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I came here to say basically this. I've worked at enough companies to know that their ideas of what their values are may not be accurate. Instead of asking abo

I came here to say basically this. I've worked at enough companies to know that their ideas of what their values are may not be accurate. Instead of asking about values, ask about behavior. No one is going to say no to "Do you value code quality?" Aking what they've done (and sacrificed) to support code quality will give you a better idea of what their relative values are. Asking about their tech ladder will get you an HR answer. Asking "Who was the last person promoted to X? When?" will give you a better answer. And if they can't remember the last time, that's an answer in itself.

war1025 7y ago
I listened to a podcast recently [1] that talked about "embodied knowledge", which is basically the idea that what we know is often very different from what we think we know. The idea being that you will learn much more about someone / something if you ask questions that are anchored to a time and place rather than generic "unembodied" questions. So the first question you list "Do you value code quality?" is an "unembodied question" and there is no hook for the person to dig into reality and give you an honest answer. The second, "Who was the last person promoted?" is "embodied" in that it is anchored in time and place. And because of that, a person is going to use their memory, rather than their rehearsed "value system" answers. Anyway, it's basically exactly what you said, but I just wanted to recommend that I thought the podcast was a worthwhile listen. [1] https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/1912/ https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/1912/
- Tronno 7y ago
  Without having listened to the podcast, another way to frame this is using the concept of yes/no questions, who/when/what/why/how questions, and open-ended questions. Y/N questions are not very revealing and are likely to lead to dead-ends in the conversation. WWWWH questions reveal a specific bit of information, but can also lead to dead-ends. Open-ended questions ("Tell me about...", "What do you think of...", etc) will foster good conversations and uncover new threads to pull. In my experience, this is by far the best way to interact with other people, whether they are interviewing you or not. Coming up with good/relevant questions on the spot is a skill that can be difficult to master, but is extremely valuable.
  - war1025 7y ago
    To expand on this, people will commonly give you unintentional "hooks" for where you can go to increase the depth of the conversation. For example, people use common words as short hand for many things ("Work was stressful", "The kids are being a pain", "We had a really nice weekend"), and a mistake people run into when talking with others is that they assume the person they are talking with meant they same thing they themselves would have if they had used that phrase. This leads to lots of people "listening but not understanding". So basically, offhand comments and common phrases are a great place to get a person to dig in deeper into their feelings on a topic. Usually they indicate something that is on the person's mind but that they probably haven't worked through enough to put into words. That means you will get a much more raw and unfiltered response from them. Also it's always good to remember that people love to talk about themselves, even if they say they don't.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Hanging out with permaculture people (going on 6 years now) gives me an idea of what it must be like to hang out with famous artists. How can someone be so right and so crazy at the same time? "The inflammation in my body"? Sounds like a dopamine response in someone whose sympathetic nervous system is strung tighter than a kettle drum.
  - war1025 7y ago
    Don't have a good response other than that I completely agree. :)
hinkley 7y ago
The charitable way to put it is that the stated values of most companies are aspirational, not descriptive. But it's hard in some cases not to feel lied to when you see the gap. At least in dating when this happens you can get out early. You don't get the same trial period with work arrangements.
- freedomben 7y ago
  I've learned this the hard way twice now. I hope people reading this pay very close attention to your comment. In fact one of the hardest lessons I've learned is that the companies who are the most vocal/passionate about their "values" are often the ones that are the farthest from them.
dredmorbius 7y ago
"Your values are what you promote for." I like to ask about recent promotions and reasons, or conversely, asking who's been promoted based on the stated values in response to the direct question. Basically: how do you track and credit for this?
- lliamander 7y ago
  Another way to phrase: "What does it take to succeed here beyond hard work?" EDIT: and "Imagine I've been working here for 3 months and you are very happy with my performance: what am I doing?"
jjohansson 7y ago
Do your homework before the interview and check LinkedIn for promotions. Then ask them about that specifically... why have only x People in the team been promoted in the past few years? Why was Jane Soe promoted to y role? Bonus is if you reach out to former employees on LinkedIn and ask what it’s like to work there.

war1025 7y ago

I listened to a podcast recently [1] that talked about "embodied knowledge", which is basically the idea that what we know is often very different from what we think we know. The idea being that you will learn much more about someone / something if you ask questions that are anchored to a time and place rather than generic "unembodied" questions. So the first question you list "Do you value code quality?" is an "unembodied question" and there is no hook for the person to dig into reality and give you an honest answer. The second, "Who was the last person promoted?" is "embodied" in that it is anchored in time and place. And because of that, a person is going to use their memory, rather than their rehearsed "value system" answers. Anyway, it's basically exactly what you said, but I just wanted to recommend that I thought the podcast was a worthwhile listen. [1] https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/1912/ https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/1912/

Tronno 7y ago
Without having listened to the podcast, another way to frame this is using the concept of yes/no questions, who/when/what/why/how questions, and open-ended questions. Y/N questions are not very revealing and are likely to lead to dead-ends in the conversation. WWWWH questions reveal a specific bit of information, but can also lead to dead-ends. Open-ended questions ("Tell me about...", "What do you think of...", etc) will foster good conversations and uncover new threads to pull. In my experience, this is by far the best way to interact with other people, whether they are interviewing you or not. Coming up with good/relevant questions on the spot is a skill that can be difficult to master, but is extremely valuable.
- war1025 7y ago
  To expand on this, people will commonly give you unintentional "hooks" for where you can go to increase the depth of the conversation. For example, people use common words as short hand for many things ("Work was stressful", "The kids are being a pain", "We had a really nice weekend"), and a mistake people run into when talking with others is that they assume the person they are talking with meant they same thing they themselves would have if they had used that phrase. This leads to lots of people "listening but not understanding". So basically, offhand comments and common phrases are a great place to get a person to dig in deeper into their feelings on a topic. Usually they indicate something that is on the person's mind but that they probably haven't worked through enough to put into words. That means you will get a much more raw and unfiltered response from them. Also it's always good to remember that people love to talk about themselves, even if they say they don't.
hinkley 7y ago
Hanging out with permaculture people (going on 6 years now) gives me an idea of what it must be like to hang out with famous artists. How can someone be so right and so crazy at the same time? "The inflammation in my body"? Sounds like a dopamine response in someone whose sympathetic nervous system is strung tighter than a kettle drum.
- war1025 7y ago
  Don't have a good response other than that I completely agree. :)

hinkley 7y ago

The charitable way to put it is that the stated values of most companies are aspirational, not descriptive. But it's hard in some cases not to feel lied to when you see the gap. At least in dating when this happens you can get out early. You don't get the same trial period with work arrangements.

freedomben 7y ago
I've learned this the hard way twice now. I hope people reading this pay very close attention to your comment. In fact one of the hardest lessons I've learned is that the companies who are the most vocal/passionate about their "values" are often the ones that are the farthest from them.

dredmorbius 7y ago

"Your values are what you promote for." I like to ask about recent promotions and reasons, or conversely, asking who's been promoted based on the stated values in response to the direct question. Basically: how do you track and credit for this?

lliamander 7y ago
Another way to phrase: "What does it take to succeed here beyond hard work?" EDIT: and "Imagine I've been working here for 3 months and you are very happy with my performance: what am I doing?"

jjohansson 7y ago

Do your homework before the interview and check LinkedIn for promotions. Then ask them about that specifically... why have only x People in the team been promoted in the past few years? Why was Jane Soe promoted to y role? Bonus is if you reach out to former employees on LinkedIn and ask what it’s like to work there.