6 ms·

Not the OP, but I just wanted to chime in from an interviewer's perspective and describe how candidates should approach these types of questions. Disclaimer: T

by l_t 7y ago

Not the OP, but I just wanted to chime in from an interviewer's perspective and describe how candidates should approach these types of questions. Disclaimer: This is just my personal experience. For starters, if you're asked a question that is directly relevant to your future work (e.g. "What's your take on accessibility on the web" for a Web developer), you're best served to state your honest opinion. Do not try to "figure out the right answer." The right answer is the one you believe and you can defend. If that means your answer is "I don't know, I've never had to deal with it, but I know its important," say that and it helps improve the overall signal of the interview. You might think of this as wasting time, but the interviewer is asking you the same questions that you'll be asked in your new job, but in a simplified form. Just be honest and try to treat the interviewer like a coworker as much as possible. As I always tell my candidates, "there are no right or wrong answers in this interview." (Once again, YMMV depending on who is interviewing you or what type of job you want.)

Jach 7y ago
I've been doing more giving than taking of interviews in the last years and think almost all the problems are on the interviewer side, but yeah, it's useful to speak to the candidate faced with this. My own perspective is somewhat different, and is really meant for these context-light scenarios, real scenarios will have a lot more context that will help both sides of the table do better at accomplishing their respective purposes. Anyway given that mind reading is impossible, and that you want the job, what to do? The answer is.. you have to guess based on the context you do have available. There's not really a good general solution here, and you might guess in a way that really screws you up. It's easy for the interviewer to tell if the candidate is attempting a "just feed me what I want to hear" strategy, if the candidate has guessed wrong about what I actually want to hear, and now the candidate appears deceitful, a double-whammy. If they have guessed right, though, it's much harder for the interviewer to pick up on it -- which is why for hiring programmers at least it's common (even if rife with its own pitfalls) to do more objective things like asking for a demonstration of basic coding capabilities, because sometimes some people who must really want the job and have Masters degrees and can talk somebody's ear off in a confident enough way to get this far still somehow can't seem to program when asked, the primary activity we need them to do. Life's not about maximizing the chances of getting a particular job, though. I like ethical policies of being maximally honest, even if you shoot yourself in the foot by revealing you're a bit crazy about homoiconicity or whatever... And generally speaking it's not a terrible guess to assume the interviewer just wants an honest answer primarily even if secondarily the content of the answer isn't what they were hoping for. It's also easy to execute on that guess, since it's usually easy to come off as honest if you're being honest. If the interviewer asks a question that does seem job related (like this accessibility example), honesty is also helpful in that even if your honest answer differs from the interviewer's expected answer, and you don't get hired like you wanted, you might have dodged a bullet by at least surfacing that the difference in opinion or expectations was apparently a big deal there before actually taking the job. Wasteful interviews are wasteful, but it's even more wasteful to take a job, start going through onboarding, and only then you and/or the employer beginning to realize things probably won't work out. Though if the interviewer asks a loaded question, i.e. one which is well known to be a topic of contention in the industry, it's worth re-evaluating your guess and to respond accordingly. I wouldn't suggest ever outright lying, but the honest, direct answer might not be your friend and as with any adversarial conversation (interviews are not casual chats at a meetup with industry peers, even if they can sometimes feel structurally similar) giving too much information can be detrimental. Example, the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" Maybe you honestly believe spaces, and maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about and are ready to go at it if the interviewer dares claim for tabs. You might reveal the basic answer of "Spaces", I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. Here's an opportunity to guess the intent though, maybe the interviewer just wants to see if you'll try to be funny about the answer rather than answer directly. Ideally the interviewer would guide the interview so that whatever their intention is will be clear. > "there are no right or wrong answers in this interview." It's good to tell the candidates something about what your expectations are, that's my whole point! Though I might rework this one a bit. Some personalities would be instantly alarmed by such a phrase... For myself, I'd ignore it and proceed as normal, though part of me would want to ask "So you've already decided on yes/no? Want to regain the hour?"
- blankaccount 7y ago
  > "Anyway given that mind reading is impossible, and that you want the job, what to do?" > "Example, the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" ...and maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about ... I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. Here's an opportunity to guess the intent though." To me, this reads as "if you want the job then you [should/are entitled to] misrepresent yourself to bypass the filtering mechanism". If that's the case, then your whole reply reads as a complaint about how hard it is to cheat when anti-cheating tactics are in place. Am I misunderstanding?
  - speedplane 7y ago
    >> the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" ... maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about ... I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. > this reads as "if you want the job then you [should/are entitled to] misrepresent yourself to bypass the filtering mechanism". I don't think so... it's more like, if you have a deeply held viewpoint, can you effectively work with others who have different viewpoints? If you can strike a compromise or convince them to change, that's the best. If you can bury your differences, that's not ideal but at least workable. Given the spaces/tabs example, if you are sincerely passionate about using spaces instead of tabs, and you're able to convince a tab-user to switch to spaces without upsetting them, that's the best, demonstrating leadership. Almost as good, is if you can explain how much you like spaces but have happily worked together with tab users (tabbers?). Finally, if you say you like spaces but you're happy to keep silent about it (or if you don't mention it at all), that's not as good as the others, but probably fine too. Any company that values innovation should encourage differing viewpoints to be raised, but not to the point that it becomes a distraction and hinders overall productivity.
    - blankaccount 7y ago
      If one of your strongly held beliefs is "spaces over tabs" and you think that belief is information that has sway in the interview AND you take the advice to not reveal the information, then how are you not misrepresenting yourself? You're answering like a person who doesn't hold strong beliefs to a question designed to identify strong beliefs, knowing that you are a person who holds those strong beliefs. Is that not misrepresentation to bypass the filtering mechanism? We might be talking about slightly different things - if you have a strong belief then I agree you should try sell it, and doing so would demonstrate leadership qualities.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
raveenb 7y ago
Yes YMMV is my experience too following any of the suggestions. Sometimes I have hired the best and sometimes I have hired real snakes :) using such guidelines
ryandrake 7y ago
> As I always tell my candidates, "there are no right or wrong answers in this interview." Yea, I've heard that one before. At least at large companies, with complex (and sometimes written) culture, there are right answers to cultural fit questions. This is where it helps to know someone inside the company who can coach you on the specifics of the culture and help you to learn the right answers. At different companies, the culturally "fit" answer to "What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked?" can be very different! At one company, the better answer could be "coach the nit-picker on effective feedback" and at another, the better answer might be "help the nit recipient with their coding skills." Figure out the right answer for the company you're interviewing with and how to defend it in a way the interviewer expects, given your knowledge of their cultural norms. Maybe I'm being overly pragmatic but as a candidate, your goal is to get the offer and if possible get the offer at their competitor, too. You're already facing a massive power imbalance. More offers translates into more choices and leverage as a candidate.
- l_t 7y ago
  Personally, I do believe that there are no right or wrong answers, just right or wrong reasons. At least for the tech parts of the interview. I like that you called out that culture fit questions often have right answers. I failed to mention that but it's definitely true. Ironically, the more "cultural" a question is, the more likely it has right and wrong answers. (As a little background, I'm usually involved in the tech-eval stages of the interview. The "culture fit" is evaluated by other people at our company. So, I don't have a lot of experience with that, unfortunately.)
- Communitivity 7y ago
  I think the wrong answer to a culture fit question is the one that doesn't reflect who you are. The answer they are looking for matches their culture. If you are hired because they think you fit the culture, and you don't, everyone loses. You won't keep the job because team friction trumps all other considerations in my opinion, and you'll be miserable. Find a place that where you are a match for their culture, and thrive.

by l_t 7y ago

Jach 7y ago

I've been doing more giving than taking of interviews in the last years and think almost all the problems are on the interviewer side, but yeah, it's useful to speak to the candidate faced with this. My own perspective is somewhat different, and is really meant for these context-light scenarios, real scenarios will have a lot more context that will help both sides of the table do better at accomplishing their respective purposes. Anyway given that mind reading is impossible, and that you want the job, what to do? The answer is.. you have to guess based on the context you do have available. There's not really a good general solution here, and you might guess in a way that really screws you up. It's easy for the interviewer to tell if the candidate is attempting a "just feed me what I want to hear" strategy, if the candidate has guessed wrong about what I actually want to hear, and now the candidate appears deceitful, a double-whammy. If they have guessed right, though, it's much harder for the interviewer to pick up on it -- which is why for hiring programmers at least it's common (even if rife with its own pitfalls) to do more objective things like asking for a demonstration of basic coding capabilities, because sometimes some people who must really want the job and have Masters degrees and can talk somebody's ear off in a confident enough way to get this far still somehow can't seem to program when asked, the primary activity we need them to do. Life's not about maximizing the chances of getting a particular job, though. I like ethical policies of being maximally honest, even if you shoot yourself in the foot by revealing you're a bit crazy about homoiconicity or whatever... And generally speaking it's not a terrible guess to assume the interviewer just wants an honest answer primarily even if secondarily the content of the answer isn't what they were hoping for. It's also easy to execute on that guess, since it's usually easy to come off as honest if you're being honest. If the interviewer asks a question that does seem job related (like this accessibility example), honesty is also helpful in that even if your honest answer differs from the interviewer's expected answer, and you don't get hired like you wanted, you might have dodged a bullet by at least surfacing that the difference in opinion or expectations was apparently a big deal there before actually taking the job. Wasteful interviews are wasteful, but it's even more wasteful to take a job, start going through onboarding, and only then you and/or the employer beginning to realize things probably won't work out. Though if the interviewer asks a loaded question, i.e. one which is well known to be a topic of contention in the industry, it's worth re-evaluating your guess and to respond accordingly. I wouldn't suggest ever outright lying, but the honest, direct answer might not be your friend and as with any adversarial conversation (interviews are not casual chats at a meetup with industry peers, even if they can sometimes feel structurally similar) giving too much information can be detrimental. Example, the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" Maybe you honestly believe spaces, and maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about and are ready to go at it if the interviewer dares claim for tabs. You might reveal the basic answer of "Spaces", I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. Here's an opportunity to guess the intent though, maybe the interviewer just wants to see if you'll try to be funny about the answer rather than answer directly. Ideally the interviewer would guide the interview so that whatever their intention is will be clear. > "there are no right or wrong answers in this interview." It's good to tell the candidates something about what your expectations are, that's my whole point! Though I might rework this one a bit. Some personalities would be instantly alarmed by such a phrase... For myself, I'd ignore it and proceed as normal, though part of me would want to ask "So you've already decided on yes/no? Want to regain the hour?"

blankaccount 7y ago
> "Anyway given that mind reading is impossible, and that you want the job, what to do?" > "Example, the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" ...and maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about ... I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. Here's an opportunity to guess the intent though." To me, this reads as "if you want the job then you [should/are entitled to] misrepresent yourself to bypass the filtering mechanism". If that's the case, then your whole reply reads as a complaint about how hard it is to cheat when anti-cheating tactics are in place. Am I misunderstanding?
- speedplane 7y ago
  >> the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" ... maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about ... I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information. > this reads as "if you want the job then you [should/are entitled to] misrepresent yourself to bypass the filtering mechanism". I don't think so... it's more like, if you have a deeply held viewpoint, can you effectively work with others who have different viewpoints? If you can strike a compromise or convince them to change, that's the best. If you can bury your differences, that's not ideal but at least workable. Given the spaces/tabs example, if you are sincerely passionate about using spaces instead of tabs, and you're able to convince a tab-user to switch to spaces without upsetting them, that's the best, demonstrating leadership. Almost as good, is if you can explain how much you like spaces but have happily worked together with tab users (tabbers?). Finally, if you say you like spaces but you're happy to keep silent about it (or if you don't mention it at all), that's not as good as the others, but probably fine too. Any company that values innovation should encourage differing viewpoints to be raised, but not to the point that it becomes a distraction and hinders overall productivity.
  - blankaccount 7y ago
    If one of your strongly held beliefs is "spaces over tabs" and you think that belief is information that has sway in the interview AND you take the advice to not reveal the information, then how are you not misrepresenting yourself? You're answering like a person who doesn't hold strong beliefs to a question designed to identify strong beliefs, knowing that you are a person who holds those strong beliefs. Is that not misrepresentation to bypass the filtering mechanism? We might be talking about slightly different things - if you have a strong belief then I agree you should try sell it, and doing so would demonstrate leadership qualities.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

raveenb 7y ago

Yes YMMV is my experience too following any of the suggestions. Sometimes I have hired the best and sometimes I have hired real snakes :) using such guidelines

ryandrake 7y ago

> As I always tell my candidates, "there are no right or wrong answers in this interview." Yea, I've heard that one before. At least at large companies, with complex (and sometimes written) culture, there are right answers to cultural fit questions. This is where it helps to know someone inside the company who can coach you on the specifics of the culture and help you to learn the right answers. At different companies, the culturally "fit" answer to "What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked?" can be very different! At one company, the better answer could be "coach the nit-picker on effective feedback" and at another, the better answer might be "help the nit recipient with their coding skills." Figure out the right answer for the company you're interviewing with and how to defend it in a way the interviewer expects, given your knowledge of their cultural norms. Maybe I'm being overly pragmatic but as a candidate, your goal is to get the offer and if possible get the offer at their competitor, too. You're already facing a massive power imbalance. More offers translates into more choices and leverage as a candidate.

l_t 7y ago
Personally, I do believe that there are no right or wrong answers, just right or wrong reasons. At least for the tech parts of the interview. I like that you called out that culture fit questions often have right answers. I failed to mention that but it's definitely true. Ironically, the more "cultural" a question is, the more likely it has right and wrong answers. (As a little background, I'm usually involved in the tech-eval stages of the interview. The "culture fit" is evaluated by other people at our company. So, I don't have a lot of experience with that, unfortunately.)
Communitivity 7y ago
I think the wrong answer to a culture fit question is the one that doesn't reflect who you are. The answer they are looking for matches their culture. If you are hired because they think you fit the culture, and you don't, everyone loses. You won't keep the job because team friction trumps all other considerations in my opinion, and you'll be miserable. Find a place that where you are a match for their culture, and thrive.