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My favorite interview question

• rootedbox 11y ago
  My answer would be simple. Roll my eyes. Stand up, and walk out the door.
  • andreasklinger 11y ago
    TBH I think this would be super efficient for both sides. The question shows a bit how the company (at least the manager) thinks about the world and about interacting with people. If it doesnt fit with your views it might be worth addressing at this point - it's not something that would change in future
  • coherentpony 11y ago
    Care to elaborate?
    • savanaly 11y ago
      It's the sort of question that would be asked by someone that the poster you're responding to probably considers very much part of the outgroup and so would take pleasure in brushing off and condescending to.
      • AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        And if you'd rather brush me off and be condescending than get the job, I don't want to hire you.
      • yarrel 11y ago
        It's a question designed to get you to either to lie or to show bad faith. Someone who asks it is not someone you want to work for, whichever group you feel you do or don't belong to. And you are doing what you are (without evidence or reason) accusing the OP of doing. So which particular group dynamics do you have in mind?
  • afroviking 11y ago
    If that's your answer then you shouldn't be applying for a job in the first place. It seems like your attitude would make you a difficult person to work with. Instead you should monetize and work on your own projects.
  • cryoshon 11y ago
    I nearly did something similar. Ended up accepting that job. Probably should have walked out.
• fecak 11y ago
  This question is actually a potentially useful tool for closing a candidate as well, designed to find out the candidate's interests with the answer potentially used to demonstrate that the job being offered is a fit for the candidate's specific filters and criteria. This isn't much different from what an agency recruiter may ask a candidate in an initial profiling session, where the answers will be used later to try and close a candidate on a job offer.
• zyxley 11y ago
  This doesn't seem like a very useful question, since a lot of people if answering completely honestly would probably name things in other fields they're specifically not doing for money or other logistical reasons ("writer", "dolphin trainer", "skydiving instructor", or whatever).
  • Guvante 11y ago
    Not being in your ideal field is a useful data point.
    • stupidcar 11y ago
      No it isn't. Everyone has pipe dreams about things they imagine they'd like to do, it's human nature to fantasise this way. All it tells you is that they have a basic level of imagination. These ideas appeal to us precisely because they're unrealistic, and outside of our experience and day-to-day life, and probably not achievable. That lets them retain a haziness that obscures the difficulties, compromises and risk that actually pursuing them would inevitably entail. If somebody volunteers that they'd rather be a professional surfer than a software developer, then spends the whole interview bringing it up, then that's a red flag. If you explicitly ask them to spin a flight of fancy then judge them for not having pursued it, then you're an extraordinarily unfair interviewer.
      • Guvante 11y ago
        You are assuming the interviewer is looking at it in a black and white fashion. I was more pointing towards the more mundane goals. For instance in game development there are lots of roles including designing and developing. If I am hiring a developer and you say you want to design that is a very valuable piece of feedback that doesn't exclude you from the position. For instance it could mean that of the two positions one may be a better fit because it involves more architectural work. In your example that isn't nearly as useful, wanting to focus on your hobby is not a negative at all. An example of a problem would be hiring for a legacy system and having someone say they want to work with the latest and greatest tools. The reality is that isn't going to happen and the fact that you are going to be looking out for another job quickly means it would be better for both of us to avoid the hire (again all things being equal).
• jackmaney 11y ago
  That's a terrible question. You may as well just ask "Hey, can you please slip up and say something incredibly stupid and/or offensive, so that I can have an excuse to end this interview? It'd be great if you could just walk right into this trap that's not-so-cleverly-disguised as a question whose answer isn't even vaguely my business. Thanks!" EDIT: Oh, and I skimmed further and found this gem: > I never let people opt-out of the question What a pile of arrogant crap. You're interviewing a candidate, NOT interrogating a prisoner. Get over yourself.
  • Retra 11y ago
    If they want to end the interview, it doesn't matter what question they ask, because they won't be listening to your answer anyway.
    • jackmaney 11y ago
      Exactly. One can opt out of literally any interview question by simply ending the interview.
      • kpwagner 11y ago
        LOL. Yeah, that's like saying, 'hey, if you don't like the laws in this country, you can move out.' You sure can; you sure CAN. Disparity of "power". That's what interviews are all about. So you would pass up a great candidate because they disagreed with the relevancy of your line of questioning? It takes a lot more intelligence and self-confidence to consider a question and respectfully opt out of it than to blindly do your master's bidding and muddle through a through a question you don't even understand.
      • jazzyk 11y ago
        I would not hire you because of your lack of social skills. Yes, the question is a bit silly, but as an adult you need to be able to deal with silly/annoying questions gracefully. Any polite, hopefully humorous answer would do here.
• drhayes9 11y ago
  My favorite question to ask as the interviewee is kinda isomorphic of that one: "If you could spare $10,000 of the engineering budget to fix anything in your business right now, what would it be?" I also like the similar: "If you could spend one week fixing anything in your app, what would it be?"
  • ksenzee 11y ago
    These are great questions. I'm imagining my answers, and the answers of people on my team, and I think they'd reveal quite a bit about us: personality, priorities, outlook, whether we'd rather fix people problems or software problems.
    • dalke 11y ago
      They are also highly contextual. If I've been self-employed for 5 years, selling an app but only making $30K/year - ie, not poor, but well below market - and decide that it's time to "get a real job", then there likely isn't something in my app that $10K will easily fix.
      • drhayes9 11y ago
        The intent is that the job seeker asks these questions of the place that's hiring, not the other way around.
        • dalke 11y ago
          My apologies! I missed the "as" in "to ask as the interviewee".
• jbob2000 11y ago
  This is a pretty bad question. Since I know what job I'm applying for, I will tailor my answer to fit the job. You're hiring me as a developer? OK, my ideal job is a developer, i love building things and getting down to the nitty-gritty. You're hiring a manager? OK, my ideal job is a manager, i love being part of the bigger picture and breaking a project up into small pieces is my forte. An interview should just be there to weed out people with immediately obvious problems. Use 3 month probations to determine if they are a good fit.
  • paulcole 11y ago
    This is where the BS detector goes off and where a lot of follow-up questions are needed. What about building things and getting down to the nitty-gritty appeals to you? Why?
    • learc83 11y ago
      He's a developer he should be able to drill down into those fairly easy. Sure if you're just trying to weed out people who aren't actually developers, (or managers or whatever the job title is) the question might work. As long as they lie on the first question and say their dream job is whatever job you're offering. The question is bad because it's basically encouraging you to lie--along the lines of "what is your greatest weakness". I'm a developer and I love it, but my dream job would be philanthropic roboticist who designs swarms of robots to build affordable housing for the impoverished, and my dream salary would be $100 billion dollars per year.
      • ska 11y ago
        The question is bad because it's basically encouraging you to lie No, it really isn't. Being unable or unwilling to engage with the question meaningfully is a useful signal in an of itself. But think of this another way around: Sometimes hiring managers are currently trying to fill N positions, with a few more that are opening soon but aren't even posted yet. You may be interviewing for job A when and even better fit, job B, is on offer if you don't play around with this sort of questioning. It's a shame to miss opportunities like that...
• peterburkimsher 11y ago
  The question removes responsibility from the interviewer, and puts all the pressure on the candidate. Many candidates are in situations when they'd be willing to accept something less than "ideal". This is especially true in countries where youth unemployment is high. If someone is seeking perfection, rather than just survival, they probably already have a job. Therefore they'd be being headhunted, and the hiring manager will be trying to attract them, not filter them out. I've taken some horrendously underpaid internships simply to keep me off the streets. Did I admit my desperation at the time? Of course not. Were those jobs a perfect match for my skills? Not exactly. But did I get the job done, answer to my managers, and learn some new skills? Absolutely. Even though my current job isn't totally perfect, it's better than most others I've had before. The value of stability and years of continuous work experience are more important to me than the minor inconveniences I'm accustomed to here.
• unoti 11y ago
  > Suppose you could design your dream job that you'll be starting on Monday. It's at your ideal company with your ideal job title and salary. All you have to do is tell them what you want to do at your job and you can have it. What does your job entail? Funny thing about that to me. What I'm doing matters less to me than why and with whom. I certainly know the kinds of software development and management tasks that I enjoy doing the most. But when I look back over my fondest memories and the biggest high points of my career, it's always about the team. It's who I was working with, what we accomplished together. I've been self-employed for the last several years, and that experience has helped crystallize the importance of the team. I'd seriously consider cleaning toilets and changing bedpans if it was with the right team for the right reasons. That's not likely to happen, though. So to bring it down to a more practical level: working on going-nowhere legacy software that does something important with a great team of people all pushing for excellence-- that would be great for me. But doing the kind of software development I enjoy the most, with a team of pretentious primadonnas who don't really care about actually putting projects into the done-basket, for users who don't really want to use the software-- that's a hell job. I speak from experience.
  • ska 11y ago
    What I'm doing matters less to me than why and with whom. That's a perfectly reasonable answer (fleshed out a bit) to the question.
• vkjv 11y ago
  I also have asked this question many times, but have been unable to get anything useful out of it. I usually end up with one of three responses: 1. Verbatim definition the positions job description. 2. I'd be golfing or laying on a beach. 3. My attempts to probe deeper lead them to specific answers and I end up with my dream job and not theirs. The article is a little light on details about your follow-up questions. Care to share some more?
  • alxndr 11y ago
    Of the employees you've hired after hearing their answers, how have they all been?
• geggam 11y ago
  Why does anyone think these crazy questions have any relevance to work. Work is called work because its not play. Play you do for fun. Work you do for money. People who get paid to play are in professional sports. I never understood why anyone thinks these questions are relevant and frankly I wouldn't want to work for someone who thinks he can figure out a personality with a few minutes spent in a discussion when everyone has their date face on.
• harryh 11y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1346/ https://xkcd.com/1346/
  • pavornyoh 11y ago
    @Harryh, thanks for the laugh..:)
• krupan 11y ago
  The "ready by Monday" part is apparently the author's vague way of saying, "picture a job that is ideal in every way except that they won't give you any time to train or otherwise come up to speed on new skills or technology." For me an ideal job is one where I get to learn some new things, not just plug away at stuff I'm already really good at. An ideal job needs to stretch me a bit, allow me to grow and develop. Once the author explained what was meant by "ready by Monday" I couldn't really come up with an ideal job. A good one, but not an ideal one.
  • ccostes 11y ago
    I don't think the author meant that you needed to be 100% proficient at the job on day one. As in his example the goal is to avoid answers like 'CEO of Google' At least, if I was asking the question, I would be encouraged that you want to expand your skill set.
  • paulcole 11y ago
    It is also a hypothetical question that's intended to give insights into the candidate's thought process without giving an incredibly leading question. You are also free to imagine a position that would allow you to maximize the value of your current skills and explain how that position would also allow you to grown and develop new skills.
• mfringel 11y ago
  "Suppose you could design your dream job that you'll be starting on Monday. It's at your ideal company with your ideal job title and salary. All you have to do is tell them what you want to do at your job and you can have it. What does your job entail?" #savedyouaclick
• pavornyoh 11y ago
  The question is actually not a good question. In today's day and age, the really intelligent jobseekers don't have time for these kind of questions. The hiring company should rather be focused on how to convince a good applicant to come work for them instead of these type of questions.
  • slgeorge 11y ago
    This question is focused on convincing good applicants to work for them. The structure of the interview is: a. Have candidate define their perfect role b. Explain to candidate how actual role lines-up with desired role they defined It works because if both sides are honest then there's a positive exchange of what the candidate wants, and what the role has to offer. Presumably, if the interviewer really wants the candidate, then they'll explain all the ways in which the role on offer matches the ideal.
• valarauca1 11y ago
  This is a bit of a tangent but ultimately related. Back in my WoW raiding days a common question we'd ask candidates, If you could design an encounter what would the mechanics be? The way a person would answer would show a lot about them. A good raider would go into detail talking about obscure details, talking about past encounters they liked/disliked. You'd even hear hints of their cross class knowledge as they'd talk about how to overcome the difficulties of their imaginary encounter. The worst raiders would respond with simple DPS checks, or stupid mechanics that would prevent other classes from being competitive. :.:.: To be clear positions were pretty competitive. Really most Top 50 US guilds are roughly aligned in skill level, the differences you see in positional rankings are normally just time spent within instances. As RNG became the rule of thumb from Sunwell on :\
  • JabavuAdams 11y ago
    This comment just blows my mind! I remember when I stopped playing pen-and-paper RPGs regularly. It was after an intense Sunday session that felt more like an unproductive work meeting. I remember thinking "fun shouldn't be this much like the work I'm dreading going to tomorrow."
    • valarauca1 11y ago
      High end raiding is a lot more work then a game. 2-3 hours per night of highly focused extremely performance critical labor. Follow with 1 hour of meetings where you discuss performance, review reports of your guilds performance vs other outfits. Write reports about this, discuss potential strategy initiatives and if there is a need to recruit I.E.: Hire new talent. At the same time you need to manage monetary income. Your outfit sells off good its acquires during raids, and you use this to purchase materials your raid group needs in game. Its literally a business inside a video game :| If it didn't take me 6 years to realize that. In retrospect I wish I could list it as management/leadership experience without getting laughed out of boardrooms :)
      • JabavuAdams 11y ago
        You know, you probably could list that. I'd find it interesting on a resume. Just one line like "Ran one of the top X raiding guilds in World of Warcraft", followed by some bullet points about your duties. I wonder whether I'd have a more rounded skill-set had I played more games like that, rather than solo or adversarial one-on-one games.
• mootothemax 11y ago
  How are you meant to objectively and unbiasedly grade candidates with such a question? For all you know, you could interview the same candidate before and after lunch and come out with completely different views each time.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• radmuzom 11y ago
  I did not enjoy the article as much as I like the author's (Nicholas C. Zakas) other articles or books [1]. However, he has also written some more "useful" interview related articles earlier - On interviewing front-end engineers (2013) Interviewing the front-end engineer (2010) Surviving an interview with me (2007) [1] http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Object-Oriented-JavaScript-Nicholas-Zakas/dp/1593275404 http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Object-Oriented-JavaScript-... - one of the best JavaScript books ever written
• dc2447 11y ago
  My question is the reverse: "What's the worst culture you have been part of at a company and were you able to change it"
  • RogerL 11y ago
    What does that tell you about what matters: on the job performance? What's a pass? What's a fail? Two people could tell you the same thing. for example, they doggedly raised issues, keep escalating, ended up talking with the CEO directly, and couldn't make a change happen. Except, in case 1, it turns out there were good reasons, or bad reasons, but the person alienated everyone and made it impossible for them to effectively do their job (bad culture if so, but hey, you need to be aware of what you can do and not do). Second person did all that, but cemented relationships in the processs. Chances are you won't know the difference between the two. Then take two more people. they barely tried. But one person was just not very pushy, and the other one rightly decoded the political landscape and rightly figured out that they would accomplish nothing, and probably get fired to boot. How do you distinguish between those 4 stark choices, let alone the continuum of situations that actually exist? (people who just weren't effective at making the change, people that misjudged what the change should be, and so on)
• davidw 11y ago
  > The phrase "starting Monday" places the job in a specific time. It's clear that we're not talking about a position you will one day aspire to, nor are we talking about a dream job that can't actually exist. Wait, what? Because it starts Monday, it can't be a fantasy dream job? That's a non-sequitur.
  • SapphireSun 11y ago
    I start training to become Batman on Monday. If the interviewer suggests that that sounds far fetched, then Robin.
    • thaumasiotes 11y ago
      http://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2013/04/10/ http://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2013/04/10/
  • RogerL 11y ago
    You failed to read the interviewer's mind. No job for you! I really despair every time I read these interview threads. The number of hoops you have to jump through, the questions that require "just so" answers (I'm a 8 out of 10 will get you a fail for being too overconfident by some, and a fail for not being high enough for others), measurements based on everything BUT the one thing that matters - on the job performance, interviews where all information is hidden to the applicant.Take this article: you dragged me in, forcing me to take a day off with pay, and only then tell me the actual requirements of the job? Thanks. Why didn't you put that in the job description, an email, or tell me in a pre interview phone call? What a waste of time.
    • developer1 11y ago
      The OP's question is one that an interviewee would love to hear if they've saved up money and are actually searching for their dream job, while living comfortably on those savings. This is the real annoyance with the employer-employee relationship: the lack of any genuine relationship. Most of the time, the employer wants the best talent without having to pay for it or compromising on anything, and the employee just wants the highest salary/package possible. The real win would be this: I find a company whose product I truthfully want to invest my interest in. You realize my potential and pay me the $150k I am worth compared to the $80k I make now, considering I routinely provide the quantity of work you get from 3-4 juniors at $50k each, at a superior quality where every line of code written isn't adding to the technical debt. Oh, and I'll take my 4-5 weeks of yearly vacation instead of the 2-3 bullshit weeks you expect me to be satisfied with. If only more than 1% of the companies out there actually owned a product worth being excited about. :(
• luckydude 11y ago
  My favorite interview question is different but it has served me well over the years when hiring software devs: Tell me about any software project that was 100% done by you (code, regression tests, docs, web site if there is one, mailing list if there is one, etc) that has been used by at least 10 people, none of whom contacted you for any help (thank you emails aren't help). The software doesn't have to be a big deal, years ago I wrote some regexp enabled wrappers for cp/mv such that you could do move '*.c' '*.c++' and posted it to usenet. Something like that counts. What I'm trying to tease out is how much of the dev process can this person handle. And I'm trying to see if they tinker on their own. It's a bit of red flag for me if the person doesn't have any examples of this sort of thing.
  • ajnin 11y ago
    That's a rather absurd set of constraints. Do you hire people to only work 100% alone on projects ? Would Linus Torvalds be a "red flag" because he's accepting contributions to Linux ? Why 10 people ? There is no link between popularity and code quality. Presumably the developer won't be also in charge of marketing. Did the piece of code you posted to usenet have tests, doc, a website and a mailing list ? How do you know that you had 10 users who never contacted you ? In our industry programmers aren't allowed to be simply professionals. They are always expected to be "passionate" and if they don't program day and night and in their spare time then it is suspicious.
    • luckydude 11y ago
      The point of the question is to find out what the candidate can do. If you interview a lot of people you will find that a lot of people claim they did more than they actually did. As for 10 people, you typically get some sort of feedback when you put stuff out there. What I was trying to say is "can you produce something that at least 10 people can install and use without having to ask you how does this work". In my experience, the people that have put together some small open source (or not, I don't care about the license) project by themselves are in a somewhat different league. They can handle a broader set of problems, they don't depend on others to do the docs, tests, marketing, whatever. We're not talking about photoshop here, it could be some tool you wrote to do galleries of your photos. A buddy of mine has a different way of asking a similar question: "If we needed you to, would you sweep the floors?" We're both trying to get at the capabilities of the candidate. I'm not asking you (or anyone) to program "day and night" but I do like it when people do it because they like it. I've done plenty of free stuff and I've found it rewarding.
• claysmithr 11y ago
  My dream job would be to have enough money in the bank to live off of a 100k salary for the rest of my life without working.
• kazinator 11y ago
  > Sometimes the scope of this question is too big for people to grasp and they get stuck. The ones who appear stuck could be the reasonably clever ones who know that the question's purpose is to reject poor-fit candidates. The extra time is needed to think about how to "game" the question to avoid looking like a poor fit, not because the question has a large scope. (And that includes avoiding haplessly looking like a poor fit even when the candidate knows he or she is actually a good fit, just by fumbling a rejector question.) Even those who could instantly blurt out a honest answer aren't going to do that, if they know what is good for them. For instance "On Monday, I start getting paid $150K per year to work on new widgets for my toy open source GUI library, that nothing uses other than the demo calculator, text pad and mini paint program." All the discussion stimulating questions about what languages you'd like to be using and such are just pieces of rope to hang yourself with. Especially the reversal "what would you absolutely not want to do?" You probably don't want to give a passionate discussion about things you refuse to do. Suppose the job you're interviewing for is in fact close to ideal. You want to be doing exactly what they're doing and paid about what they pay. You have the skills and are in fact a great fit. But, oops, you can't say that, because it's indistinguishable from the bullshit that someone completely naive would blurt out. All this kind of thinking is going to chew up many seconds of time, and create awkward silences.
  • ubernostrum 11y ago
    I've been hunting around for a little while for the right job to move into, and so I've done quite a few interviews. And there definitely have been moments when I've been trying to figure out whether the question I was asked was just part of a standard script the interviewer has to use (and thus is as simple/obvious as it appears) or is trying to accomplish something more subtle.
  • cryoshon 11y ago
    I agree entirely. Typically when I have to stop and think for a few minutes during an interview, it's because I have to devise the "correct" answer to the loaded questions handed to me. It's annoying that it's this way, but once in a great while I get a wink from an interviewer that understands what I am doing. Last time I got the wink, I got the job.
• sown 11y ago
  This seems like kind of a trick question. The vast majority of interviewers want to hear what they want to hear, or at least have you agree. We've all been conditioned to expect this. Then, here comes along someone with a different question where if you answer it differently, you probably don't get the job. In my mind, I'm going to ask, "Is this a serious question? Are we just filling time?" > Are you ready to be CEO of Google on Monday?" If they say yes, then I'll probably entertain myself by asking how they'd run the company while mentally moving on to the next candidate. This question...it just seems so loaded and I have to disagree. I can get a 'no' vote (which is enough to end the interview process) because I give a silly answer to an uncertainly question. If I say, "I want to build apps for non-profits" is that going to sink me during a QA interview? What if I say, "I want to enable non-profits with tech?" during a product or project manager interview? To me, both of those things are heavily intersected. But it seems like I can get stopped right there. God forbid if someone says they want to be a stay-at-home parent. I'm going to cold read you and tell you what you want to hear. I feel this question is less-than-helpful because it doesn't really extract any extra information yet is approached with a different angle to make the question intentionally tricky and make good candidates fail.
  • ryandrake 11y ago
    >> Are you ready to be CEO of Google on Monday?" If they say yes, then I'll probably entertain myself by asking how they'd run the company while mentally moving on to the next candidate. > This question...it just seems so loaded and I have to disagree. I can get a 'no' vote (which is enough to end the interview process) because I give a silly answer to an uncertainly question. It's a silly question, and the commentary about moving on to the next candidate shows ugly dismissiveness. What if the person sitting across from you COULD be the next CEO of Google, and you're blowing off a great find? It's not like there's only one person on Earth who is qualified to be the CEO of Google. Plenty of people could do it. I'd argue that the higher you go up the chain of command at any company, the less specific a skill set the position needs, to the point where many more people out there could be CEO of Google than could be Principal Compiler Technologies Engineer. As others have mentioned, mostly the question is silly because, like most behavioral questions, the correct answer is: take some time to figure out what the interviewer wants to hear and feed it back to them.
• Xyik 11y ago
  Which part of this question ensures the candidate is capable of doing the job?
  • pavornyoh 11y ago
    @Xyik, I agree with you. Let's not forget job descriptions are written so poorly, it does not tell you exactly what the company is looking for. So for a candidate whose background closely match the job description, I don't see how this is a good question to ask.
• learc83 11y ago
  Years ago, when I was in college the first time, I was a tech support supervisor at a large retail store. All candidates had to take an online personality test. The test was a joke. It asked things like "Have you ever stolen anything from work (including little things like a pencil)?" "Do you think it's ever ok to break the law (including minor things like speeding)?" Many people who took the test assumed it was trying to find out whether they'd lie on a test and that saying yes to these questions was the correct answer. Other people guessed correctly that the test wanted you to answer as if you were the perfect retail automaton. The point is that the test punished honesty. And even if this question doesn't necessarily do that, i.e., the interviewer might be fine with answers that include "professional athlete", "swimsuit photographer", etc..., many candidates will think that it does. They will assume that they are supposed to say their dream job is the job they are applying for.
  • geebee 11y ago
    These tests are so odd. But maybe, as you've pointed out, they are simply screening for people who are aware of when and how they need to lie. It used to be fashionable to ask "what is your greatest weakness" in interviews. I always considered it an unfair question, but I was on an interview panel once with a guy who loved to ask it, and I couldn't stop him. I slowly realized that it does reveal show a person handles an unfair question that he or she absolutely should not answer truthfully, but without stammering or being obviously evasive. Like I said, I wouldn't ever ask this question, I consider it to be a bit of a trap. But maybe the people who are asking it are simply more cynical people who are checking to see if the candidate is an equally aware cynic? Just a bit more interview hazing, I guess.
    • logfromblammo 11y ago
      INTERVIEWER: What's your greatest weakness? INTERVIEWEE: My greatest weakness is that my canned response to that question probably won't satisfy any interviewer that asks it. Even with unlimited preparation time, knowing that someone, somewhere will ask it of me eventually, this is the best I can come up with. So now you have to ask a follow-up question to try to peel back a layer of canned response. INTERVIEWER: Is there anything about you that you think you could improve? INTERVIEWEE: Well, yes. There is a severe bug in the inner layers of my canned response that I was never able to get rid of. It has an infinite loop. INTERVIEWER: So you have trouble debugging? INTERVIEWEE: There is a severe bug in the inner layers of my canned response that I was never able to get rid of. It has an infinite loop. INTERVIEWER: I'll just mark you down for "smartass".
• brayton 11y ago
  Are we making an assumption that the candidate doesn't just say what I want to hear? Reminds me of economics class - "Ok class, before we begin you must first go forward with the assumption all people make rational decisions."
• AcerbicZero 11y ago
  I enjoy questions such as this during interviews because, if I've handled the interview well so far, I can turn the question around a bit and use it to feel out the interviewer's opinion on a more important topic, or reinforce one of my previously well received comments. On the other hand if I've been blowing the interview, its a decent chance for me to try and get things pointed in a positive direction again, and/or lighten the room up. Either way, its a better experience than just having someone read off a series of questions like a robot.
• kozukumi 11y ago
  Well it is a damn sight better than how many window cleaners are there in London.
• imglorp 11y ago
  We hugged it down. Mirror cache backup: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.nczonline.net/blog/2015/09/my-favorite-interview-question/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
• yarrel 11y ago
  That's a very useful question for deciding who not to work for.
• cryoshon 11y ago
  Pose a game-fantasy question and you get gamed fantasy answers. "Realistic self-view The first thing I try to figure out is if this person's job description matches their skills. If a 22 year old tells me they want to be CEO of Google next week, for example, it looks like either their perspective on their skills is flawed or they didn't really grasp what I was asking. In that case, I say something like, "remember, you're starting this job on Monday. Are you ready to be CEO of Google on Monday?" If they say yes, then I'll probably entertain myself by asking how they'd run the company while mentally moving on to the next candidate." This isn't telling you anything about what the candidate can actually do. It's telling you whether you as the interviewer think the candidate is capable of doing what they say-- and you probably have only minimal prior knowledge. It's also telling you that you didn't form the question with enough qualifications if you're receiving answers which you consider to be outside the realm of expected results. I'm also going to go ahead and say that there are 22 year olds who could be the CEO of Google next week, whether or not the author has faith in them. I really hate interviewing for this very reason. Every question is a trick question. Every question must be gamed. Every question that you will ask (be forced to pose in order to game the situation of having a question for them) will be dodged and gamed similarly. In light of that, this question by the author isn't so bad. Interviewing is going to be a joke/crapshoot/have no real correlation to ability to do the job no matter what, so I guess this question isn't so bad. I'll admit, I had fun with thinking of my answer-- but I know the author wouldn't ever accept it if I answered genuinely in the fashion I wanted to in an interview with him. Showing too much ambition in a job interview is quite dangerous from my experience.
  • Thimothy 11y ago
    "I would love being paid for programming an IA that substitutes you and all your kind so I don't have to stand another job interview in all my live" Yep, way too much ambition.
• strommen 11y ago
  I think the entire premise of hiring for fit in terms of leader vs. follower, etc. is flawed. Has anybody ever actually worked with an engineer that was a) good at their job, b) not a total jackass, c) their employer would have been better off had they not hired them? [meta] Also, I'm pretty sure that here on HN, an article about hiring is going to get more upvotes and discussion if, like this one, its advice is _bad_.
• tfigueroa 11y ago
  > I don't want to get into a discussion about titles because they are mostly meaningless; ... Quite untrue, except at the fringes of corporate hierarchy. It's hard to take the rest of the article seriously after that.
• alexandercrohde 11y ago
  Wow, another arbitrary interview technique of dubious worth. Yay... "Are you ready to be CEO of Google on Monday?" If they say yes, then I'll probably entertain myself by asking how they'd run the company while mentally moving on to the next candidate." Why does a young candidate believing he can be CEO of google mean he can't work for you as a javascript developer? How do already know how good this candidate is at business? After all, google was founded by 20 year olds with 0 business experience. Some would argue it went wrong when suited business people took so much control over it (6 adds on a search result today). Ultimately though, my larger point is that what objective evidence is there that this technique is any better than a coin flip? If none, why are you telling us?
• deleted 11y ago
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• kpwagner 11y ago
  "Are you ready to be CEO of Google on Monday?" If they say yes, then I'll probably entertain myself by asking how they'd run the company while mentally moving on to the next candidate." This is why I hate interviews. Interviewers can be as sadistic as they please, get drunk on this "power", and act like jackasses. I have had only a handful of interviews where my impression of the interviewer was not lowered significantly over the course of the interview.
  • jazzyk 11y ago
    My answer to the question would be: "Obviously I do not have previous experience. But I'd still give it a shot and try to learn as much as possible on the job. Just like Larry Page did."
• mcphage 11y ago
  From the question: > It's at your ideal company with your ideal job title and salary. From his discussion: > I immediately exclude discussion of company, title, and salary, because these are the things people think they want but can't really affect my decision. Then why ask it? Why make it part of the question, if the information is meaningless? If you asked me what I wanted to do, I could come up with an answer pretty quick. But if you added in stuff about ideal title, salary, etc, then I would have a lot of trouble answering that part—which you don't even want or need.
  • robotresearcher 11y ago
    You misunderstood the intent. He intended "it's a given that it's at your ideal company with your ideal job title and salary, so we don't have to talk about those".
    • mcphage 11y ago
      Ah, gotcha. That makes sense, then.
• kpwagner 11y ago
  "Are you ready to be CEO of Google on Monday?" If they say yes, then I'll probably entertain myself by asking how they'd run the company while mentally moving on to the next candidate." This is why I hate interviews. Interviewers can be as sadistic as they please, get drunk on this "power", and act like jackasses. I have had only a handful of interviews where my impression of the interviewer was not lowered significantly over the course of the interview.
• deleted 11y ago
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• hawleyal 11y ago
  Isn't that the entire point of an interview to suss out the response to that question through, albeit, through indirect means. If you just ask it directly, you're not going to get honest answers.
  • logfromblammo 11y ago
    ~Just put the iocaine powder in both wine goblets and be done with it.~ You're not going to get entirely honest answers as long as the respondent believes there is something to be gained from dishonesty. And guess what? In an interview, there is always something to be gained. The only way you get a chance is by having an accomplice clip on a "VISITOR" badge, to ask the question outside the interview room.
• elevenfist 11y ago
  > "I operate on the mindset that the damage done by filling a position with a bad fit is far greater than the damage of not having enough people to do work, and so I believe in optimizing to find the right person for the job." Who is this guy kidding? This question will simply weed out those who are actually honest. If the person wants the job they're going to tell you what you want to hear to get the job. Unless he's being subtle, and "The right person for the job" is the one most willing to tailor himself to the needs of the employer, and skilled in double-speak. What a ridiculous question.
• stuaxo 11y ago
  TBH this is not much better than "where do you see yourself in 5 years"
• angdis 11y ago
  I think that technical hiring managers tend to get obsessed with finding the "ultimate" interview question as a short-cut for evaluating candidates. The problem is that such a question doesn't exist, or rather, that it may very well be a different question for every possible combination of interviewer and interviewee. The OP and those who take his advice are going to get lost in the weeds if they try to read too much into the answer to this "super question". Just pay attention to what the candidate is saying, their background, their responses to behavioral questions, their personality and their aptitudes. There's no shortcuts and there's a huge heap of subjectivity required to assess somebody for "fit". Modern organizations have been hiring people for decades. If there were actually a "best way" to hire/evaluate people, everyone would be using it.
• neprune 11y ago
  I think this question is good precisely for the same reason a lot of people are saying it's bad; it's really easy to give a bad answer, especially if the job isn't close to your ideal job. The article talks about waiting as long as it takes to get the best candidate, and in that regard, this question is perfect. Sure some people will do a good job at gaming question but if a candidate clears this hurdle, they are more likely to enjoy their role and therefore perform better.
• sandworm101 11y ago
  Design your dream job? That sort of question is code for: you aren't in the running. It is a stock question, something asked of all the candidates. Very very few people who are asked such questions are ever hired imho. An interviewer who thinks you have any hope of landing the job should (a) already have read your resume and (b) be under instructions from someone above them regarding your application. A good interview is one where the interviewer is vetting a candidate, not trying to find a candidate. There should be a discussion of the problems/tasks for which you are to be hired. Whether or not you will turn out to be a "good fit" will come from that discussion, not stock questions. A job is about pay for work. The only honest answer to "what is your dream job?" is "You give me 1,000,000$ and I go home at 9:30." Everything short of that is a lie. So an answering candidate must create in their mind some parameters to bookend their dream job. They try to figure out what the interviewer wants to hear and form a lie based on those expectations. The real meet of the question is therefore "What do you think I want to hear?" The winning candidate ends up being the one who best knew the interviewer's expectations and crafts the best lie. Unless you are hiring people for a improv comedy team, that knowledgeable liar is isn't the candidate you want. It's a toxic process best avoided.
  • alkonaut 11y ago
    > Everything short of that is a lie. I think most people would do some kind of "work" even if they didn't have to work for money. Especially true for developers. If I could create my dream job with a dream team of mentors (say "I'd work with Carmack and a few other guys working on a new game engine for VR") I'd certainly do it for free if I was already rich. And I'd do it for half my current salary regardless. I could make up 100 such dream jobs within an hour, and I wouldn't need to lie, nor be unrealistic about what I'd do in the position. I think it can be a good indicator of what the candidate is passionate about, what their interests are, what their insights about their capabilities are and so on. Not saying it's the bestest interview question ever, but just like my favourite "Tell me about some code you wrote that you really like" it can give an insight into what drives and motivates a developer.
    • sandworm101 11y ago
• ajnin 11y ago
  This looks like an open question to get to know the candidate but in fact it's another way to fit the candidate in a box. Distinctions like leader/follower don't always make sense, they are not opposites. Programming languages, specific percentages spent coding/managing. Just a basic skill grid. The recruiter also need to see the future to decide based on a single answer if a candidate would be able to be CEO of Google. It's not clear why he would not. The question is also incredibly oriented towards the recruiter's point of view, for example why exclude the salary discussion? It seems it should be one of the major discussion points when applying for a job. Maybe I'm mistaken but I think people work for a company and not for their toy projects because of money. Focusing on starting next Monday isn't a particularly good idea either, good candidates can learn quickly and what they can't do on Monday they could probably do in a month. Well, that's a pretty bad question.
• powera 11y ago
  I find it astonishing how many people's snarky responses here would actually be astonishingly useful to an interviewer. Not as a disqualifier even. The person who wants to spend all day building robots to feed the poor, and the person who wants to spend all day writing are probably not going to both be happy in the same job. And the person who "I just want to be a developer, I love doing business development" is going to always tell you yes regardless of the situation. And the person who sits and thinks for 5 minutes ... probably needed some more encouragement from the interviewer.
  • sheepmullet 11y ago
    > The person who wants to spend all day building robots to feed the poor, and the person who wants to spend all day writing are probably not going to both be happy in the same job People don't actually work that way though. My favourite sport is rugby union, my second favourite sport is swimming. These sports are very different and yet I am passionate about them both. Rugby league and American football don't interest me at all despite being much closer to my favourite sport than swimming.
• soham 11y ago
  Realize that an interview is more like a date, and the question is merely a means to a conversation. i.e. the interview depends as much on the interviewER, as it does on the interviewEE. Questions matter, but what matters far more, is how the interviewer judges the interviewee. I've worked with Nicholas Zakas before. He is a sharp and thoughtful person. Plus, he has probably given this question hundreds of times, to have a strong BS detector. And there will be several followup questions he will ask, to separate the wheat from the chaff. So, is this the only question that can identify great candidates? No. Is this one good one, that fits his evaluation style and his values? Yes, and that's what he is sharing with us. [About me: I run http://InterviewKickstart.com http://InterviewKickstart.com in the valley. We prepare candidates for technical interviews, and deal with a variety of these situations every day]
• benihana 11y ago
  >If they say yes, then I'll probably entertain myself by asking how they'd run the company while mentally moving on to the next candidate. How condescending and arrogant do you have to be to take this kind of attitude to someone who answers the question you just asked them? What's the point of asking the question if you're not going to listen to people's answers and think about them? I can't imagine someone who takes such a dismissive approach to candidates is much of a good boss. >I immediately exclude discussion of company, title, and salary, because these are the things people think they want but can't really affect my decision. >Sometimes the scope of this question is too big for people to grasp >They are just indicators to dig deeper, you're not going to trick someone who knows what they're doing. >* In most cases, the candidates have thanked me for the exercise because it helped them really narrow in on what they're passionate about and what type of job they should be looking for.* The arrogance and of the author and the lack of empathy and respect for the people they're talking to is really offputting. I'm sure people are just lining up to thank this guy for this stimulating and amazing question that saved them and helped them figure out who they really were. Christ.
• deleted 11y ago
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• monksy 11y ago
  If it was answered honestly. I wonder how the answer of: In the morning [not a consistent time] I'll reflect on what I need to do for the day, examine goals that need to be completed, plan out the day, start the first pomodoro, mid day: take a break by walking around outside, finish up the pomodoros, and take the last one to reflect on what I did, how the goals went, and how to improve. All which would have nothing to do with Agile or being questioned on how much I got done in x time.
  • slgeorge 11y ago
    You answered how you like to work, not what sort job it is. They may be the same thing for you - 'it doesn't matter what I work on as long as I can work in the following way' - which would be worth exploring with you further. Presumably, he'd ask you some of the other parameters - like what languages you prefer. Then in stage two, he'd then discuss how the way they worked is (or is not) similar to your desired way of working.
• draw_down 11y ago
  This is an interesting thought experiment, but my problem is that it's considered a bad thing if the candidate's ideal job is substantially different from the one they're interviewing for. Why should an actual job line up with an ideal at all? Shouldn't we just evaluate the candidate for how well they would perform at the actual job in question, instead of worrying about how it lines up with some scenario they've been asked to conjure up? This strikes me as a backdoor to the old "passion" canard.
• lazyant 11y ago
  So this is the job interview equivalent of the ice-breaker "what would a day in your life look like if money was no objection?"
• incepted 11y ago
  The answer you will get is not to the question "What is your ideal job?" but "What is a good sounding job that the candidate can pretend he wants that will cause you to hire him?".
• wrs 11y ago
  Wow, this thread has a strong attraction for the overthinkers and the slightly-sociopathic. :) This question, or some variant of it, is useful when both sides take it seriously, in context, and have a mostly-honest conversation about fit between a person and a workplace. Otherwise, not. A lot of these comments make it sound like the goal in an interview is simply to "play the game" to get the job, regardless of what the job turns out to actually be like, or whether you're a good fit for the workplace culture. If you're starving and desperate to get any job, then sure, that makes sense. Otherwise, it's not a good idea to start your relationship on that note. It seems obvious that interviews aren't going to work well when either side is desperate or blatantly dishonest.
• kelvin0 11y ago
  This is brilliant, and can be used to gather much more about a candidate than any of the usual lame 'how would your friends describe you...'. Most interviews seem scripted, and do not really assess a candidate in depth
• sparkzilla 11y ago
  The best question is always: Why wouldn't we hire you?
• dpeck 11y ago
  just answer one level up from what you're interviewing for. Junior Dev -> Dev Senior Dev -> Team Lead Team Lead -> VP of Engineering or CTO Do same with salary. Whatever position you're interviewing for * 1.3.
• donovanr 11y ago
  I enjoyed reading this as written rather than as (I assume) intended: "The enormity of defining any job they want can be overwhelming..."
• jmmcd 11y ago
  > It sounds to me like this isn't a great match for what you're looking for. Do you agree? This is the part that reveals the whole thing as nonsense. My "ideal job" is not what I'm "looking for", therefore this conclusion is impossible.
• fineman 11y ago
  It seems pretty reasonable. As in, can be answered honestly without ruining your chances and reveals valuable information to the applicant and the employer. But I assume that the applicant actually honestly believes themselves to be fit for a role. After all, the desired goal of the question is to weed out people who can't or won't perform the needed tasks. If I really thought coming to an office every day at 9am was your idea I wouldn't offer a salary. There's an understanding that the salary is compensation for the difference between ideal and reality. Even if I were to believe you, it wouldn't be in your best interest to tell me my job was ideal for you... I think the scenario people imagine in all these interviewing-question threads is themselves looking for work and all that is available is a junior dev position in an unpopular language, or a QA/QE role, etc, and that they have to lie and pretend their life-goal is picking up after others in a corporate environment. Like a waterfall Java QE. If you could honestly describe that as your ideal you really wouldn't be the type of person I'd hire... But if you respond that your ideal is a dev role in a better language I'd probe your dev process and see what you'd do to ensure the connection between customer-spec-code-reality. Then I could say "Well, the code you'd be reviewing is legacy and Java, so that's inflexible, but our test infrastructure is out of date and needs to be re-integrated - I think that could be done in your language of choice ... etc" Ideally you'd offer these yourself. "I see myself in more of a full-time dev role, but with so much legacy code the sane thing to do is to get a reliable and useful set of tests running before the product is modernized. So as long as the QE role involved creation of new tests and new test frameworks - and especially if you'll let me implement at least one in Xlang to demonstrate its benefits ..."
• DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Job interviews are negotiations. As such, the controlled release of information is critical. "Come tell me your dreams so I can match them up against my opportunities" is not fair to the candidate, who 1) would be an idiot to have a dream where what you wanted was what they wanted and 2) might very well be able to adapt to whatever your situation was. Hell, you very well might desire to adapt your situation to the candidate. At the end, you then step into the candidate's shoes and say something like "Gee, looks like you missed out on a bunch of important stuff we care about. But hey, it still might work! What do you think about that?" -- this puts extreme pressure on somebody who is probably just trying to figure out the difference between what you think you want and what you actually need. I think I'd care a lot more about a candidates values -- the ones they've actually lived -- than what some kind of dream job is like. If you're not dreaming of sitting on the beach spending your time as you see fit? If, instead, your dream is to code Javascript at some company 75% of the time while going to meetings 25%? Maybe you're either lying, are missing some key bit of imagination, or just trying to bullshit me. Even folks who actually spend those percentages are usually doing so because something else they value drives them to do it. I do not want to be cruel, but this sounds like one of those interview questions that's just a little bit too clever for its own good. The kinda thing you could do for a long while and get away with, because it's really measuring the ability of the candidate to negotiate tricky manager situations, which is in itself a valuable skill. You are probably getting something that feels good, but is not the thing you think you're getting.
• agentgt 11y ago
  I started a successful recruiting software company about two years ago. I have learned many things about the industry and recruiting. Some from our own analytics (on any given day we get an enormous amount of job applies coming in to our system) and others just passing observations (talking to recruiters, staffing firms, and corp hr). Three things that I have learned ... job hunters are desperate and will do surprising things to get a job (more so for bad candidates), every recruiter seems to think they have some secret trick for filtering candidates and finally companies in general love to make candidates go through an enormous amount of illogical jump-through-these-hoops, quack like a chicken, stand on one leg steps as possible. While I appreciate the writers intent trying to help candidates I also think he is massively underestimating people looking for jobs. They are not dumb and if it takes a question as simple as that during an interview to make some determination on hiring perhaps some better filtering needs to be done prior (ie checking them out on linkedin and looking at their resume/application).
• Yxven 11y ago
  If I could take over as the CEO of Google on Monday, I would do it in a heart beat. Whether my skills fit the job is irrelevant. You're wrongly assuming that I expect to be great at my dream job. I don't. I'd expect a learning experience. I'm sure I'd get fired eventually. I'd wipe my tears with the money I got from my golden parachute, add my years as Google's CEO to my resume, and start to campaign for other CEO jobs that I'm now "qualified" for. Eventually, I'd become a decent CEO.
• nigel182 11y ago
  Judging by the comments here, I would be one of the few people to answer this question honestly. Although I haven't been desperate for a job in a long time, I think an honest discussion around this question would be best for both sides.
• kafkaesq 11y ago
  Suppose you could design your dream job that you'll be starting on Monday. It's at your ideal company with your ideal job title and salary. All you have to do is tell them what you want to do at your job and you can have it. What does your job entail? What a horrible filter question -- unless your goal is to attract consummate brownnoser, that is.