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Culture Fit Interview Questions

269 points by Raj7k 7y ago

ronilan 7y ago
OT: Google Hire has been discontinued.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  That seems a little misleading. Google says they're sunsetting it about 11 months from now.
- Junk_Collector 7y ago
  That's how you know it's a Google product.
- gherkinnn 7y ago
  It’s called “sunsetting”. ;)
makeramen 7y ago
Also worth noting for candidates: These are great questions to ask your interviewers, to see if the company is a place you want to work at.
cgrealy 7y ago
The most generic and obvious set of questions ever. Every single interview I’ve participated in (on both sides) has included some or all of these questions. There isn’t really anything new or interesting here.
- hnspirit 7y ago
  "Why do you want to not be destitute? Also, tell us you like us!"
  - dsr_ 7y ago
    That's question one from the article: Based on nothing but what you've learned about this company from the outside, please tell me why we're great and you're great and we will be great together?
whatshisface 7y ago
>How would you describe the culture at previous companies you’ve worked at? Somehow this one sounds like, "tell me what you hated most about your last boss," insofar as it's a bit of a minefield to answer in a professional way.
- deleted 7y ago
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- creaghpatr 7y ago
  I like to ask "what is/was your favorite and least favorite part of [Company's] [Department's] culture, that way there's a rough range that's specific to the department rather than ambiguous cultural perks.
  - flapadar 7y ago
    The problem I have with that is shit talking your previous work is generally seen as unprofessional - yet, you're also leaving them for a reason. I would probably be evasive if asked your question (at least, in terms of 'least favourite'), which also wouldn't work in my favour.
    - creaghpatr 7y ago
      You would have to take the answer in context, ie does it align with their reason for leaving. Shit talking would be a red flag but everyone's got unique cultural preferences. Someone's favorite part might be someone's least favorite part from that same company.
    - kthejoker2 7y ago
      Why does it have to be shit talking? Surely there are value neutral things you didnt love about your old company. We couldn't install our own tools which hampered creative problem solving. We weren't given enough direct access to our customers to make better design decisions in the product. We didn't have a strong culture of documentation so we relied too much on tribal knowledge.
  - 7y ago
HarryHirsch 7y ago
How can you even answer any of these questions except with fluff and bullshit if you want to be hired? Google is supposed to be a data-driven company, but it's impossible to extract any information out of bullshit, bullshit by definition is orthogonal to observable reality, it is neither truth, nor falsehood, it's pure empty words.
- decebalus1 7y ago
  These are generally interview wildcards. It can be used against you regardless of how you answer (assuming you didn't show an obvious red flag like call your former manager a fuckhead) or used for your benefit if someone needs a bit more leverage to get you on the team. My take is that you need to project the image of a professional, match your resume experience, don't be combative and basically show that you can be a valuable drone. Even the fact that you can bullshit this with a straight face and not go candid on the interviewer is a positive data point, as that's basically 80% of working in a corporation. But again, the hiring manager can cherry pick positives/negatives based on what he actually wants to do.
  - deleted 7y ago
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    - deleted 7y ago
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  - jkp56 7y ago
    Except that these questions are asked by SWEs who don't like these questions and don't support this idea in general. So there is a interview where one SWE asks another SWE a bunch of behavioral questions, takes notes, then goes back to his desk and writes an full interview feedback with ratings. Then a hiring manager can look at these ratings and make a decision. There is no recording of the interview. In general, SWEs just evaluate the candidate on basis "can we get along? Do I want to want with him?" and if that's the case, the interviewer gives outstanding ratings and completes the interviee's answer to match them with definitions for those ratings.
vzaliva 7y ago
this is terrible
Pirate-of-SV 7y ago
> 1. Why do you want to work for our company? I don't feel comfortable asking this question. Many of the people I interview are "headhunted" into an interview by an talent acquisition team. Are they even looking for a new job?
- astura 7y ago
  It's a weird question because one of the reasons I'm interviewing is to decide if I wanna work at your company or not. It's like if the candidate asked the interviewer "why do you want to hire me?"
- groby_b 7y ago
  fwiw, I've answered these in the past with "I'm not sure, I'm evaluating if I want to". I've had interesting conversations based on that. And, as far as I can tell, it didn't affect the outcome negatively. For you as the interviewer, an answer like that is a great hook to ask "well, what does matter to you? What would convince you to work here?" It'll tell you a lot about fit or not :)
- halfjoking 7y ago
  > My honest answer to "why do you want to work here?" I want to chill and pace myself here. I'm looking to do 30+ hours of work per week on my projects outside of this dayjob, so it's important for you not bother me too much during my 40 hours here. My only goal is to build a company on the side. I've turned down better jobs just so I work in an environment and with coworkers that I fucking hate, so that I am extremely motivated to do whatever it takes to have my own business. Overall this job is just a paycheck - a necessary distraction to maintain a reasonable standard of living, and completely irrelevant to any of my goals in life. If contract work didn't cause too much stress/friction for me, I would be doing that for money. I hope you understand that I want to see you fail, this company fail, and any project I'm on to fail miserably. I will do the work you assign me according to spec, but please remember to leave me the fuck alone. So... when can I start?
msum 7y ago
Things that are more useful to know: - What's your mechanism for bias self-check? - If someone gives you specs and you notice that something is off, what do you do? - If you have to solve a problem you haven't solved before, how do you approach it? - What's your take on accessibility on the web? - What's your process like for deciding that you're at the point in your career where you can mentor others? - What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked? - You're just about to finish a feature and have a great idea for improving it. What do you do? For all of these things, people will likely give different answers but those answers will tell me a lot about whether or not they would end up being really useful for the kinds of teams I build.
- hnspirit 7y ago
  Found the real person!
- quanticle 7y ago
  I really like the question about specs, and I'll definitely use that in the future when I'm on the interviewer side of the hiring desk. A useful follow up to that would be, "If I gave you a list of features, how would you go about estimating how long it would take to build them all out?" There is no perfect answer to that (as we know from the steady drumbeat of stories decrying the state of software estimation) but hearing how someone would go about solving a problem under conditions of uncertainty would tell give you a lot more useful information, in my opinion, than "What kind of relationship do you want to have with your co-workers?"
- Jach 7y ago
  I don't like these questions at all. My initial reaction to these is: Why do you insist the candidate reads your mind? Some of the questions can be useful if rephrased to not require mind-reading the best range of answers. The purpose of the interview for the interviewer: deciding between "no, don't hire this person", "maybe, we'll decide later with more data or after comparing with another person", and "yes, hire". The purpose of the interview for the interviewee: deciding "yes/no, I want to continue with this company" and conditionally if yes trying their best to get the interviewer into the "yes, hire" state. I'm only going to pick on one of these questions, but they all have the same problem in that they're not (to me) very effective means at fulfilling the purpose since they'll select for candidates most capable of reading your mind, not actually really useful candidates. When you ask "what's your take on accessibility on the web?", the candidate is thinking many things at once. Here are some: 1) do I have a take and what is it? 2) what's the answer the interviewer wants to hear? 3) if my answer is wrong does that make it impossible to get into the "no, don't hire" state? 4) will I know once I answer? Maybe you want a take that says accessibility is important despite the added costs, because humanism or whatever. If they say accessibility isn't important, because the costs don't justify it, you put them in the "no" bucket. Or perhaps it's vice versa, or you analyze the issue through some other framework. Maybe you really just want to see if they can converse about it at all, and will devil's-advocate the opposite of what they say, and only put them in the "no" bucket if they can't converse or start screaming at you. In any case, I don't think you're being fair to the candidate and you're likely wasting time. If you just want to test ability to converse, and don't actually care what they personally believe, state that in the question and don't ask for their actual belief: "I'd like to have a sort of philosophical discussion with you about accessibility on the web. Let's imagine I ask you ... and you feel ..." If you actually have a specific range of answers in mind that can put someone in the "no" bucket, put that information in the job description requirements. "Expected to design with accessibility in mind." fits the first of my maybes, "Expected to move fast and not spend time on non-MVP work like accessibility." fits the vice-versa. Presto, no mind games, no wasted time for everyone because it wasn't clear until you asked your question that you hold opposite views and thus this is a "no". Maybe you're worried about liars, which you have to be anyway since plenty of people apply to coding positions without being able to code, so you might ask a more specific question (like we do by asking them to code something) around accessibility that makes clear what conclusion you expect (it matches the job description) and that you're looking for some sort of reasoning for why that conclusion is such in their mind. Maybe since you're mentioning "end up being really useful" (as opposed to just useful) you don't weigh answers to these questions as hard "yes" or "no" filters, but just "maybes" that you can subjectively reflect upon later (e.g. by adding up a bunch of "maybes" you've recast to point-weighted soft yes/nos that can cancel each other). Fine, you can still put "Bonus:" in the job description, rather than "Required:", so that candidates know ahead of time that if they can only get to the "maybe" state the presence/absence of those certain "Bonus" attributes will influence their chances of moving from "maybe" to "yes". If they're already uncertain about "yes", and see a lack of "bonus" attributes on top of that, they're likely to not bother, again saving everyone's time. It's fine to distinguish between "really useful" and "useful". Questions that can distinguish between degrees of "maybe" between candidates aren't bad, but they should be back-loaded as much as possible, and only used when the front-loaded yes/no questions have been asked and you're still in a state of uncertainty about which candidate would really be better, lamenting that you only have the budget for one of them. How many of those do you get?
hnspirit 7y ago
I wouldn't have published this.
nfRfqX5n 7y ago
Most candidates will probably be prepared to answer this common question. Nonetheless... as if being prepared for a question is a bad thing
- ascorbic 7y ago
  I'm not saying I agree with this, but I think their implication is that the candidate will have prepared a generic answer that isn't necessarily honest or useful. If it's a question they haven't prepped for, they are more likely to give an honest answer rather than one they read on a blog post by a hiring platform company.
vgrafe 7y ago
We have such silly silver-bullet-like talking points at my company. I don't follow them. It is to me too easy to make up/twist past experience to match what the interview wants to hear. Oh yeah I hit that wall and used that clever way to ship in time... Oh yeah I learnt from such and such mistake... not a fan. Instead, prior to the ITW I define clearly (with myself or an other interviewer) the information I want to hear or the parts of the intellect/emotions I want to feel. Example: wanna check if the candidate is autonomous? Instead of asking him if he prefers working in a big or small (or no) team and get a generic/boring answer, I will ask the candidate how they prioritize tasks when no workflow can help them. Do they rely on gut feeling? perceived ROI? ask the manager? the client? In this mindset I know directly if there's a clear match, and if not it is easy to dig in their way of thinking with a follow-up question (why/how?). Takes a bit of improvisation/reactivity but at least I feel like I keep things interesting for everyone in the room when doing so.
serf 7y ago
as a serial victim to sets of questions exactly like this earlier in my life, i've come to realize that 'Culture-fit' is really just a coded honesty test -- and the most deceptive thing about it is that straight honesty is one of the quickest ways to do poorly at it. in other words, answering '1. Why do you want to work for our company?' with "Because I want a salary and I need to avoid destitution.' is a wholly appropriate answer, but it's wrong. They actually just want you to evangelize the company for a few minutes and lay on how envious you are of those that have 'the opportunity' to 'be a part of the revolution at X-Co'.
- tylerl 7y ago
  The relevant bit in "Why do you want to work for our company" is the unstated "...as oppose to another." Ideally the answer is some property of the company that aligns well with the candidates ideals. But it presupposes that the candidate knows of some attribute that fits this frame. A better question might be to make the company attribute hypothetical. Something like: "if you could propose a rule for all employees at the company where you want to work, what would it be." You'd definitely need follow-up questions and promoting, but it could be way more insightful.
  - username90 7y ago
    The question "Why do you want to work for our company" can always be answered with "I want to work with great coworkers and I've heard you have really great people here" no matter what company it is.
    - whenchamenia 7y ago
      I could nave a few in SV where this would undoubtably raise suspicion. Many of the hottest companies are well known for being successful dispite (because of?) their challanging working environments. At first you would wonder why anyone would bother when the pay is often similar, but talented people seek a challenge. Many of the most tempermental composers always had a line of the best musicians waiting to suffer near-abuse just to have a crack at attempting something amazingly difficult that they respect.
the_af 7y ago
Many of those questions are iffy, a potential minefield or uninteresting, but this one (#3) is key and we use it a lot: "Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work. What was the issue, and how did you approach it?" What I like about it is that it isn't a trick question. Also, knowing beforehand you're going to be asked this won't help you to bullshit your way through -- either you did stuff and can answer questions about it or you don't. This question lets the interviewee discuss something they did and that they feel comfortable talking about, how they approached it, what their problem-solving approach was, etc. It also lets the interviewer ask follow-up questions about whatever sounds interesting to discuss in more detail.
- quadrifoliate 7y ago
  For a lot of the work I do, this is heavily grounded in context and therefore useless to the interviewer. “I undid some hacks that Dave who left two years ago had put in the test suite because he just really liked stacking Python decorators, and they were getting too complex to figure out when some test broke. I updated some documentation that hadn't been touched in 5 years and was terrifyingly out of date. And then I sat in for two useless meetings because leadership really likes holding them.” is not likely to communicate any positive messages, but it is the reality of what a lot of us do at our jobs instead of solving complex race conditions in elegantly designed distributed systems. Not saying that that might not contribute some kind of signal to a potential interview, but it's very likely to be one that labels me as incompetent :)
  - the_af 7y ago
    You can always talk about a hobby project of yours if your day job is uninteresting or not readily marketable. It's true that for some job interviews, an answer like in your example will make you lose points. However, for other jobs being able to fix and refactor legacy Python code may be just what they are looking after. Your interviewer might ask follow-up questions about code quality and cleanliness, how you made sure your refactor didn't break anything, etc.
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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OhHeyItsE 7y ago
> 9. How do you maintain a work-life balance? Pretty sure the candidate is supposed to ask the interviewer that one...
- dx87 7y ago
  IKR, work-life balance defaults to healthy until the employer starts requiring or additional hours on top of the normal 9-5.
protomyth 7y ago
I honestly don't even know what I would answer for #2. It really sounds like one of those terminology questions to get people who think in the exact terms you use.
quanticle 7y ago
A lot of people are jumping on #3 (Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work). While I agree that #3 deserves criticism, I feel like #6 (Tell me about your preferred workday) and #8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) are even more problematic. As an introvert, as someone who likes quiet, my ideal workday consists of me getting into work at ~7:30am, working until ~4:30pm with about an hour off for lunch. I accept that meetings are a necessary evil, but I maintain that their necessity does not diminish their evil. I especially despise the "daily standup", which is a completely pointless 15-20 minute interruption right during my peak concentration hours. And yet, if I actually gave that response to question #6, the best I could hope for is a sympathetic nod from my interviewer, and a mention about how they attempt to have a single day without meetings. Instead, I feel like I'm supposed to lie about how I like "collaboration" (code for meetings). #8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) is, if anything, even worse. As someone who doesn't like parties, and who doesn't drink, I find it really awkward and draining to go out with coworkers. No offense, but if I'm with the same people for 40 hours a week, the last thing I want to do is spend more time with them (especially on a Friday afternoon or evening, which is when most after-work outings tend to occur). And yet, I feel like if I actually gave that answer at a lot of companies, I'd be immediately dismissed as "not a culture fit", even though my skills are a very good match for the position.
- codyb 7y ago
  We got rid of standups on my current team and it’s definitely very nice. I think you could probably massage that answer though “well standups aren’t my favorite thing really, it’s sort of a lot of context switching and a lot of times the conversation isn’t relevant to me. But I understand it’s generally more for the managers than it is for me.” And for the latter one “I like a very professional, cordial, and relaxed relationship with my coworkers. I tend to do my own things on weekends which leaves me refreshed and happy to see everyone on Monday.” It’s just a bit smoother than “the last thing I’m going to want to do is spend _more_ time with you”. Instead of emphasizing the drain it’d be to spend more time with your coworkers, emphasize the benefits of coming back refreshed on Monday :-). They’re the same answer but one’s more positive.
  - 7y ago
tempsy 7y ago
From the WSJ recently..."The Dangers of Hiring for Cultural Fit" https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-hiring-for-cultural-fit-11569231000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-hiring-for-cultu...
- tylerhou 7y ago
  From your article: > “What most people mean by culture fit is hiring people they’d like to have a beer with,” says Patty McCord, a human-resources consultant and former chief talent officer at Netflix. From Google's article: > However, culture fit evaluations can invite bias into your process if interviewers see it as simply a way to assess a candidate’s likeability, rather than how they align with your company’s core values. Assessing culture fit is about much more than whether or not you’d like to hang out with someone at a company happy hour. Disclaimer: I work at Google; opinions are my own.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "...how they align with your company’s core values" This phrase seems kind of common, but it seems a little odd in that it sort of implies different companies have significantly different "core values". Like, Google's core value is of course, "don't be evil". So, they get all the non-evil candidates, and someone else gets the spawn of Satan?
Impossible 7y ago
These questions are good and seem standard to me. Whenever interview questions come up on HN there are always many comments refuting them. Any behavioral/culture/softskill questions will be bullshitted by sociopaths and liars. Any technical questions will be biased toward competitive coders and leetcode cramers, and they aren't relevant for position X anyway. IQ tests and brain teasers are less relevant for the job and in some cases potentially illegal. Take home tests take up too might time that you don't get compensated for. Contract to hire takes even more time and doesn't work for candidates that already have full time work. Not everyone has side projects that can be evaluated or contributes to open source, and even if they do it's impossible to tell if the candidate did th actual work. Every way of evaluating programmers sucks unless I'm missing a magic bullet? My question is at what point does a candidate show such skill at gaming interview system(s) that it doesn't matter if they are bullshitting or had to study for your interview? If they apply the same skills to the job they're likely to be successful in most tech roles, and given corporate or start up structures and politics these candidates might be significantly better than more "genuine" candidates. The only places I think standard tech interview variants might break down is hiring for creativity and for ethical behavior (ethical behavior and rule following being different things). I'm not sure if either of those are important in most tech roles and they might actually be determintal.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Ask developers about projects they’ve worked on and have the technical skills to evaluate the depth of their answers. It works every time for me, it’s fair and even fun for the interviewee and it’s really fast. I’m often to a hire/no hire decision in 30 mins. No culture questions (I’m happy to manage all kinds of people). No technical challenges. The more you do this, the better you get at it.
PascLeRasc 7y ago
Does anyone have good ways to determine if a company is a good culture fit for you, as an interviewee? I had an in-person this week where I tried the reverse of some of these - "Can you tell me about a typical workday?" "How is the work-life balance here?" and I just got BS fluff answers like "Well there's a variety of technical problems to solve here".
- codyb 7y ago
  I tend to ask about things interviewers don’t like, would change, or that have been challenging for the company. If you can’t name a single issue in your org that smells fishy to me, but an honest answer indicates an open culture and decent people.
  - sethammons 7y ago
    As an interviewer, I like these kinds of questions as it shows interest from the candidate. The worst is no questions from the candidate. If a candidate has no decent questions for me, I'll usually and enthusiastically suggest some, starting with "what is most enjoyable and what is the worst thing about this role/department/company?"
- Traubenfuchs 7y ago
  I am so, so bad at this at this point I should be able to provide some pointers! But I can't. Interviewers lie. When I am the interviewer, I know I do. Or at least enhance the truth. Only experiencing it will tell you the truth...
morkfromork 7y ago
Google should give people a chance to adapt to their work culture instead of rejecting them.
person_of_color 7y ago
Off topic but I interviewed at Apple (SWE) and brought a cheap Chinese phone (Xiaomi) to the onsite. I didn't get the job. A factor?
- twothumbsup 7y ago
  No
  - person_of_color 7y ago
    What would be? I felt all my rounds were positive.
    - Infinitesimus 7y ago
      One downside of the interview process is that candidates hardly get told _why_ they were rejected. It is unlikely that your phone cost you the job but Apple as a company does seem to live in a bubble of "Apple is best. Apple for everything " so there's always the slim chance that you got an interviewer who lives by that and decided to not like you much. Pretty unlikely though but it shall remain one of those great mysteries of life
      - JJMcJ 7y ago
        Actual feedback is rare and extremely valuable. Mostly you will get "decided not to go forward", or "they felt you didn't have enough depth in <SOME SKILL>", which might or might not be true. What recruiter is going to say, "Jeff said he could never work with anyone who would carry a cheap phone".
eesmith 7y ago
So, I've been self-employed for 20 years, doing custom software development at home and short-term (typically <2weeks) on-site consulting). I've been thinking about going back to work for a company full-time, as I'm getting tired of dealing with sales and marketing. I do it poorly. I don't know how to answer these questions, by which I infer that long-term self-employed people are rarely hired at Google. #2: the last company I worked at was in 1999. I don't remember enough about the culture to give a coherent answer. The on-site work I did for clients wasn't long enough for me to understand their culture. #3: "independent troubleshooting and initiative" is all that can apply for someone who's self-employed. #4: "a team project you did at work". The best I can do is describe how I work for other companies in my development work. #5: I ... don't know how I would like to be managed. I guess, work with a manager who can help me figure out how I can be managed in a large corporate environment. "Follow-up questions: Tell me about a disagreement you had with your last manager." ... Again, 1999.
- ascorbic 7y ago
  I don't know what Google is expecting, but if I were interviewing you those sort of answers would satisfy me, if you explained your situaiton and made a decent attempt to provide some useful answer. e.g. for #2 they're not actually doing due diligence on your current employer, they want to know about the sort of environment you thrive in, so talk about what you're looking for in a company's culture. As you said, #3 is a chance to give lots of real world examples and play to your strengths. For #4 they don't need to actually know about that specific project, they just want to know how you handle projects, so if there's a way you can answer that from your own experiences then that's fine. I'd say your #5 is fair enough too. At that point that's probably the sort of thing you'd want to turn around. e.g. ask if they have hired people who have come from self-employed backgrounds, and if so how did they handle it.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Thank you for your supportive answers!
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
rramadass 7y ago
Useless "world-as-you-want-it-to-be" rather than "world-as-it-actually-is" questions. These questions simply encourage the interviewee to guess expected answers and provide them with a smile. They mean nothing. Until and unless companies learn that "Honesty" and "Trust"(from both sides) are the only things which matter when it comes to measuring intangible character traits these sorts of questionnaires are bunkum.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Not everyone is going to do that, because some would rather find out sooner than later that they don't really want the job. Also, some people are bad at guessing expected answers.
- jaggederest 7y ago
  I must be lucky because I'm at the point in my career where I give these kind of questions direct but nuanced answers and let the chips fall where they may. I'm definitely not everyone's "cultural fit" (a dog whistle term for legitimizing discrimination imo), but for companies that appreciate what I bring to the table, it's all the better. Honesty and trust are definitely top values for me, and people who can't handle respectful and frank discussion can't handle me, so better to find out immediately, as early in the process as possible.
nitwit005 7y ago
These questions assume the person has significant prior experience, which makes them unusable for a decent amount of hiring. At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them. It's impractical to ask a bunch of open ended questions like this, and also engineering questions, in a 45 or 60 minute time slot.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them. I would love to be wrong, but interviewing still seems more magic than science. I've interviewed for positions and think I did great, and did not get a job, and for others, did poorly and did get an offer. On the other side, I've hired promising candidates that turned out terrible, and questionable candidates that turned out great. There are some things you can do to filter out the worst of folks (e.g., a fiz-buz test or evaluating basic communication skills), but these generally just filter out the bottom 20%. It's maddeningly difficult to differentiate between the middle 50% and the top 20%. When you occasionally find a rock-star, they generally know they're a rock-star and demand rock-star pay. The top 5% of candidates is rarely 2X more productive than the top 10%, but they can demand much higher salaries because they are easier to identify.
jdkee 7y ago
Orwellian in more than one manner.
deleted 7y ago
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Traubenfuchs 7y ago
After significant experience on both sides of the table I am completely lost. As interviewer I feel the best I can do in the short time I have is to weed out those so incompetent and badly fitting where I wonder why they even applied for the job. E.g.Java developer position and they can't do a simple stream.filter.map.collect task. As interviewee I rarely even get the slightest interest of actually taking the job if they want me. I usually don't feel any enthusiasm on the other side and I have a hard time appearing to be enthusiastic myself. Candidates interests usually boil down to "I want more money", "I want a less outdated tech stack", "I want better management" and "I am depressed and want change for change's sake". In the end, most software development jobs suck and employers are just looking for code monkeys, hoping they will find some that will stay for more than a year or two. Applicants are fed up with pretending they have any personal interest in software development beyond the wages they get for it.
subpixel 7y ago
Keep in mind this is content marketing for a dead Google product, nothing more
kthejoker2 7y ago
Classic HN, assuming these questions are only for technical roles. If the only true signal in an interview is weeding out completely unacceptable candidates, these are great questions because the only goal should be staying in your lane with two hands on the wheel. Also, reversing the questions can be insightful as a candidate. Personally I think the biggest disconnect comes in the job descriptions and postings: a lot of these preferences companies have about their candidates could just be openly posted and the candidates could self select themselves for fit.

269 points by Raj7k 7y ago

ronilan 7y ago

OT: Google Hire has been discontinued.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
That seems a little misleading. Google says they're sunsetting it about 11 months from now.
Junk_Collector 7y ago
That's how you know it's a Google product.
gherkinnn 7y ago
It’s called “sunsetting”. ;)

makeramen 7y ago

Also worth noting for candidates: These are great questions to ask your interviewers, to see if the company is a place you want to work at.

cgrealy 7y ago

The most generic and obvious set of questions ever. Every single interview I’ve participated in (on both sides) has included some or all of these questions. There isn’t really anything new or interesting here.

hnspirit 7y ago
"Why do you want to not be destitute? Also, tell us you like us!"
- dsr_ 7y ago
  That's question one from the article: Based on nothing but what you've learned about this company from the outside, please tell me why we're great and you're great and we will be great together?

whatshisface 7y ago

>How would you describe the culture at previous companies you’ve worked at? Somehow this one sounds like, "tell me what you hated most about your last boss," insofar as it's a bit of a minefield to answer in a professional way.

deleted 7y ago
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creaghpatr 7y ago
I like to ask "what is/was your favorite and least favorite part of [Company's] [Department's] culture, that way there's a rough range that's specific to the department rather than ambiguous cultural perks.
- flapadar 7y ago
  The problem I have with that is shit talking your previous work is generally seen as unprofessional - yet, you're also leaving them for a reason. I would probably be evasive if asked your question (at least, in terms of 'least favourite'), which also wouldn't work in my favour.
  - creaghpatr 7y ago
    You would have to take the answer in context, ie does it align with their reason for leaving. Shit talking would be a red flag but everyone's got unique cultural preferences. Someone's favorite part might be someone's least favorite part from that same company.
  - kthejoker2 7y ago
    Why does it have to be shit talking? Surely there are value neutral things you didnt love about your old company. We couldn't install our own tools which hampered creative problem solving. We weren't given enough direct access to our customers to make better design decisions in the product. We didn't have a strong culture of documentation so we relied too much on tribal knowledge.
- 7y ago

HarryHirsch 7y ago

How can you even answer any of these questions except with fluff and bullshit if you want to be hired? Google is supposed to be a data-driven company, but it's impossible to extract any information out of bullshit, bullshit by definition is orthogonal to observable reality, it is neither truth, nor falsehood, it's pure empty words.

decebalus1 7y ago
These are generally interview wildcards. It can be used against you regardless of how you answer (assuming you didn't show an obvious red flag like call your former manager a fuckhead) or used for your benefit if someone needs a bit more leverage to get you on the team. My take is that you need to project the image of a professional, match your resume experience, don't be combative and basically show that you can be a valuable drone. Even the fact that you can bullshit this with a straight face and not go candid on the interviewer is a positive data point, as that's basically 80% of working in a corporation. But again, the hiring manager can cherry pick positives/negatives based on what he actually wants to do.
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- jkp56 7y ago
  Except that these questions are asked by SWEs who don't like these questions and don't support this idea in general. So there is a interview where one SWE asks another SWE a bunch of behavioral questions, takes notes, then goes back to his desk and writes an full interview feedback with ratings. Then a hiring manager can look at these ratings and make a decision. There is no recording of the interview. In general, SWEs just evaluate the candidate on basis "can we get along? Do I want to want with him?" and if that's the case, the interviewer gives outstanding ratings and completes the interviee's answer to match them with definitions for those ratings.

vzaliva 7y ago

this is terrible

Pirate-of-SV 7y ago

> 1. Why do you want to work for our company? I don't feel comfortable asking this question. Many of the people I interview are "headhunted" into an interview by an talent acquisition team. Are they even looking for a new job?

astura 7y ago
It's a weird question because one of the reasons I'm interviewing is to decide if I wanna work at your company or not. It's like if the candidate asked the interviewer "why do you want to hire me?"
groby_b 7y ago
fwiw, I've answered these in the past with "I'm not sure, I'm evaluating if I want to". I've had interesting conversations based on that. And, as far as I can tell, it didn't affect the outcome negatively. For you as the interviewer, an answer like that is a great hook to ask "well, what does matter to you? What would convince you to work here?" It'll tell you a lot about fit or not :)
halfjoking 7y ago
> My honest answer to "why do you want to work here?" I want to chill and pace myself here. I'm looking to do 30+ hours of work per week on my projects outside of this dayjob, so it's important for you not bother me too much during my 40 hours here. My only goal is to build a company on the side. I've turned down better jobs just so I work in an environment and with coworkers that I fucking hate, so that I am extremely motivated to do whatever it takes to have my own business. Overall this job is just a paycheck - a necessary distraction to maintain a reasonable standard of living, and completely irrelevant to any of my goals in life. If contract work didn't cause too much stress/friction for me, I would be doing that for money. I hope you understand that I want to see you fail, this company fail, and any project I'm on to fail miserably. I will do the work you assign me according to spec, but please remember to leave me the fuck alone. So... when can I start?

msum 7y ago

Things that are more useful to know: - What's your mechanism for bias self-check? - If someone gives you specs and you notice that something is off, what do you do? - If you have to solve a problem you haven't solved before, how do you approach it? - What's your take on accessibility on the web? - What's your process like for deciding that you're at the point in your career where you can mentor others? - What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked? - You're just about to finish a feature and have a great idea for improving it. What do you do? For all of these things, people will likely give different answers but those answers will tell me a lot about whether or not they would end up being really useful for the kinds of teams I build.

hnspirit 7y ago
Found the real person!
quanticle 7y ago
I really like the question about specs, and I'll definitely use that in the future when I'm on the interviewer side of the hiring desk. A useful follow up to that would be, "If I gave you a list of features, how would you go about estimating how long it would take to build them all out?" There is no perfect answer to that (as we know from the steady drumbeat of stories decrying the state of software estimation) but hearing how someone would go about solving a problem under conditions of uncertainty would tell give you a lot more useful information, in my opinion, than "What kind of relationship do you want to have with your co-workers?"
Jach 7y ago
I don't like these questions at all. My initial reaction to these is: Why do you insist the candidate reads your mind? Some of the questions can be useful if rephrased to not require mind-reading the best range of answers. The purpose of the interview for the interviewer: deciding between "no, don't hire this person", "maybe, we'll decide later with more data or after comparing with another person", and "yes, hire". The purpose of the interview for the interviewee: deciding "yes/no, I want to continue with this company" and conditionally if yes trying their best to get the interviewer into the "yes, hire" state. I'm only going to pick on one of these questions, but they all have the same problem in that they're not (to me) very effective means at fulfilling the purpose since they'll select for candidates most capable of reading your mind, not actually really useful candidates. When you ask "what's your take on accessibility on the web?", the candidate is thinking many things at once. Here are some: 1) do I have a take and what is it? 2) what's the answer the interviewer wants to hear? 3) if my answer is wrong does that make it impossible to get into the "no, don't hire" state? 4) will I know once I answer? Maybe you want a take that says accessibility is important despite the added costs, because humanism or whatever. If they say accessibility isn't important, because the costs don't justify it, you put them in the "no" bucket. Or perhaps it's vice versa, or you analyze the issue through some other framework. Maybe you really just want to see if they can converse about it at all, and will devil's-advocate the opposite of what they say, and only put them in the "no" bucket if they can't converse or start screaming at you. In any case, I don't think you're being fair to the candidate and you're likely wasting time. If you just want to test ability to converse, and don't actually care what they personally believe, state that in the question and don't ask for their actual belief: "I'd like to have a sort of philosophical discussion with you about accessibility on the web. Let's imagine I ask you ... and you feel ..." If you actually have a specific range of answers in mind that can put someone in the "no" bucket, put that information in the job description requirements. "Expected to design with accessibility in mind." fits the first of my maybes, "Expected to move fast and not spend time on non-MVP work like accessibility." fits the vice-versa. Presto, no mind games, no wasted time for everyone because it wasn't clear until you asked your question that you hold opposite views and thus this is a "no". Maybe you're worried about liars, which you have to be anyway since plenty of people apply to coding positions without being able to code, so you might ask a more specific question (like we do by asking them to code something) around accessibility that makes clear what conclusion you expect (it matches the job description) and that you're looking for some sort of reasoning for why that conclusion is such in their mind. Maybe since you're mentioning "end up being really useful" (as opposed to just useful) you don't weigh answers to these questions as hard "yes" or "no" filters, but just "maybes" that you can subjectively reflect upon later (e.g. by adding up a bunch of "maybes" you've recast to point-weighted soft yes/nos that can cancel each other). Fine, you can still put "Bonus:" in the job description, rather than "Required:", so that candidates know ahead of time that if they can only get to the "maybe" state the presence/absence of those certain "Bonus" attributes will influence their chances of moving from "maybe" to "yes". If they're already uncertain about "yes", and see a lack of "bonus" attributes on top of that, they're likely to not bother, again saving everyone's time. It's fine to distinguish between "really useful" and "useful". Questions that can distinguish between degrees of "maybe" between candidates aren't bad, but they should be back-loaded as much as possible, and only used when the front-loaded yes/no questions have been asked and you're still in a state of uncertainty about which candidate would really be better, lamenting that you only have the budget for one of them. How many of those do you get?

hnspirit 7y ago

I wouldn't have published this.

nfRfqX5n 7y ago

Most candidates will probably be prepared to answer this common question. Nonetheless... as if being prepared for a question is a bad thing

ascorbic 7y ago
I'm not saying I agree with this, but I think their implication is that the candidate will have prepared a generic answer that isn't necessarily honest or useful. If it's a question they haven't prepped for, they are more likely to give an honest answer rather than one they read on a blog post by a hiring platform company.

vgrafe 7y ago

We have such silly silver-bullet-like talking points at my company. I don't follow them. It is to me too easy to make up/twist past experience to match what the interview wants to hear. Oh yeah I hit that wall and used that clever way to ship in time... Oh yeah I learnt from such and such mistake... not a fan. Instead, prior to the ITW I define clearly (with myself or an other interviewer) the information I want to hear or the parts of the intellect/emotions I want to feel. Example: wanna check if the candidate is autonomous? Instead of asking him if he prefers working in a big or small (or no) team and get a generic/boring answer, I will ask the candidate how they prioritize tasks when no workflow can help them. Do they rely on gut feeling? perceived ROI? ask the manager? the client? In this mindset I know directly if there's a clear match, and if not it is easy to dig in their way of thinking with a follow-up question (why/how?). Takes a bit of improvisation/reactivity but at least I feel like I keep things interesting for everyone in the room when doing so.

serf 7y ago

as a serial victim to sets of questions exactly like this earlier in my life, i've come to realize that 'Culture-fit' is really just a coded honesty test -- and the most deceptive thing about it is that straight honesty is one of the quickest ways to do poorly at it. in other words, answering '1. Why do you want to work for our company?' with "Because I want a salary and I need to avoid destitution.' is a wholly appropriate answer, but it's wrong. They actually just want you to evangelize the company for a few minutes and lay on how envious you are of those that have 'the opportunity' to 'be a part of the revolution at X-Co'.

tylerl 7y ago
The relevant bit in "Why do you want to work for our company" is the unstated "...as oppose to another." Ideally the answer is some property of the company that aligns well with the candidates ideals. But it presupposes that the candidate knows of some attribute that fits this frame. A better question might be to make the company attribute hypothetical. Something like: "if you could propose a rule for all employees at the company where you want to work, what would it be." You'd definitely need follow-up questions and promoting, but it could be way more insightful.
- username90 7y ago
  The question "Why do you want to work for our company" can always be answered with "I want to work with great coworkers and I've heard you have really great people here" no matter what company it is.
  - whenchamenia 7y ago
    I could nave a few in SV where this would undoubtably raise suspicion. Many of the hottest companies are well known for being successful dispite (because of?) their challanging working environments. At first you would wonder why anyone would bother when the pay is often similar, but talented people seek a challenge. Many of the most tempermental composers always had a line of the best musicians waiting to suffer near-abuse just to have a crack at attempting something amazingly difficult that they respect.

the_af 7y ago

Many of those questions are iffy, a potential minefield or uninteresting, but this one (#3) is key and we use it a lot: "Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work. What was the issue, and how did you approach it?" What I like about it is that it isn't a trick question. Also, knowing beforehand you're going to be asked this won't help you to bullshit your way through -- either you did stuff and can answer questions about it or you don't. This question lets the interviewee discuss something they did and that they feel comfortable talking about, how they approached it, what their problem-solving approach was, etc. It also lets the interviewer ask follow-up questions about whatever sounds interesting to discuss in more detail.

quadrifoliate 7y ago
For a lot of the work I do, this is heavily grounded in context and therefore useless to the interviewer. “I undid some hacks that Dave who left two years ago had put in the test suite because he just really liked stacking Python decorators, and they were getting too complex to figure out when some test broke. I updated some documentation that hadn't been touched in 5 years and was terrifyingly out of date. And then I sat in for two useless meetings because leadership really likes holding them.” is not likely to communicate any positive messages, but it is the reality of what a lot of us do at our jobs instead of solving complex race conditions in elegantly designed distributed systems. Not saying that that might not contribute some kind of signal to a potential interview, but it's very likely to be one that labels me as incompetent :)
- the_af 7y ago
  You can always talk about a hobby project of yours if your day job is uninteresting or not readily marketable. It's true that for some job interviews, an answer like in your example will make you lose points. However, for other jobs being able to fix and refactor legacy Python code may be just what they are looking after. Your interviewer might ask follow-up questions about code quality and cleanliness, how you made sure your refactor didn't break anything, etc.
  - 7y ago

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OhHeyItsE 7y ago

> 9. How do you maintain a work-life balance? Pretty sure the candidate is supposed to ask the interviewer that one...

dx87 7y ago
IKR, work-life balance defaults to healthy until the employer starts requiring or additional hours on top of the normal 9-5.

protomyth 7y ago

I honestly don't even know what I would answer for #2. It really sounds like one of those terminology questions to get people who think in the exact terms you use.

quanticle 7y ago

A lot of people are jumping on #3 (Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work). While I agree that #3 deserves criticism, I feel like #6 (Tell me about your preferred workday) and #8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) are even more problematic. As an introvert, as someone who likes quiet, my ideal workday consists of me getting into work at ~7:30am, working until ~4:30pm with about an hour off for lunch. I accept that meetings are a necessary evil, but I maintain that their necessity does not diminish their evil. I especially despise the "daily standup", which is a completely pointless 15-20 minute interruption right during my peak concentration hours. And yet, if I actually gave that response to question #6, the best I could hope for is a sympathetic nod from my interviewer, and a mention about how they attempt to have a single day without meetings. Instead, I feel like I'm supposed to lie about how I like "collaboration" (code for meetings). #8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) is, if anything, even worse. As someone who doesn't like parties, and who doesn't drink, I find it really awkward and draining to go out with coworkers. No offense, but if I'm with the same people for 40 hours a week, the last thing I want to do is spend more time with them (especially on a Friday afternoon or evening, which is when most after-work outings tend to occur). And yet, I feel like if I actually gave that answer at a lot of companies, I'd be immediately dismissed as "not a culture fit", even though my skills are a very good match for the position.

codyb 7y ago
We got rid of standups on my current team and it’s definitely very nice. I think you could probably massage that answer though “well standups aren’t my favorite thing really, it’s sort of a lot of context switching and a lot of times the conversation isn’t relevant to me. But I understand it’s generally more for the managers than it is for me.” And for the latter one “I like a very professional, cordial, and relaxed relationship with my coworkers. I tend to do my own things on weekends which leaves me refreshed and happy to see everyone on Monday.” It’s just a bit smoother than “the last thing I’m going to want to do is spend _more_ time with you”. Instead of emphasizing the drain it’d be to spend more time with your coworkers, emphasize the benefits of coming back refreshed on Monday :-). They’re the same answer but one’s more positive.
- 7y ago

tempsy 7y ago

From the WSJ recently..."The Dangers of Hiring for Cultural Fit" https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-hiring-for-cultural-fit-11569231000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-hiring-for-cultu...

tylerhou 7y ago
From your article: > “What most people mean by culture fit is hiring people they’d like to have a beer with,” says Patty McCord, a human-resources consultant and former chief talent officer at Netflix. From Google's article: > However, culture fit evaluations can invite bias into your process if interviewers see it as simply a way to assess a candidate’s likeability, rather than how they align with your company’s core values. Assessing culture fit is about much more than whether or not you’d like to hang out with someone at a company happy hour. Disclaimer: I work at Google; opinions are my own.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "...how they align with your company’s core values" This phrase seems kind of common, but it seems a little odd in that it sort of implies different companies have significantly different "core values". Like, Google's core value is of course, "don't be evil". So, they get all the non-evil candidates, and someone else gets the spawn of Satan?

Impossible 7y ago

These questions are good and seem standard to me. Whenever interview questions come up on HN there are always many comments refuting them. Any behavioral/culture/softskill questions will be bullshitted by sociopaths and liars. Any technical questions will be biased toward competitive coders and leetcode cramers, and they aren't relevant for position X anyway. IQ tests and brain teasers are less relevant for the job and in some cases potentially illegal. Take home tests take up too might time that you don't get compensated for. Contract to hire takes even more time and doesn't work for candidates that already have full time work. Not everyone has side projects that can be evaluated or contributes to open source, and even if they do it's impossible to tell if the candidate did th actual work. Every way of evaluating programmers sucks unless I'm missing a magic bullet? My question is at what point does a candidate show such skill at gaming interview system(s) that it doesn't matter if they are bullshitting or had to study for your interview? If they apply the same skills to the job they're likely to be successful in most tech roles, and given corporate or start up structures and politics these candidates might be significantly better than more "genuine" candidates. The only places I think standard tech interview variants might break down is hiring for creativity and for ethical behavior (ethical behavior and rule following being different things). I'm not sure if either of those are important in most tech roles and they might actually be determintal.

malvosenior 7y ago
Ask developers about projects they’ve worked on and have the technical skills to evaluate the depth of their answers. It works every time for me, it’s fair and even fun for the interviewee and it’s really fast. I’m often to a hire/no hire decision in 30 mins. No culture questions (I’m happy to manage all kinds of people). No technical challenges. The more you do this, the better you get at it.

PascLeRasc 7y ago

Does anyone have good ways to determine if a company is a good culture fit for you, as an interviewee? I had an in-person this week where I tried the reverse of some of these - "Can you tell me about a typical workday?" "How is the work-life balance here?" and I just got BS fluff answers like "Well there's a variety of technical problems to solve here".

codyb 7y ago
I tend to ask about things interviewers don’t like, would change, or that have been challenging for the company. If you can’t name a single issue in your org that smells fishy to me, but an honest answer indicates an open culture and decent people.
- sethammons 7y ago
  As an interviewer, I like these kinds of questions as it shows interest from the candidate. The worst is no questions from the candidate. If a candidate has no decent questions for me, I'll usually and enthusiastically suggest some, starting with "what is most enjoyable and what is the worst thing about this role/department/company?"
Traubenfuchs 7y ago
I am so, so bad at this at this point I should be able to provide some pointers! But I can't. Interviewers lie. When I am the interviewer, I know I do. Or at least enhance the truth. Only experiencing it will tell you the truth...

morkfromork 7y ago

Google should give people a chance to adapt to their work culture instead of rejecting them.

person_of_color 7y ago

Off topic but I interviewed at Apple (SWE) and brought a cheap Chinese phone (Xiaomi) to the onsite. I didn't get the job. A factor?

twothumbsup 7y ago
No
- person_of_color 7y ago
  What would be? I felt all my rounds were positive.
  - Infinitesimus 7y ago
    One downside of the interview process is that candidates hardly get told _why_ they were rejected. It is unlikely that your phone cost you the job but Apple as a company does seem to live in a bubble of "Apple is best. Apple for everything " so there's always the slim chance that you got an interviewer who lives by that and decided to not like you much. Pretty unlikely though but it shall remain one of those great mysteries of life
    - JJMcJ 7y ago
      Actual feedback is rare and extremely valuable. Mostly you will get "decided not to go forward", or "they felt you didn't have enough depth in <SOME SKILL>", which might or might not be true. What recruiter is going to say, "Jeff said he could never work with anyone who would carry a cheap phone".

eesmith 7y ago

So, I've been self-employed for 20 years, doing custom software development at home and short-term (typically <2weeks) on-site consulting). I've been thinking about going back to work for a company full-time, as I'm getting tired of dealing with sales and marketing. I do it poorly. I don't know how to answer these questions, by which I infer that long-term self-employed people are rarely hired at Google. #2: the last company I worked at was in 1999. I don't remember enough about the culture to give a coherent answer. The on-site work I did for clients wasn't long enough for me to understand their culture. #3: "independent troubleshooting and initiative" is all that can apply for someone who's self-employed. #4: "a team project you did at work". The best I can do is describe how I work for other companies in my development work. #5: I ... don't know how I would like to be managed. I guess, work with a manager who can help me figure out how I can be managed in a large corporate environment. "Follow-up questions: Tell me about a disagreement you had with your last manager." ... Again, 1999.

ascorbic 7y ago
I don't know what Google is expecting, but if I were interviewing you those sort of answers would satisfy me, if you explained your situaiton and made a decent attempt to provide some useful answer. e.g. for #2 they're not actually doing due diligence on your current employer, they want to know about the sort of environment you thrive in, so talk about what you're looking for in a company's culture. As you said, #3 is a chance to give lots of real world examples and play to your strengths. For #4 they don't need to actually know about that specific project, they just want to know how you handle projects, so if there's a way you can answer that from your own experiences then that's fine. I'd say your #5 is fair enough too. At that point that's probably the sort of thing you'd want to turn around. e.g. ask if they have hired people who have come from self-employed backgrounds, and if so how did they handle it.
- eesmith 7y ago
  Thank you for your supportive answers!
DoreenMichele 7y ago

rramadass 7y ago

Useless "world-as-you-want-it-to-be" rather than "world-as-it-actually-is" questions. These questions simply encourage the interviewee to guess expected answers and provide them with a smile. They mean nothing. Until and unless companies learn that "Honesty" and "Trust"(from both sides) are the only things which matter when it comes to measuring intangible character traits these sorts of questionnaires are bunkum.

skybrian 7y ago
Not everyone is going to do that, because some would rather find out sooner than later that they don't really want the job. Also, some people are bad at guessing expected answers.
jaggederest 7y ago
I must be lucky because I'm at the point in my career where I give these kind of questions direct but nuanced answers and let the chips fall where they may. I'm definitely not everyone's "cultural fit" (a dog whistle term for legitimizing discrimination imo), but for companies that appreciate what I bring to the table, it's all the better. Honesty and trust are definitely top values for me, and people who can't handle respectful and frank discussion can't handle me, so better to find out immediately, as early in the process as possible.

nitwit005 7y ago

These questions assume the person has significant prior experience, which makes them unusable for a decent amount of hiring. At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them. It's impractical to ask a bunch of open ended questions like this, and also engineering questions, in a 45 or 60 minute time slot.

speedplane 7y ago
> At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them. I would love to be wrong, but interviewing still seems more magic than science. I've interviewed for positions and think I did great, and did not get a job, and for others, did poorly and did get an offer. On the other side, I've hired promising candidates that turned out terrible, and questionable candidates that turned out great. There are some things you can do to filter out the worst of folks (e.g., a fiz-buz test or evaluating basic communication skills), but these generally just filter out the bottom 20%. It's maddeningly difficult to differentiate between the middle 50% and the top 20%. When you occasionally find a rock-star, they generally know they're a rock-star and demand rock-star pay. The top 5% of candidates is rarely 2X more productive than the top 10%, but they can demand much higher salaries because they are easier to identify.

jdkee 7y ago

Orwellian in more than one manner.

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Traubenfuchs 7y ago

After significant experience on both sides of the table I am completely lost. As interviewer I feel the best I can do in the short time I have is to weed out those so incompetent and badly fitting where I wonder why they even applied for the job. E.g.Java developer position and they can't do a simple stream.filter.map.collect task. As interviewee I rarely even get the slightest interest of actually taking the job if they want me. I usually don't feel any enthusiasm on the other side and I have a hard time appearing to be enthusiastic myself. Candidates interests usually boil down to "I want more money", "I want a less outdated tech stack", "I want better management" and "I am depressed and want change for change's sake". In the end, most software development jobs suck and employers are just looking for code monkeys, hoping they will find some that will stay for more than a year or two. Applicants are fed up with pretending they have any personal interest in software development beyond the wages they get for it.

subpixel 7y ago

Keep in mind this is content marketing for a dead Google product, nothing more

kthejoker2 7y ago

Classic HN, assuming these questions are only for technical roles. If the only true signal in an interview is weeding out completely unacceptable candidates, these are great questions because the only goal should be staying in your lane with two hands on the wheel. Also, reversing the questions can be insightful as a candidate. Personally I think the biggest disconnect comes in the job descriptions and postings: a lot of these preferences companies have about their candidates could just be openly posted and the candidates could self select themselves for fit.