but relentlessly steer towards what you really want to talk about.
I don't think it's good practice for the interviewer to require the ability to dissemble from software engineers, though.
Because they're presumably just trying to call bullshit, since it can sound like such an easy probably oft-recomended 'hobby' to say you have, so it's 'oh yeah well what have you actually read recently then', not actually 'I now therefore expect you to have perfect recall over your read catalogue'.
"The industrial society and its future" - Theodor Kaczinski.
"The communist manifesto" - Karl Marx.
"Rules for Radicals" - Saul Alinsky
"Hitler's War" - David Irving
"The Souls of Black Folk" - W.E.B. Du Bois
"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" - Tom Pickety
"Las venas abiertas da America Latina" - Eduardo Galeano
"The question of Palestine" - Edward Said.
"Grapes of Wrath" - John Steinbeck.
"The conquest of Bread" - Kropotkin
"Problems of Leninism" - Josef Stalin
If adventurous, I'd cite another one I've read that should not be mentioned amongst educated XXI century folks, as they think reading a book means you agree with the author.
Not the last 10 books I've read, but books I've read along my life and that would maybe make the guy think twice before considering making me an offer.
> talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments.
I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business.
And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.
At least when I've done these interviews, they will be extremely friendly, and they will at least act interested in everything you have to say. It's very easy to overshare when you think the audience is actually interested in what you have to say.
"Cracked engineer" is throwing me, but maybe I've just never seen the word cracked used this way before. Should it be "crack", like "crack team"?
"He's so good (plays aggressively) he must be on crack" sort of became "he's cracked", etc. Now that the people who were killing CoD lobbies are writing code full time or running companies, its seeped out.
Actually I think "it's cooked" came from this as well.
Funny enough, I've only ever heard 'crack team' used in a professional context.
If 'cooked' diffuses to corporate at the same rate then I'm very much looking forward to 'cooking the ops' during standup in 2035 :P
edit: Looking again, this may be overstated. Apex-era gaming culture likely helped popularize the usage, but considering older idioms like "crack shot," the actual etymological root is more likely there.
"Crack engineer" someone who is an excellent engineer, I feel like this goes back to at least the early 20th century, certainly long before gaming culture.
"Cracked engineer" a damaged person who is an engineer
Shrug. Language changes all the time!
I think regardless of whatever you face during an interview, true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade. If you cannot do it in that context, you dodged a bullet imho.. you wouldn't be able to recognize yourself a few years down the line working there with them daily.
Or say "screw that" and go find work that lets you be a human, not a repressed shell. I'm in my 40s now and have followed that my whole life to great benefit. Barring about two months in a open-plan hell hole in my mid twenties which I still look back on and shudder, mostly out of empathy for people who spend their whole working lives that way.
People who can "pull up a facade" are a subset of the population
I see a lot of replies that accuse OP of oversharing, and that's bullshit. In any job interview, the expectation is that you answer questions to the best of your ability. If "I'm not comfortable answering that" is an acceptable answer, that is an exception to the norm and it should be made clear ahead of time.
I walk into a darkened cubicle farm, down to the only lit corner office for a 'lunch interview'.
Interviewer is sitting at their desk eating a hot pocket on a paper plate.
Didn't even offer me any.
First interview I walked out of.
Not the last.
I've always worked with people I don't mesh with. We fight with each other. We even yell sometimes. But that's ok. We don't need to be a family and in fact I feel major ick at the thought (weird polyamory shit) - they're gross. But they are competent and consistently bring us more customers.
It was all disclosed up front, so no surprises. Not really that bad.
For interview questions like these, they can only tease about what they are really after - finding employees who "go the extra mile" or "stay late" or "don't give up in the face of adversity". They are looking for you to find evidence of these patterns to corroborate your story. If they drove you to the answer they were after, it wouldn't be a passing score in their interview summary write-up.
They make us write essays and life stories and reject in 24hrs.
Felt the exact same frustration.
One job they got offended to ask for a negotiation, despite it was them who changed the original job posting. Another job took 4 interviews (plus one redundant, as it seems they forgot they had that interview with me) over 4 months only to send a generic “thank you” email. Another job, the interviewer seems was hostile just to have the interview. Another one the questions in the first interview were stupid, supposedly technical but extremely shallow, like tabs or spaces.. yeah, I got asked that! Another one refused to change a word in the contract because it’s a “template”, it felt like applying to a service rather than a job. And many other stories, like a company sent me a ticket for an interview in another country, only to find the team is disconnected from what the recruiter wants, they paid for the trip tho.
European companies seem slightly better than North American ones, but for some reasons bringing up the money talk early is a taboo topic? Had few calls and noticed that, they got shocked asking such question, even though it’s great to know so we don’t waste our time.
I never negotiated money, funny how that sounds, but it isn’t my no1 priority, all I wanted is a mature workplace and working with goal oriented people where nothing else matters that much than delivering the results, it seems it was impossible.
Sometimes, if the hobby shows leadership etc, it might be relevant even if the domain isn't.
And this was for a mental health startup!? Please name-and-shame them. Awful.
First, in 2023 I interviewed for a startup as a lead architect.
They had me do some virtual whiteboard stuff, and so I was drawing rectangles and cylinders and mentioning things like "database" and "message queues" as generically as I could.
They would interrupt me and say stuff like "Which message queue? Where do you download that?". The interview went on for a long time, with many bizarrely-specific questions for a whiteboard interview, but I figured that it was just their way to make sure that candidates didn't bullshit them by handwaving away important details.
They did make me an offer a few days later, but not for as much as I wanted. That's fine, no hard feelings over that.
But then a week later the CEO emails me asking for technical help on a question. I was on the train when I got it. I don't remember the exact question but it was something to do with RabbitMQ and Redis, and it was pretty easy, so I just typed out a quick answer to my phone and replied without even really thinking about it. Then another half-hour later he responds back to my reply asking for more detail on everything.
After his last reply I sent a response like "I am happy enough to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I will need to start billing the time it takes for me to reply. Give me a call and we can discuss the rate.
He didn't reply.
And then I realized something: this company was using interviews as unpaid consulting. That's why they were asking for bizarrely-specific stuff during the interview, and that's why the CEO was still trying to get free consulting out of me even afterward.
Really pissed me off, and I am very glad I didn't accept their offer. I am generally a person who is happy to help answer technical questions for free [1], but I felt like my trusting nature was kind of weaponized.
---------
Second was last year at a big bank.
I was really excited for this job, so I showed up to the interview in my best (and only) suit, made sure everything looked nice, and had studied for many of the technical questions I thought they were likely to ask the previous night.
Off to a bad start, it was one of the hottest days in NYC of the year, and I sweat a lot by nature, so in combination with the full suit, by the time I got to the building I was already kind of drenched in sweat.
Once I get in, they start giving me some conceptual algorithm questions on the whiteboard. I don't remember the exact question, but I remember they asked the runtime complexity of my solution and I said "Looks like O(n + log m) where n is the length of list A and m is the length of list B". One of the interviewers very confidently corrects me an says "You got your n and m backward".
I look at the board, go through my solution, and, no, I actually hadn't gotten the variables backward.
I have no idea what you're supposed to do in a situation where you're right and the interviewer is wrong [2], so I just do a trace through my solution and explain that, no, my variables were appropriately assigned. He still confidently "corrected" me again.
At this point I really don't know what I'm supposed to do, because I'm not going to just lie and say "oh you're right", but if I'm wrong, then I do want to know why so I don't repeat the mistake in the future. So I ask him "Ok, let's trace through this again because I really don't think my understanding is wrong here".
It was this bizarre gaslighting experience, because he would agree with every premise of why I thought the answer was O(n + log m), and every reasoning step along the way, but then still insisted I got the answer wrong. I do really know my Big O complexity, I have been doing this for a very long time, so eventually I just said something like "I guess we need to agree to disagree" because my time for that interview was almost up.
Then there was another interview immediately afterward. The interviewer started asking me very specific questions about Java Spring MVC (like about which annotations to use and whatnot)
Now, I don't have Java Spring on my resume, I haven't touched Java Spring in more than a decade, and Java Spring was not in the job listing. I didn't even consider studying Spring MVC because the listing didn't even mention that this would be web-based.
So I tell the guy something like "umm, I don't really know Spring. I know how a web request works so I'm happy to answer conceptual questions on the whiteboard, but I'm afraid I would have to learn the specific syntax".
And he responded "Well this is not a junior role. You shouldn't have to learn."
So of course I get the specific Spring questions wrong, and fine, if they wanted a person who knew Spring, that's ok, even if they should have put that in the job posting.
But then he asked me to, on the whiteboard, design a basic web request where there was a global counter [3]. I use an AtomicLong, which to my understanding is what pretty much every human who writes Java uses for counters.
He asked me why I used an AtomicLong, and I said "because it's what everyone uses, and because it doesn't block and because compare and swap for a small surface area like that is pretty cheap".
The guy then, corrected me, and told me to use a mutex. I said "I don't think a mutex is necessary here, if it's just a counter I think an atomic is fine."
He was very insistent, and told me to rewrite it with a mutex, and at this point I am starting to question my own competence, so I yield and just rewrite it with a ReentrantLock, which he again "corrected" me saying that I should use `synchronized`, and at that I push back and say "no, ReentrantLock is fine".
I left the interview feeling like a moron; I was so sure about this stuff before, but maybe I didn't have the understanding I thought I did.
I'm friends with a few graybeard C and C++ programmers on Discord, so when I got home I told them the questions and asked them how they'd solve them, and they solved the problems in the same way I would have.
Then I realized that this interviewer, who was principal level, didn't know what an atomic was, and I think he also had no idea how to use ReentrantLock, and so when I used them he just assumed I was wrong. Moron.
[1] And that's still true; feel free to email me if you want to geek out about software :)
[2] And it seems like the answer I get for that varies between each person. I'm not sure anyone knows.
[3] With, to be clear, no further arithmetic or anything being applied to it, before someone asks.