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Worst interview questions for software developers

154 points by skydowx 4y ago

buggy6257 4y ago
Depending on where you are, questions 1 and 3 are just straight up illegal. No interviewer in the US would dare ask about vices or your family situation unless they don’t mind shelling out lawsuit settlements to everyone they interview and decline to hire.
- hezralig 4y ago
  I have sat across from recruiters at a previous job, in California of all places, that would quite frequently ask these very questions. The question is, how would you prove you were asked these questions if you were being interviewed in a state that has 2 party consent laws for recording?
  - mnd999 4y ago
    Ask the other candidates, it’s not so hard with glassdoor etc. The questions are a red flag, so you’d never want to work there but equally some free money from a discrimination lawsuit wouldn’t hurt.
  - gilbetron 4y ago
    If you are in a single party consent state, you can legally record conversations you are involved in without informing the other participants. (California is not one of those states, sadly, but if you are in a state that does, and are interviewing for a California company via zoom or a phone call, I believe you can still record it legally)
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > No interviewer in the US would dare ask about vices I actually saw a job application recently asking to confirm that you haven’t used any nicotine products in 6months in order to be hired. This was very strange as it was a 100% remote job so maybe it was HR/copy paste but the wording was bizarre . They made it clear that it was about nicotine and not just tobacco and explicitly called out things like gums or patches. I did not continue the application. I assume now it was some useless virtue signaling related to young people and vapes or something. I’m not even sure they’d seriously test people, but it’s still ridiculous that according to what was written you could be denied employment or lose your job because you had a cigarette outside the bar last weekend or have been using nicotine gum to quit smoking
- foreverCarlos 4y ago
  Question #3 offers a great opportunity to make the interviewer feel very uncomfortable. Tell them your bad habit is sticking boogers on your keyboard.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    "My bad habit is hacking into the personal computers of interviewers who decide not to give me a job."
lofatdairy 4y ago
>4. Why do you change jobs so often (so rarely)? Am I wrong to think this seems at least somewhat reasonable? Like obviously it's annoying to explain yourself, but it takes time to on-board someone and for them to become productive and it seems reasonable to want someone to stay on long enough for that at least. This naturally applies less to those super engineers you barely need to train and have obvious experienced, but that's probably not the normal case.
- chadash 4y ago
  A short job or two, fine, but at a certain point it’s a pattern that needs a reason. If the reason is “my spouse was in the military and we moved around a lot for that, but we longer do”, that’s fair enough. If the answer is that you weren’t happy enough at your last jobs to stay for more than 12 months, then why should I think you’ll be any different at your next job?
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    My wife had really bad luck with her first three jobs: the offices would just up and close a year or so after she started (this included a Nokia office because of the Microsoft merger). But she would still have to frame her answer in a way that didn’t give vibes that she was cursed.
    - recursive 4y ago
      No one would blame her for the closing of the whole branch. That's kind of the best possible answer.
    - mosdl 4y ago
      I've seen some resumes/linkedins that put reasons for why they left the job in similar situations. Acknowledging stuff like that is a good way to get ahead of questions.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    You'll never hear the real reason. So if you have an issue with this fact, don't invite the candidate to an interview. If you don't have an issue with it, then why ask? They'll never say "because I'm constantly looking for better opportunities and will jump ship when I can". This is what most of those questions on the list have in common: both sides of the table know that the answer will be contrived BS. They are a waste of everyone's time.
shusaku 4y ago
> Don’t make people cheat you. Solid general piece of advice there. If the best answer is a lie, it’s not a good question.
- taeric 4y ago
  I have that same general perspective working with the kids. Don't ask questions where you both know the correct answer is the bad answer. Examples, "Who did this?" "Why haven't you done your homework yet?" "Have you started your homework?" Much better to do the invitation style questions. "Who is going to help me clean this up?" "What is left to your homework?", etc. With the obvious major caveat of things being very tailored to the specific kid and situation, of course.
djbusby 4y ago
Ok, what are the best questions?
- taeric 4y ago
  I was curious if there were going to be good questions at the bottom. I suspect the general idea is that good questions are essentially unstable due to Goodhart's Law. (That is, as soon as they are on a list, they are no longer good.)
- fotcorn 4y ago
  I like to ask the following as a starting point for an interview: What is the most interesting project you have worked on recently? Doesn't have to be work related, but should be relevant to the job, e.g. programming, not gardening for a developer role. Why was it interesting? What were the biggest challenges on that project? How did you solve those? Will show if people are passionate about something specific, and also gives a general measurement on what they consider challenging, and a first insight into their problem solving skills. If the person goes into detail, go along and ask more questions. Very helpful to figure out how a person works. This should hopefully be a low pressure "just talking" question to get started and help people to calm down a bit.
  - Jiro 4y ago
    Demanding passion for the job is one of the toxic features of the software industry. It's your job, not your life.
- Falkon1313 4y ago
  I like to ask about tradeoffs - what kind of tradeoffs they've made and why they chose that; where their opinion lies on the pragmatic vs perfection scale and that sort of thing. Quite a lot of tech work involves making tradeoffs, so they should be able to talk about it easily, and it leads to some interesting discussion as well as giving you an idea of their opinions and decision-making. There's no need to lie or have a canned response, because tradeoffs are inherently between things which are both desirable.
IncRnd 4y ago
4. Why do you change jobs so often (so rarely)? How does that matter? If I am a match for the company in terms of qualifications and personal qualities, how will my job history and reflection help? I changed jobs every year or so. Is that “often” or “rarely”? What’s wrong with changing jobs frequently? It is actually important to ask this of a candidate who seems to frequently change jobs. A hiring manager may not want to hire someone who will leave soon. It often makes more sense to hire someone who is capabale and wants to work for you. Several of the questions in the article are very good questions to ask. Their purpose isn't for the candidate to give some canned response, like the article states. Their purpose is to help the candidate shine by asking questions that can be answered with examples from the candidate's background. If the candidate can't give solid answers that's not an issue with the questions.
- joezydeco 4y ago
  "I actually come prepared for this question, and have a line to explain each and every job I've departed in reverse chronological order. And I'd be happy to read them off if you'd like. You do? Okay... - VCs merged us with a Chinese acquisition and sent our work overseas - Manager ignored my memos for 5 years and then said "you have no new ideas" to my face in a review - Sales team demanded an emergency prototype and then let a competitor steal the contract - Company pivoted into a different tech stack overnight - Google rewrote our code in a weekend and kicked us out of Android - Owner wouldn't install health benefits (+$5K) but hired his daughter for the summer for busywork - Company abandoned the market and went into Facebook games Now hopefully none of these scenarios will ever happen here. Right? Glad to hear it."
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  - readonlybarbie 4y ago
    While I agree all of these scenarios are good reasons to leave, I have a feeling (based on being an American for all 30 years of my life now), these answers would be classified as "TOO REAL" and as a result you might be filtered for "culture fit" aka manager doesn't think he/she can control you.
xyzelement 4y ago
#10 is a measurement of ability to mentally model and estimate problems. Relevant to engineering ability. #8 measures self-awareness. Many people can answer this question with "I know I could be much better at X and I am working on it" which is what it's about.
- zulban 4y ago
  Indeed. When I was a high school teacher, I saw kids fail estimation skills like #10 badly. You don't want technical teams doing that. I've also seen people fail #8 in interviews for junior positions. They can't introspect. It sounds impossible but it happens.
- rzzzt 4y ago
  Do recruiters have up-to-date information on the number of piano tuners in NYC? How do they verify the answer?
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    Not at all. It's about you coming up with a framework for how you'd estimate it, and working through it.
  - necovek 4y ago
    It's never about guessing a correct answer. Eg. if I guess NYC population is 10M, with every 100th household having a piano, I can guess there are 100k pianos in NYC. If each of them needs tuning once every two years, that's 50k tunes each year. That's roughly 1k tunes each week, which, if a tuner can do 2 a day (5 work days per week), is 100 tuners. And then it'd be worth comparing to tuning of venue pianos which are tuned more frequently: let's say 10k venues with pianos requiring tuning every month, or 2k tunes a week. So another 200 tuners. You can also talk about pattern of work instead of market demands (eg most tuners only get 1 tune a week, so we can multiply the number of tuners by 10), just to show off you are ignoring other variables knowingly. Obviously, each of the guesses has a large error margin, and errors multiply, so you can be off by way more than a single order of magnitude. But just coming up with things to include in your calculation, and not being scared of exploring such random situations with little data you know, signals some generic problem solving ability. Eg for a better answer, I now know I need exact number of people and venues in NYC, I need to ask tuners how often are pianos tuned, get some data on how frequent are pianos in homes, how long does a tune take, etc. While I think I am decent at these questions, and I do believe they signal a very generic problem solving ability, I agree they are terrible interview questions for most software engineering roles, since you rarely hire for such generic ability, and might even get more out of a more specific question/test..
unauthed 4y ago
I'll mention one which I've had which I considered bad. Worse than most on the linked list IMO. The question was "What is the worst challenge you've faced, and how did you deal with it or overcome it?" and on me asking if it should be work related, "it doesn't have to be work related". I can't remember whether the wording was exactly "hardest challenge" or "worst problem" or "most difficult challenge", but it used an absolute term (worst/hardest/most, not "a difficult challenge" or "a time in which you faced..."), and it was certainly very close to one of those. I think that most people's hardest challenges in life are things like "my parents passed away" or "I came out as trans, and my parents disowned me, and I've had to come to terms with that" or "I had a divorce".. basically, interpersonal relationship experiences which really aren't very work relevant. The use of "hardest" also makes it feel like you're lying if you go for something less serious, but work related. I brought up a non-work-related rough time in my life from years ago, which still easily stood out as the most challenging time in my life, and then specifically asked again "this doesn't seem work relevant, should I choose a less serious work-related challenge?" and the interviewer asked me to continue with my non-work relevant one (i.e. asked me to relive some trauma). It soured the experience massively for me, I had to try and disassociate some to avoid crying, and all in all it was the least comfortable I've ever felt in an interview. I can't imagine what signal that gave them. That somehow also didn't disqualify me since I still got an offer, though I of course declined it. Anyway, the company was osohq. I hope they don't ask this question anymore, but I guess prepare a story just in case if you do interview there.
- jlund-molfese 4y ago
  The interviewer’s phrasing is a little clumsy, but an interview goes both ways. The candidate has a responsibility to maintain boundaries too. It sounds like the interviewer was trying to give you the opportunity to provide a non-work related response if you wanted, and anticipated something like you volunteering on a difficult project where you overcame challenges and helped people. Really, the challenge isn’t what’s important, it’s how you handled it and the result that matters. It’s like how, in the US, if a stranger asks how you’re doing, you shouldn’t actually tell them how you’re doing. You should just say you’re doing fine, because they aren’t asking the question literally.
lr4444lr 4y ago
It's not a terrible list, but #10 and #4 are fine, IMHO.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  #10 is not only fine, but ought to be mandatory. How can you expect anyone ever to "engineer" something if they are not capable of making (and refining) rough estimates? Sure, often you just have to measure. But I'd much rather work with the person who can get an order-of-magnitude estimate from a 10 minute measure than the person who gets a reasonably accurate estimate but only after taking half a day to set up the experiment.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Come to think of it, #10 is now top of my "reverse interview" question list. > All these riddles are aimed to reveal the person’s creative nature. They aren't riddles, nor do they require creativity. Fermi questions exercise a basic skill: estimation. Bread and butter.
rdoherty 4y ago
Worst one I got recently was "What is your perfect number of working hours per week?" I said 40 and the interview process was ended early after the CEO said "oh we put in 50 per week because we know it takes extra effort for a startup". I expanded on how 40 is what works for me, interview got very cold after that. I felt pretty incredulous after that. Especially when the recruiter asked if 40 was a hard requirement. I thought those types of startup cultures were long gone by now but I guess not!
- cpitman 4y ago
  Sounds like it was actually a perfect question. It made it crystal clear that you and the company didn't see eye to eye on work conditions, and that neither of you would be happy working together.
  - foreverCarlos 4y ago
    I would feel grateful for this question. It would allow me to quickly reject this company and move on.
    - enraged_camel 4y ago
      Personally, if the expectation is to work 50 hours a week, then the question to ask them is "OK, do you pay 25% more than the average salary for this position?" Of course, the only reason you'd ask such a question in the interview is that you have already decided you don't want the job. But the response can still be illuminating/entertaining. :)
      - b4je7d7wb 4y ago
        "Oh wow, you must be burning through a lot of cash paying for all that overtime." Would probably end the interview right then and there but so worth it to see their reaction.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    It's the fact that they're trying to trick you that I'd object to. Why not "we do a standard 50-hour week, how do you feel about that?"?
lp4vn 4y ago
Everytime they asked me "why should we hire you?", I always replied a small introduction saying that that position might be an interesting next step for my career followed by "and also your recruiter contacted me, so I guess you guys know better than me why you should hire me". The oversaturated modern job market melted the brain of the HR departments to the point that they think it's a great privilege to work for them when they are just another company and you only want to earn a salary.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  I had several screen calls with HR recruiters recently where they asked me why I wanted to work at their company, and I said something like, "Well, you reached out to me, so what do you think?" I did not get any of those jobs.
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foreverCarlos 4y ago
Questions like #5 are some of my least favorite. I don’t know if it’s only prevalent in the US, but can we stop throwing around phrases like “why are you the best” or “what is your super power”, etc. Not only this makes me cringe, it also leads to an uncomfortable moment since I always reply that I am not the best and don’t have super powers.
victor9000 4y ago
One of the most ridiculous questions I've encountered was asked by a manager on the Alexa team. First question in and this guy sneers at me and says tell me the smartest thing you've ever done. Hmmm... what? To say this rubbed me the wrong way is an understatement. I knew immediately that I would loathe reporting to someone so egotistical, so it went downhill from there. I'm just never going humor to someone who starts a conversation with a pissing contest.
- necovek 4y ago
  "Walked out on this interview" would have been perfect :)
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  "Learnt to feed myself" would probably be my answer.
- djks422 4y ago
  "I learned to trust my instincts and they aren’t telling me good things right now."
FabHK 4y ago
I don't understand the animus against Fermi questions. I think they're quite indicative of a candidate's basic abilities, particularly for technical roles.
- europeanguy 4y ago
  Most coders are bad at thinking with numbers, and so bad at answering these type of questions. So, instead of improving themselves, they invent reasons why the questions are bad.
Waterluvian 4y ago
Something I find myself doing is saying, “the reason I’m asking X is because Y.” I aim for absolute transparency. This isn’t a game of subterfuge, I’ll leave that part to HR…
dsr_ 4y ago
Can you have the computer draw a red line in blue ink? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
- timeon 4y ago
  > Can you have the computer draw a red line in blue ink? Are we talking about NTSC composite artifacts?
cebert 4y ago
I would much rather have these questions than go thru the LeetCode grinder. Without spending significant prep time, you can’t get through the grinder. For most software developers, the grinder isn’t actually representative of how we work.
- foreverCarlos 4y ago
  Yes but in reality this is in addition to 3 leetcode grinder interviews.
karaterobot 4y ago
> How do you see yourself in five years? Man, this question. I was asked this question in an interview for a startup. I gave the regular answer that was expected of me. The interview went well, and at the end when the interviewer (who was the co-founder) asked if I had any questions, I turned this around on him: "where do you see [company x] in five years?" He laughed and talked about finding product-market fit and getting a certain amount of funding, and having so many employees, and that kind of thing. In other words, the things you're expected to say in that position. I was impressed, and took the position when it was eventually offered to me. 18 months later, the company was on fire, most of the staff were laid off, the product I had been working on was shelved, and the company pivoted to a completely different product. I put in my notice just before that co-founder left the company completely, and eventually took a salaried position in a different industry, and moved across the country. So, we both just said the right things, but had absolutely no fucking idea where we'd be in even two years. If either of us had any idea, we wouldn't have told the other person anyway. Questions like this have no answer, but a trivially correct response, and so are meaningless wastes of time.
- andirk 4y ago
  It's a fine question to chew the fat with, and there _are_ wrong answers, needn't I go in to those. Probably the best answer: even better off, more happy, more fulfilled, and not worrying about where I will be in the next 5 years.
  - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
    Which would be some of the wrong answers?
    - cesaref 4y ago
      How about 'Living the life of riley on a hawaiian island having embezzled funds from the company'?
      - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
FatActor 4y ago
Biggest problem is any of these can be rehearsed and the best interviews are spontaneous ones where the person opens up into uncharted authentic territory vs canned responses. Of these, I've only been asked questions 5-9 back circa 1990 when I was just starting out and the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" and "what are your strengths/weaknesses" were ubiquitous. Something must have happened in HR world in the 2000's because interviewers stopped asking these questions even thought I was still hiring for dev positions so maybe a memo went out or possibly the internet was blowing up. By the 2010's I was 20+ years into my career and at that point your CV speaks for itself and they just want to know if you are going to be behaviorally difficult person. Interviewing very senior people is a much more difficile proposition. When I was 20 (cusp of 21) and hiring for internships my mentor told me the answer to "where do you want to be" should be "in your seat" but I my mentor was so old he didn't understand the concept of HR people giving the first interview lolololol.
Blackstrat 4y ago
Having interviewed innumerable candidates for software development roles, I seldom used anything resembling these questions. If the candidate had relevant domain knowledge, e.g., financial apps, we’d talk about that. If not, how did that person go about acquiring the relevant knowledge. Same on the development platform. If they weren’t experienced with our suite of technologies, how do they approach learning it. What were they reading currently? Some answers were disqualifying. The most extreme case being an individual who said he was reading “Shades of Gray”. When I clarified that I only cared about technical material, he replied that he only read technical material on the job, not after hours. Pass. Who/what was their favorite development source? Assuming they were good prospects, possibly they would be subjected to more in depth technical interviews with senior staff. Generally, we hired for talent not specific skill sets. As such, we had relatively long tenures with excellent productivity and quality. I considered pure behavioral interviewing to be a horrible way to select new hires. Making the individual uncomfortable seems to be counterproductive. Fortunately, I’m retired now. The various ATS’s cost companies untold millions in missed opportunities as do many HR departments.
- Jiro 4y ago
  >When I clarified that I only cared about technical material, he replied that he only read technical material on the job, not after hours. He's heard of work/life balance and doesn't want to do work during unpaid hours. Nobody hires a cashier asking "tell me how you've made cashiering an integral part of your whole life or we won't hire you".
  - Blackstrat 4y ago
    Work/life balance? Yes, work/life balance matters. On the other hand, when one enters a professional field, the expectation of the employer is that they maintain their value. The employer is paying for productivity. The individual has the responsibility of maintaining and enhancing their knowledge. Those thinking otherwise are opening the door to foreign competition, against which they will lose. And comparing software development to cashiering is apples and oranges.
FabHK 4y ago
That is a terrible list. Many of those questions are perfectly fine. 10 - Fermi problems. Good to get an indication of a candidate's problem solving skills. 9,8,7,6 - The candidates's motivation, weaknesses, strengths, plans. What's wrong with that? Evidently, you have to modulate the answers somewhat, but the extent to which you do that well is indicative of your understanding of the job requirements, the competition, etc. Perfectly legitimate. 5 - Best candidate. Again, this is a fine question - it allows you to highlight your understanding of the job, and your fit, and your accomplishments, and so on. 4,2 - If you've had unusually short tenures at prior jobs, why? Again, perfectly legitimate question. There might be some reason pertaining to the prior company, or there might be a character trait with the candidate. Insofar as training a candidate incurs some fixed costs, it is legitimate to aim to find out whether they'll stay around for a while. 1,3 - "bad habits", family. Agreed, irrelevant. But 2/10 is a pretty bad hit ratio for a top 10 list.
- Volundr 4y ago
  I actually disagree on 10, I just estimated the population of New York then looked it up and was off by an order of magnitude. Good chance I'd do worse in an interview situation than sitting at home. A few more estimates with errors of this size and we've learned what? I have a poor grasp of US census data? Unless this is a realistic approximation of the kind of thing your doing with this job, the time in the interview would be better spent on a problem within your domain, but that means the interviewer has to spend time coming up with something instead of Googling "interview questions". See also: "why are manhole covers round?" Which is a real question we asked all of our candidates at a previous job right up until I got control of the process (fun fact, invalid assumption. They come in all shapes and triangles are surprisingly common) But agreed on the rest. OP thinks they are bad, when really they are poorly worded, and they would be better off taking a moment to think what kind of information the interviewer is trying to get at with their questions. Heck if the job involves interfacing with other people the ability to do this can even be an important signal on if the candidate is right for the job. A lot of people are really bad at asking what they are looking for.
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
kthejoker2 4y ago
I offer 5 good "situation / behavior /outcome" (SBO, sometimes called STAR) questions, the key is there aren't objectively "correct" answers, you decide what behaviors you prefer (humility, risk management, bias for action, respect for chain of command, etc) and then select for answers that demonstrate them. Interviewer tips: listen not just to the answer, but also how do they communicate, do they use deflective or passive language, ask them to elaborate a lot with lots of details (bullshitters are bad at this), let them do all the talking ("why? Tell me more" Or "and then what happened?" are all the additional prompts needed), take good notes * tell me about a time you disagreed with someone senior to you. (After every prompt ask "How did you handle it" and "what were the results?") * tell me about a time you failed * tell me about a time you had too much to do and not enough time do it. * tell me about a time you solved a problem in a way you were really proud of. * tell me about a time you felt you were asked to do something that was outside your skillset or comfort zone. Lots of alternative questions you could ask instead, but again the key is no right answers, and you'll get a lot more signal compared to most questions.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
> 4. What’s wrong with changing jobs frequently? This blog post is pretty self congratulatory. We get it, employer bad -> employee good. The fact of the matter is, they are investing in you. It often costs more to hire frequent replacements than one long-standing employee. I’ve been places 9 months, 6 MONTHS, this question drives me up the walls. At the back of my head, I never once thought, “I don’t deserve to be asked this”.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  I guess if the employer is willing to tell you how often they sack people, there's at least some give and take.
patrulek 4y ago
If you could be an animal, which one you would prefer to be?
- test1235 4y ago
  wow ... I didn't realise this was a common question. I got this once, and answered, 'tortoise' (and got the job).
- timeon 4y ago
  How about Homo sapiens?
curious-im 4y ago
Most of the questions by themselves are not stupid, it looks like the author just used them for the wrong reasons. It's more of a HR questions and as a manager he can leave it to recruiters. Many years ago I worked in HR, here's this questions as recruiters see them: 9. Trying to understand persons motivation for the job. For culture fit, for position, etc. Not a'ways 'i love it and that's my sole interest in life' is a 'good' answer. Some companies/position are looking for cold professional approach, financial interest may be interpreted as less problematic and stable. Depends. 8, 7. To see how the candidate see himself, usually entry point for more questions and soft skills evaluation. Also gives you an idea what person in front of you sees as good and bad, and if he fits the manager/team. And people do tell their real weaknesses. Surprisingly, people tell A LOT on interviews. 6. Pretty obvious - direction of development, some want to grow to be in a managing positions, some interested in tech side only, position/company may provide support for this or no. 5. Also hate it, but used to see how motivated person is and again - how he sees his strengths. 4. Asked if person really jumps from job to job or, say, stayed in company 10 years. In first case - it's suspicious and question gives the chance for candidate to explain themselves. For people who worked in one place for a long time - let's see if we are the company that provides same benefits or not. Last three is stupid and may be illegal. But in general - questions are just entry points and a way to start a discussion about the things you wanna know. It's not stupid if you understand why do you ask it and not looking for just an answer. Also his solutions for those who get this questions... Being passive aggressive rarely helps. You are in conversation with someone - speak, express your frustration, explain why. Facepalm, exhale and look deeply in the eye after being asked about why do you canned so many jobs - that's a great answer I guess, explains a lot, but just understand, that you are an asshole in this situation.
- andirk 4y ago
  The whole how many dogs fit in to a clown car is truly a waste of time and a relic of the original Google interview questions that everyone beat off to. Value your prospect's time and ask relevant questions even if they are weird. But don't think you/they, Mr. I Just Thought of A Fun Question With No Way of Discerning If The Answer is Sufficient Or Not, are going to create some existential divide between the good candidates and the rest. Ask them how close to a fist fight have they gotten in because of a PR and did they win.
wiseowise 4y ago
Who even asks those questions in 2022? Are you sending this from 2010, OP?
neilv 4y ago
> I would say, “I’ve got bills to pay, and I know a bit about websites. But you can hire me as an assistant to the system administrator too if you want.” Unfortunately, when you give such an honest answer, you’re asked to get the hell out of the interviewer’s face. So you have to cheat. Don’t make people cheat you. This is important, IMHO. So many companies set a tone of dishonesty and playing-to-the-metrics, starting from the interviews themselves. Which is absolutely not what you want from an engineering organization. One of the most refreshing things about being a principal engineer at a multinational tech company was interviewing engineering candidates in China. They came across as exceedingly honest about what they're looking for, how they see the company, etc. (I also often find candor from experienced US candidates, especially once they read me as valuing and respecting that, but it didn't often seem the immediate default. I think they're often braced for Leetcode hazing, class shibboleths, corporate theatre, etc.)
- poutrathor 4y ago
  I am surprised by your feedback as we have heard for years that Chinese students cheat all the time. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cheating+chinese+student&t=newext&atb=v353-1&ia=news https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cheating+chinese+student&t=newext&...
  - neilv 4y ago
    The first hit I got from that search URL was of severe prison terms to people caught cheating on a national exam in a huge country. (Meanwhile, I read of rampant cheating by US college students, and professors bemoaning that administration won't even punish caught students.) Also, I wouldn't know what to make of all the search hits I might read, especially since presumably there's cultural context I don't understand. If you work with engineers from China, I suspect you'll notice many favorable qualities. Maybe including an implicit "No Jerks policy" (in American tech company terms). You'll also notice that they're all distinct individuals (in American terms), and though it might be human to prejudge groups/labels of others, that's not fair to individuals, and we strive to be better than that.
  - tgv 4y ago
andirk 4y ago
Biggest weakness: I'm slow. Where do I see myself in 5 years: Not here. How many peas in pod: Don't use Quicksort (stole that answer form Obama) Why should I-- : I've traversed your red/black tree and found the jade monkey, I have proven that I'm worth more than the position pays therefore you will need to increase said position's compensation, and I'm very hungover. I did all of this while wicked hungover. Do you have a beer for me or can I leave now? I have a lot of dogs to count for my next interview.
- nlitened 4y ago
  We will call you back, Sir. Have a good day!
neilv 4y ago
> 5. Why are you the best candidate for this job? This could be a good question, when it's a high-value position of which a big part of it involves depending on the person's advice/judgment. If they give what seems like a very honest and thoughtful assessment, that's a good sign. But seems useless or counterproductive, if it comes off to them as just a nonsense ritual or trying to assert power. And if you don't alienate them, they might still give you a counterproductive sales answer, and that also then sets the tone for if you hire them and want honest assessments.
- perlgeek 4y ago
  > If they give what seems like a very honest and thoughtful assessment, that's a good sign. In 99% of cases, the real, honest answer is "I couldn't possibly know, because I don't know all the candidates for this job". Which makes it a very boring interview question. The only time where that doesn't apply is a very, very tiny niche where you know all of the qualified people. You could also see that as a prompt "pitch us why you're a good candidate", which also seems pointless, because pitching yourself is a big part of the interview already.
neilv 4y ago
> 4. Why do you change jobs so often (so rarely)? If an engineering candidate's last few positions have all been about a 1-year vest, that's definitely going to be on my mind. I'd prefer to build a coherent, highly-effective development team who can see us through the whole lifecycles of this and successive projects -- not what might as well be fly-by-night gig contractors, tossing less-aligned check-off sprint deliverables over the wall. I don't currently have a standard way to ask about this, and would play it by ear. Maybe their answer is that there was something about recent positions that they didn't like, or maybe they've been doing early startups, or maybe they were junior but just now hitting their stride as experienced and know what they want and how to perform, or maybe they give what seems like a dishonest answer, or maybe they're only looking for particular kind of short-term transactional engagements (which we might need).
- ownagefool 4y ago
  I mean most people will just tell you what you want to hear, but the reality it's usually about the following things: Pay - Almost always, wages don't keep up with your progression, and never with the market. Progression - Not just promotions, but being given the interesting work to run with. Once someone sees you as junior, it's easier to go somewhere else to be treated with a bit more gravitas. Morale - Quite a lot of tech leadership is terrible. Various problems make people sad. Skill - They might actually be terrible / or skilled but terrible at actually finishing anything. It makes a lot of sense to hop about until you find a company that constantly rewards you, but the reality is they barely exist and even in the top companies there's hopping about for the same reasons. I'm in the UK and spent many years as a contractor. It was never a case of not caring, or not wanting a long term home, and since most of the work and platforms were similar org to org, not understanding longer term consequences of decisions doesn't entirly apply. Mostly, the negativity just writes off ambitious people. Though it might make sense given your org, like others, might just have the same reward problems.
  - throwaway9870 4y ago
    > Mostly, the negativity just writes off ambitious people. Though it might make sense given your org, like others, might just have the same reward problems. Or the person has unreasonable expectations. On top of that, they are bad at selecting a job that will make them happy. In any case, I would not hire then either. Maybe if I just had some boring app that needed some maintenance I would hire them, but that is not what I do.
neilv 4y ago
> 3. Do you have bad habits? This might be a worse version of the "greatest weaknesses" question. It sounds like it could get closer to protected status that you consciously don't go anywhere near in an interview context. Also, some of my favorite and most capable colleagues might answer honestly, about some random quirk, and not only is it problematic to have asked, but -- if that quirk got transmitted through some corporate telephone game, like an interviewer wrote down the answer -- someone elsewhere in the org will probably get a garbled impression (from "drinks too much coffee" or whatever), and then maybe bureaucracy breaks down during the offer process for the person you most should've hired, and they get alienated and go somewhere else.
hawkeye224 4y ago
The common denominator of most of these questions is that they promote dishonesty and punish honesty.. and both sides usually know that. Why play this stupid game? It does make me feel less about an interviewer or company asking such questions
neilv 4y ago
> 1. Have a family/children? How does this affect your work? I think this is a huge no-no to ask in the US, since a company can't discriminate in hiring on the basis of family/children, and this is sounding too close to that. (It's about ideals like fairness, and also about company liability.) When I'm an interviewee, I don't read too much into early startups doing things like asking that question, since startups are still learning lots of things. But if someone is doing this in a big established company, there might be a disconnect from conventional HR practices there, and who knows what other surprises are in store.
- itronitron 4y ago
  It's never appropriate. I've never been asked that question but my wife has, which suggests to me that the question places women at a disadvantage when applying to jobs.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    My wife and basically all of my friends who are women have gone through the exercise of deciding whether to wear a wedding ring to interviews. There's unfortunately a lot of biased nonsense around married/unmarried women in job interviews.
- deleted 4y ago
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kcartlidge 4y ago
I love interviews. And in contrast to most of the advice on that page, I'm totally honest even if I get the questions about strengths and weaknesses etc. * If I'm going to be working with/for these people I want it to be a good fit. Honesty increases the chance of that, and reduces the chance I'm going through the whole job-hunting process again in the near future. * Interviews can be a great opportunity to assess the current expectations of others in the industry, which is really helpful for staying current. This isn't always true of course, but enough of my interviews are of a pretty technical nature that it generally is. * If the interviewer asks probing enough questions I can often learn something new about myself by seeing what (honest) answers I arrive at. They're also fun; interesting opportunities to meet new people. It helps that I've got a good track record of getting the roles I apply for, but I'm not sure whether I enjoy them because I'm usually successful or whether I'm usually successful because I enjoy them. Either way, whilst not all of those questions are appropriate I'll still answer them honestly. And to me, the worst interview questions are leetcode and algorithms (unless they directly reflect the nature of the work expected of course). I have a general background awareness of such stuff, but you'd be better off checking my search engine skills to make sure I can find them if I ever need them.
mylons 4y ago
how about a tree traversal algorithm when you're about to become a developer on a CRUD app? edit: someone downvoted this -- i'd love to know why you think an inorder, preorder, and/or postorder implementation would help in an application that uses SQL to query a db for primary keys in a couple tables?
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> Have a family/children? How does this affect your work? I'm pretty sure that question is illegal. I do know that asking if someone is married, is illegal (in my state). We got lots of CYA training from HR, telling us to not ask these questions.
- amelius 4y ago
  How should the interviewee respond to illegal questions?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    Can't answer that for others, but for me, I would end the interview, and walk out. But I have the luxury of having the means to do that.
    - LanceH 4y ago
      I'm completely up front about having a family or my age, because if that's a problem, I'd prefer to know it before starting there. If it is a problem for them, I would probably let them know what they've asked is illegal. I would probably also let any recruiter who brought me in know as well.
  - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
    Either fight back or lie as much as possible to get the best possible answer. "I was in a relationship and it broke me, never again. I do not even like cats" "I like being in a couple where we are both enthusiastic about our work. And I am sterile" (or something more sensible - but honestly: lie, lie, lie)
  - jeffrallen 4y ago
    I might go with, "Why do you ask?" Seems like a polite noncommittal refusal. And if, by some miracle, they have a legitimate reason to want to talk about that topic, then they get a chance to clarify.
  - 4y ago
weitzj 4y ago
Worst interview question I got: “Imagine you are on an island with your peoples…. How do you protect your population?” Then this interview kind of went weirder further along… “Some predators are entering your island and rape your women. What do you do?” Well: not joining the company making up these weird questions ;) I guess this “island question” was somehow picked up by the engineer watching too many hiring talks on YouTube and I think the island question was remotely connected to some person doing these questions at Dropbox (besides the rape stuff of course)
- A_Venom_Roll 4y ago
  That question is really weird man.
mabbo 4y ago
The only "creative brain teaser" question I've ever been asked was "How would you hide an elephant?" Without thinking I replied "Alive or dead?". I followed this up with the logistics around solving the problem in each scenario. Most of the solutions involved "I know some very rural people who will take our money and help us solve this problem." At no point did it occur to me that they might be speaking metaphorically. I did get the job though.
- antihero 4y ago
  Just get a shitload more elephants and put them in the same place.
laurels-marts 4y ago
Most of these questions are valid and need to be interpreted to understand their real meaning. For example, the question "Why are you the best candidate for this job?" is not there for you to make a passive-aggressive comment about how you don't know other candidates personally and therefore cannot answer this question. Rather, it's an invitation for you to put your best foot forward and make the most compelling case you possibly can for why you want and should get the role regardless of anyone or anything else.
deleted 4y ago
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cramjabsyn 4y ago
Please add fizzbuzz and other stupid code trivia to the list. If you want to see how a developer really works, ask them to submit a patch, participate in a real code review and review their public facing code contributions.
- Terretta 4y ago
  By its very ubiquity, FizzBuzz is a beautiful filter. It's shocking how many interviewees can't do it, so bullets dodged. Then for those who regurgitate the conventional solution, extend the problem to FizzBuzzBang with Bang when divisible by 7, and see if light dawns. I dislike your tools based "do it live" test unless you pre-configure their preferred tool chain end to end. Many devs are rote in their tools of choice while lost in anything else. That's ok.
  - peatfreak 4y ago
    Ooh, I've never heard of FizzBuzzBang before, but this seems like such a natural (and surprisingly interesting) extension. Thanks for mentioning it. I'm going to check it out.
Terretta 4y ago
Question 10 is a situation / behavior / analysis question in disguise, sometimes called a Fermi problem but that doesn't say why it's useful. Question 10 with a 'walk me through the thinking' reveals aptitude for modeling and dimensional analysis, but at a higher level, shows ability to break complex problems down into many simpler and easier to solve problems. That is the essence of dev. It shows thinking through and around the problem, identifying the first component to pull out, revealing key threads to other components, that together tell you if you're in the ballpark on modeling and analysis. All dev is breaking problems down well. A thinking aloud response to 10 reveals a lot. The estimate itself (the Fermi part) isn't actually what matters.
lizardactivist 4y ago
I think this is a cultural thing as well. I am reminded of how Daniel Stenberg (author of curl) interviewed with Mozilla, and mentioned it was several interviews taking place over several days. Obviously questions like these made up the bulk of the interviews, because they could not seriously have any doubts of his skill as a software developer. Several interviews stretching over several days; accused serial killers have had to endure less before going to trial.
ughOk 4y ago
I love the "what's your greatest weakness" question. It's pretty silly to interpret this as looking for something deeply personal. This is a professional context. You should answer this question with your greatest weakness in the context of the interview. It's such a good opportunity! It's so awful feeling like an interview went great but stressing about something you didn't talk about - maybe your lack of experience or lack of degree. Whatever you're worried about that you didn't get to talk about. You get to actually talk about it and address it to the best of your ability. It also looks great that you're talking about something real. Something you're nervous about. You are being honest and vulnerable. It reflects incredibly well on you if you can be vulnerable and professional. If I don't get the opportunity to answer a question like this in an interview, I'll use some of my question time (usually with the hiring manager) for it. Having the ability to anticipate and address a teammate's (interviewers) hard-to-discuss questions is such a strong, positive signal.
- xwdv 4y ago
  The best answer to this question is to simply say your greatest weakness is interviews.
Scubabear68 4y ago
When I interview, two things I always look for at as things to be concerned about are many short term (and not contract) jobs, and big inconsistencies between LinkedIn and their submitted CV. This is of course on top of discussing their recent projects and seeing how far they can drill down into them. I do this to weed out people who are very suave at interviewing, but turn out to be not only incompetent at the position, but actively poison the org. These folks are rare, but they do exist and can cause lots of organizational harm. They are aggressively self-promoting people who don’t know what they’re doing, but can fake it convincingly for awhile somehow, and who work energetically for higher and higher positions. Often CV and LinkedIn are way out of whack because of the level of creative nonsense they have gone through about their pasts to get a job. I don’t mean this in the “CV is marketing you” sense, I mean this more as “saying you were CTO when you were a junior QA person” sense. Many short stints can mean they were found out within a few months/year of being hired. An odd variation on this is talking about very important sounding positions that turn out to be their own one-person consulting company. In the past 5 years I have seen three cases of this where they were hired (2 I did not interview, 1 I did and was a “no”). All three imploded rather spectacularly. I have also seen good candidates with bizarre CV inconsistencies or several short stints in a row who explained it all very sensibly and turned out to be great. This is why these aren’t CV screening red flags, but points of discussion.
99112000 4y ago
> How many ping pong balls do you need to lift a Ferrari from the bottom of a lake? I estimate about 55,000? Ferarri is 1300kg, needs 1300 liters, 1.3m^3 of air to be buoyant, and assuming square pingpong ball of 3cm, that be ballpark 46k. Add some extra for current, drag, mud
lykahb 4y ago
Shopify is infamous for asking the question 1. It is a part of what they call "life story" interview.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
Got this once... "I don't want to ask you where you'd like to be in five years… … but where do you see yourself in five years?"
dekleinewolf 4y ago
> The only worse option is asking female candidates if they’re planning a pregnancy This happened to me in my very first grown-up job interview.
SergeAx 4y ago
> My opinion on such a hypothetical question? I hate these riddles fiercely. Then maybe you just not a good fit for the company, and it is actually a very good question for that company's interview, after all?
jasmer 4y ago
Most of those are decent questions. Open ended problem solving problems can be done well. 'Where are you in 5 years' is really helpful to understand aspirations aka 'I want to be a Senior Dev/Architect' vs. 'I want to go in to Product' etc..

154 points by skydowx 4y ago

Depending on where you are, questions 1 and 3 are just straight up illegal. No interviewer in the US would dare ask about vices or your family situation unless they don’t mind shelling out lawsuit settlements to everyone they interview and decline to hire.

hezralig 4y ago
I have sat across from recruiters at a previous job, in California of all places, that would quite frequently ask these very questions. The question is, how would you prove you were asked these questions if you were being interviewed in a state that has 2 party consent laws for recording?
- mnd999 4y ago
  Ask the other candidates, it’s not so hard with glassdoor etc. The questions are a red flag, so you’d never want to work there but equally some free money from a discrimination lawsuit wouldn’t hurt.
- gilbetron 4y ago
  If you are in a single party consent state, you can legally record conversations you are involved in without informing the other participants. (California is not one of those states, sadly, but if you are in a state that does, and are interviewing for a California company via zoom or a phone call, I believe you can still record it legally)
the_only_law 4y ago
> No interviewer in the US would dare ask about vices I actually saw a job application recently asking to confirm that you haven’t used any nicotine products in 6months in order to be hired. This was very strange as it was a 100% remote job so maybe it was HR/copy paste but the wording was bizarre . They made it clear that it was about nicotine and not just tobacco and explicitly called out things like gums or patches. I did not continue the application. I assume now it was some useless virtue signaling related to young people and vapes or something. I’m not even sure they’d seriously test people, but it’s still ridiculous that according to what was written you could be denied employment or lose your job because you had a cigarette outside the bar last weekend or have been using nicotine gum to quit smoking
foreverCarlos 4y ago
Question #3 offers a great opportunity to make the interviewer feel very uncomfortable. Tell them your bad habit is sticking boogers on your keyboard.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  "My bad habit is hacking into the personal computers of interviewers who decide not to give me a job."

lofatdairy 4y ago

>4. Why do you change jobs so often (so rarely)? Am I wrong to think this seems at least somewhat reasonable? Like obviously it's annoying to explain yourself, but it takes time to on-board someone and for them to become productive and it seems reasonable to want someone to stay on long enough for that at least. This naturally applies less to those super engineers you barely need to train and have obvious experienced, but that's probably not the normal case.

chadash 4y ago
A short job or two, fine, but at a certain point it’s a pattern that needs a reason. If the reason is “my spouse was in the military and we moved around a lot for that, but we longer do”, that’s fair enough. If the answer is that you weren’t happy enough at your last jobs to stay for more than 12 months, then why should I think you’ll be any different at your next job?
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  My wife had really bad luck with her first three jobs: the offices would just up and close a year or so after she started (this included a Nokia office because of the Microsoft merger). But she would still have to frame her answer in a way that didn’t give vibes that she was cursed.
  - recursive 4y ago
    No one would blame her for the closing of the whole branch. That's kind of the best possible answer.
  - mosdl 4y ago
    I've seen some resumes/linkedins that put reasons for why they left the job in similar situations. Acknowledging stuff like that is a good way to get ahead of questions.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  You'll never hear the real reason. So if you have an issue with this fact, don't invite the candidate to an interview. If you don't have an issue with it, then why ask? They'll never say "because I'm constantly looking for better opportunities and will jump ship when I can". This is what most of those questions on the list have in common: both sides of the table know that the answer will be contrived BS. They are a waste of everyone's time.

shusaku 4y ago

> Don’t make people cheat you. Solid general piece of advice there. If the best answer is a lie, it’s not a good question.

taeric 4y ago
I have that same general perspective working with the kids. Don't ask questions where you both know the correct answer is the bad answer. Examples, "Who did this?" "Why haven't you done your homework yet?" "Have you started your homework?" Much better to do the invitation style questions. "Who is going to help me clean this up?" "What is left to your homework?", etc. With the obvious major caveat of things being very tailored to the specific kid and situation, of course.

djbusby 4y ago

Ok, what are the best questions?

taeric 4y ago
I was curious if there were going to be good questions at the bottom. I suspect the general idea is that good questions are essentially unstable due to Goodhart's Law. (That is, as soon as they are on a list, they are no longer good.)
fotcorn 4y ago
I like to ask the following as a starting point for an interview: What is the most interesting project you have worked on recently? Doesn't have to be work related, but should be relevant to the job, e.g. programming, not gardening for a developer role. Why was it interesting? What were the biggest challenges on that project? How did you solve those? Will show if people are passionate about something specific, and also gives a general measurement on what they consider challenging, and a first insight into their problem solving skills. If the person goes into detail, go along and ask more questions. Very helpful to figure out how a person works. This should hopefully be a low pressure "just talking" question to get started and help people to calm down a bit.
- Jiro 4y ago
  Demanding passion for the job is one of the toxic features of the software industry. It's your job, not your life.
Falkon1313 4y ago
I like to ask about tradeoffs - what kind of tradeoffs they've made and why they chose that; where their opinion lies on the pragmatic vs perfection scale and that sort of thing. Quite a lot of tech work involves making tradeoffs, so they should be able to talk about it easily, and it leads to some interesting discussion as well as giving you an idea of their opinions and decision-making. There's no need to lie or have a canned response, because tradeoffs are inherently between things which are both desirable.

IncRnd 4y ago

4. Why do you change jobs so often (so rarely)? How does that matter? If I am a match for the company in terms of qualifications and personal qualities, how will my job history and reflection help? I changed jobs every year or so. Is that “often” or “rarely”? What’s wrong with changing jobs frequently? It is actually important to ask this of a candidate who seems to frequently change jobs. A hiring manager may not want to hire someone who will leave soon. It often makes more sense to hire someone who is capabale and wants to work for you. Several of the questions in the article are very good questions to ask. Their purpose isn't for the candidate to give some canned response, like the article states. Their purpose is to help the candidate shine by asking questions that can be answered with examples from the candidate's background. If the candidate can't give solid answers that's not an issue with the questions.

joezydeco 4y ago
"I actually come prepared for this question, and have a line to explain each and every job I've departed in reverse chronological order. And I'd be happy to read them off if you'd like. You do? Okay... - VCs merged us with a Chinese acquisition and sent our work overseas - Manager ignored my memos for 5 years and then said "you have no new ideas" to my face in a review - Sales team demanded an emergency prototype and then let a competitor steal the contract - Company pivoted into a different tech stack overnight - Google rewrote our code in a weekend and kicked us out of Android - Owner wouldn't install health benefits (+$5K) but hired his daughter for the summer for busywork - Company abandoned the market and went into Facebook games Now hopefully none of these scenarios will ever happen here. Right? Glad to hear it."
- deleted 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
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- readonlybarbie 4y ago
  While I agree all of these scenarios are good reasons to leave, I have a feeling (based on being an American for all 30 years of my life now), these answers would be classified as "TOO REAL" and as a result you might be filtered for "culture fit" aka manager doesn't think he/she can control you.

xyzelement 4y ago

#10 is a measurement of ability to mentally model and estimate problems. Relevant to engineering ability. #8 measures self-awareness. Many people can answer this question with "I know I could be much better at X and I am working on it" which is what it's about.

zulban 4y ago
Indeed. When I was a high school teacher, I saw kids fail estimation skills like #10 badly. You don't want technical teams doing that. I've also seen people fail #8 in interviews for junior positions. They can't introspect. It sounds impossible but it happens.
rzzzt 4y ago
Do recruiters have up-to-date information on the number of piano tuners in NYC? How do they verify the answer?
- xyzelement 4y ago
  Not at all. It's about you coming up with a framework for how you'd estimate it, and working through it.
- necovek 4y ago
  It's never about guessing a correct answer. Eg. if I guess NYC population is 10M, with every 100th household having a piano, I can guess there are 100k pianos in NYC. If each of them needs tuning once every two years, that's 50k tunes each year. That's roughly 1k tunes each week, which, if a tuner can do 2 a day (5 work days per week), is 100 tuners. And then it'd be worth comparing to tuning of venue pianos which are tuned more frequently: let's say 10k venues with pianos requiring tuning every month, or 2k tunes a week. So another 200 tuners. You can also talk about pattern of work instead of market demands (eg most tuners only get 1 tune a week, so we can multiply the number of tuners by 10), just to show off you are ignoring other variables knowingly. Obviously, each of the guesses has a large error margin, and errors multiply, so you can be off by way more than a single order of magnitude. But just coming up with things to include in your calculation, and not being scared of exploring such random situations with little data you know, signals some generic problem solving ability. Eg for a better answer, I now know I need exact number of people and venues in NYC, I need to ask tuners how often are pianos tuned, get some data on how frequent are pianos in homes, how long does a tune take, etc. While I think I am decent at these questions, and I do believe they signal a very generic problem solving ability, I agree they are terrible interview questions for most software engineering roles, since you rarely hire for such generic ability, and might even get more out of a more specific question/test..

unauthed 4y ago

I'll mention one which I've had which I considered bad. Worse than most on the linked list IMO. The question was "What is the worst challenge you've faced, and how did you deal with it or overcome it?" and on me asking if it should be work related, "it doesn't have to be work related". I can't remember whether the wording was exactly "hardest challenge" or "worst problem" or "most difficult challenge", but it used an absolute term (worst/hardest/most, not "a difficult challenge" or "a time in which you faced..."), and it was certainly very close to one of those. I think that most people's hardest challenges in life are things like "my parents passed away" or "I came out as trans, and my parents disowned me, and I've had to come to terms with that" or "I had a divorce".. basically, interpersonal relationship experiences which really aren't very work relevant. The use of "hardest" also makes it feel like you're lying if you go for something less serious, but work related. I brought up a non-work-related rough time in my life from years ago, which still easily stood out as the most challenging time in my life, and then specifically asked again "this doesn't seem work relevant, should I choose a less serious work-related challenge?" and the interviewer asked me to continue with my non-work relevant one (i.e. asked me to relive some trauma). It soured the experience massively for me, I had to try and disassociate some to avoid crying, and all in all it was the least comfortable I've ever felt in an interview. I can't imagine what signal that gave them. That somehow also didn't disqualify me since I still got an offer, though I of course declined it. Anyway, the company was osohq. I hope they don't ask this question anymore, but I guess prepare a story just in case if you do interview there.

jlund-molfese 4y ago
The interviewer’s phrasing is a little clumsy, but an interview goes both ways. The candidate has a responsibility to maintain boundaries too. It sounds like the interviewer was trying to give you the opportunity to provide a non-work related response if you wanted, and anticipated something like you volunteering on a difficult project where you overcame challenges and helped people. Really, the challenge isn’t what’s important, it’s how you handled it and the result that matters. It’s like how, in the US, if a stranger asks how you’re doing, you shouldn’t actually tell them how you’re doing. You should just say you’re doing fine, because they aren’t asking the question literally.

lr4444lr 4y ago

It's not a terrible list, but #10 and #4 are fine, IMHO.

082349872349872 4y ago
#10 is not only fine, but ought to be mandatory. How can you expect anyone ever to "engineer" something if they are not capable of making (and refining) rough estimates? Sure, often you just have to measure. But I'd much rather work with the person who can get an order-of-magnitude estimate from a 10 minute measure than the person who gets a reasonably accurate estimate but only after taking half a day to set up the experiment.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  Come to think of it, #10 is now top of my "reverse interview" question list. > All these riddles are aimed to reveal the person’s creative nature. They aren't riddles, nor do they require creativity. Fermi questions exercise a basic skill: estimation. Bread and butter.

rdoherty 4y ago

Worst one I got recently was "What is your perfect number of working hours per week?" I said 40 and the interview process was ended early after the CEO said "oh we put in 50 per week because we know it takes extra effort for a startup". I expanded on how 40 is what works for me, interview got very cold after that. I felt pretty incredulous after that. Especially when the recruiter asked if 40 was a hard requirement. I thought those types of startup cultures were long gone by now but I guess not!

cpitman 4y ago
Sounds like it was actually a perfect question. It made it crystal clear that you and the company didn't see eye to eye on work conditions, and that neither of you would be happy working together.
- foreverCarlos 4y ago
  I would feel grateful for this question. It would allow me to quickly reject this company and move on.
  - enraged_camel 4y ago
    Personally, if the expectation is to work 50 hours a week, then the question to ask them is "OK, do you pay 25% more than the average salary for this position?" Of course, the only reason you'd ask such a question in the interview is that you have already decided you don't want the job. But the response can still be illuminating/entertaining. :)
    - b4je7d7wb 4y ago
      "Oh wow, you must be burning through a lot of cash paying for all that overtime." Would probably end the interview right then and there but so worth it to see their reaction.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  It's the fact that they're trying to trick you that I'd object to. Why not "we do a standard 50-hour week, how do you feel about that?"?

lp4vn 4y ago

Everytime they asked me "why should we hire you?", I always replied a small introduction saying that that position might be an interesting next step for my career followed by "and also your recruiter contacted me, so I guess you guys know better than me why you should hire me". The oversaturated modern job market melted the brain of the HR departments to the point that they think it's a great privilege to work for them when they are just another company and you only want to earn a salary.

zach_garwood 4y ago
I had several screen calls with HR recruiters recently where they asked me why I wanted to work at their company, and I said something like, "Well, you reached out to me, so what do you think?" I did not get any of those jobs.

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foreverCarlos 4y ago

Questions like #5 are some of my least favorite. I don’t know if it’s only prevalent in the US, but can we stop throwing around phrases like “why are you the best” or “what is your super power”, etc. Not only this makes me cringe, it also leads to an uncomfortable moment since I always reply that I am not the best and don’t have super powers.

victor9000 4y ago

One of the most ridiculous questions I've encountered was asked by a manager on the Alexa team. First question in and this guy sneers at me and says tell me the smartest thing you've ever done. Hmmm... what? To say this rubbed me the wrong way is an understatement. I knew immediately that I would loathe reporting to someone so egotistical, so it went downhill from there. I'm just never going humor to someone who starts a conversation with a pissing contest.

necovek 4y ago
"Walked out on this interview" would have been perfect :)
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
"Learnt to feed myself" would probably be my answer.
djks422 4y ago
"I learned to trust my instincts and they aren’t telling me good things right now."

FabHK 4y ago

I don't understand the animus against Fermi questions. I think they're quite indicative of a candidate's basic abilities, particularly for technical roles.

europeanguy 4y ago
Most coders are bad at thinking with numbers, and so bad at answering these type of questions. So, instead of improving themselves, they invent reasons why the questions are bad.

Waterluvian 4y ago

Something I find myself doing is saying, “the reason I’m asking X is because Y.” I aim for absolute transparency. This isn’t a game of subterfuge, I’ll leave that part to HR…

dsr_ 4y ago

Can you have the computer draw a red line in blue ink? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

timeon 4y ago
> Can you have the computer draw a red line in blue ink? Are we talking about NTSC composite artifacts?

cebert 4y ago

I would much rather have these questions than go thru the LeetCode grinder. Without spending significant prep time, you can’t get through the grinder. For most software developers, the grinder isn’t actually representative of how we work.

foreverCarlos 4y ago
Yes but in reality this is in addition to 3 leetcode grinder interviews.

karaterobot 4y ago

> How do you see yourself in five years? Man, this question. I was asked this question in an interview for a startup. I gave the regular answer that was expected of me. The interview went well, and at the end when the interviewer (who was the co-founder) asked if I had any questions, I turned this around on him: "where do you see [company x] in five years?" He laughed and talked about finding product-market fit and getting a certain amount of funding, and having so many employees, and that kind of thing. In other words, the things you're expected to say in that position. I was impressed, and took the position when it was eventually offered to me. 18 months later, the company was on fire, most of the staff were laid off, the product I had been working on was shelved, and the company pivoted to a completely different product. I put in my notice just before that co-founder left the company completely, and eventually took a salaried position in a different industry, and moved across the country. So, we both just said the right things, but had absolutely no fucking idea where we'd be in even two years. If either of us had any idea, we wouldn't have told the other person anyway. Questions like this have no answer, but a trivially correct response, and so are meaningless wastes of time.

andirk 4y ago
It's a fine question to chew the fat with, and there _are_ wrong answers, needn't I go in to those. Probably the best answer: even better off, more happy, more fulfilled, and not worrying about where I will be in the next 5 years.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  Which would be some of the wrong answers?
  - cesaref 4y ago
    How about 'Living the life of riley on a hawaiian island having embezzled funds from the company'?
    - BrandoElFollito 4y ago

FatActor 4y ago

Biggest problem is any of these can be rehearsed and the best interviews are spontaneous ones where the person opens up into uncharted authentic territory vs canned responses. Of these, I've only been asked questions 5-9 back circa 1990 when I was just starting out and the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" and "what are your strengths/weaknesses" were ubiquitous. Something must have happened in HR world in the 2000's because interviewers stopped asking these questions even thought I was still hiring for dev positions so maybe a memo went out or possibly the internet was blowing up. By the 2010's I was 20+ years into my career and at that point your CV speaks for itself and they just want to know if you are going to be behaviorally difficult person. Interviewing very senior people is a much more difficile proposition. When I was 20 (cusp of 21) and hiring for internships my mentor told me the answer to "where do you want to be" should be "in your seat" but I my mentor was so old he didn't understand the concept of HR people giving the first interview lolololol.

Blackstrat 4y ago

Having interviewed innumerable candidates for software development roles, I seldom used anything resembling these questions. If the candidate had relevant domain knowledge, e.g., financial apps, we’d talk about that. If not, how did that person go about acquiring the relevant knowledge. Same on the development platform. If they weren’t experienced with our suite of technologies, how do they approach learning it. What were they reading currently? Some answers were disqualifying. The most extreme case being an individual who said he was reading “Shades of Gray”. When I clarified that I only cared about technical material, he replied that he only read technical material on the job, not after hours. Pass. Who/what was their favorite development source? Assuming they were good prospects, possibly they would be subjected to more in depth technical interviews with senior staff. Generally, we hired for talent not specific skill sets. As such, we had relatively long tenures with excellent productivity and quality. I considered pure behavioral interviewing to be a horrible way to select new hires. Making the individual uncomfortable seems to be counterproductive. Fortunately, I’m retired now. The various ATS’s cost companies untold millions in missed opportunities as do many HR departments.

Jiro 4y ago
>When I clarified that I only cared about technical material, he replied that he only read technical material on the job, not after hours. He's heard of work/life balance and doesn't want to do work during unpaid hours. Nobody hires a cashier asking "tell me how you've made cashiering an integral part of your whole life or we won't hire you".
- Blackstrat 4y ago
  Work/life balance? Yes, work/life balance matters. On the other hand, when one enters a professional field, the expectation of the employer is that they maintain their value. The employer is paying for productivity. The individual has the responsibility of maintaining and enhancing their knowledge. Those thinking otherwise are opening the door to foreign competition, against which they will lose. And comparing software development to cashiering is apples and oranges.

FabHK 4y ago

That is a terrible list. Many of those questions are perfectly fine. 10 - Fermi problems. Good to get an indication of a candidate's problem solving skills. 9,8,7,6 - The candidates's motivation, weaknesses, strengths, plans. What's wrong with that? Evidently, you have to modulate the answers somewhat, but the extent to which you do that well is indicative of your understanding of the job requirements, the competition, etc. Perfectly legitimate. 5 - Best candidate. Again, this is a fine question - it allows you to highlight your understanding of the job, and your fit, and your accomplishments, and so on. 4,2 - If you've had unusually short tenures at prior jobs, why? Again, perfectly legitimate question. There might be some reason pertaining to the prior company, or there might be a character trait with the candidate. Insofar as training a candidate incurs some fixed costs, it is legitimate to aim to find out whether they'll stay around for a while. 1,3 - "bad habits", family. Agreed, irrelevant. But 2/10 is a pretty bad hit ratio for a top 10 list.

Volundr 4y ago
I actually disagree on 10, I just estimated the population of New York then looked it up and was off by an order of magnitude. Good chance I'd do worse in an interview situation than sitting at home. A few more estimates with errors of this size and we've learned what? I have a poor grasp of US census data? Unless this is a realistic approximation of the kind of thing your doing with this job, the time in the interview would be better spent on a problem within your domain, but that means the interviewer has to spend time coming up with something instead of Googling "interview questions". See also: "why are manhole covers round?" Which is a real question we asked all of our candidates at a previous job right up until I got control of the process (fun fact, invalid assumption. They come in all shapes and triangles are surprisingly common) But agreed on the rest. OP thinks they are bad, when really they are poorly worded, and they would be better off taking a moment to think what kind of information the interviewer is trying to get at with their questions. Heck if the job involves interfacing with other people the ability to do this can even be an important signal on if the candidate is right for the job. A lot of people are really bad at asking what they are looking for.
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago

kthejoker2 4y ago

I offer 5 good "situation / behavior /outcome" (SBO, sometimes called STAR) questions, the key is there aren't objectively "correct" answers, you decide what behaviors you prefer (humility, risk management, bias for action, respect for chain of command, etc) and then select for answers that demonstrate them. Interviewer tips: listen not just to the answer, but also how do they communicate, do they use deflective or passive language, ask them to elaborate a lot with lots of details (bullshitters are bad at this), let them do all the talking ("why? Tell me more" Or "and then what happened?" are all the additional prompts needed), take good notes * tell me about a time you disagreed with someone senior to you. (After every prompt ask "How did you handle it" and "what were the results?") * tell me about a time you failed * tell me about a time you had too much to do and not enough time do it. * tell me about a time you solved a problem in a way you were really proud of. * tell me about a time you felt you were asked to do something that was outside your skillset or comfort zone. Lots of alternative questions you could ask instead, but again the key is no right answers, and you'll get a lot more signal compared to most questions.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

> 4. What’s wrong with changing jobs frequently? This blog post is pretty self congratulatory. We get it, employer bad -> employee good. The fact of the matter is, they are investing in you. It often costs more to hire frequent replacements than one long-standing employee. I’ve been places 9 months, 6 MONTHS, this question drives me up the walls. At the back of my head, I never once thought, “I don’t deserve to be asked this”.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
I guess if the employer is willing to tell you how often they sack people, there's at least some give and take.

patrulek 4y ago

If you could be an animal, which one you would prefer to be?

test1235 4y ago
wow ... I didn't realise this was a common question. I got this once, and answered, 'tortoise' (and got the job).
timeon 4y ago
How about Homo sapiens?

curious-im 4y ago

Most of the questions by themselves are not stupid, it looks like the author just used them for the wrong reasons. It's more of a HR questions and as a manager he can leave it to recruiters. Many years ago I worked in HR, here's this questions as recruiters see them: 9. Trying to understand persons motivation for the job. For culture fit, for position, etc. Not a'ways 'i love it and that's my sole interest in life' is a 'good' answer. Some companies/position are looking for cold professional approach, financial interest may be interpreted as less problematic and stable. Depends. 8, 7. To see how the candidate see himself, usually entry point for more questions and soft skills evaluation. Also gives you an idea what person in front of you sees as good and bad, and if he fits the manager/team. And people do tell their real weaknesses. Surprisingly, people tell A LOT on interviews. 6. Pretty obvious - direction of development, some want to grow to be in a managing positions, some interested in tech side only, position/company may provide support for this or no. 5. Also hate it, but used to see how motivated person is and again - how he sees his strengths. 4. Asked if person really jumps from job to job or, say, stayed in company 10 years. In first case - it's suspicious and question gives the chance for candidate to explain themselves. For people who worked in one place for a long time - let's see if we are the company that provides same benefits or not. Last three is stupid and may be illegal. But in general - questions are just entry points and a way to start a discussion about the things you wanna know. It's not stupid if you understand why do you ask it and not looking for just an answer. Also his solutions for those who get this questions... Being passive aggressive rarely helps. You are in conversation with someone - speak, express your frustration, explain why. Facepalm, exhale and look deeply in the eye after being asked about why do you canned so many jobs - that's a great answer I guess, explains a lot, but just understand, that you are an asshole in this situation.

andirk 4y ago
The whole how many dogs fit in to a clown car is truly a waste of time and a relic of the original Google interview questions that everyone beat off to. Value your prospect's time and ask relevant questions even if they are weird. But don't think you/they, Mr. I Just Thought of A Fun Question With No Way of Discerning If The Answer is Sufficient Or Not, are going to create some existential divide between the good candidates and the rest. Ask them how close to a fist fight have they gotten in because of a PR and did they win.

wiseowise 4y ago

Who even asks those questions in 2022? Are you sending this from 2010, OP?

neilv 4y ago

> I would say, “I’ve got bills to pay, and I know a bit about websites. But you can hire me as an assistant to the system administrator too if you want.” Unfortunately, when you give such an honest answer, you’re asked to get the hell out of the interviewer’s face. So you have to cheat. Don’t make people cheat you. This is important, IMHO. So many companies set a tone of dishonesty and playing-to-the-metrics, starting from the interviews themselves. Which is absolutely not what you want from an engineering organization. One of the most refreshing things about being a principal engineer at a multinational tech company was interviewing engineering candidates in China. They came across as exceedingly honest about what they're looking for, how they see the company, etc. (I also often find candor from experienced US candidates, especially once they read me as valuing and respecting that, but it didn't often seem the immediate default. I think they're often braced for Leetcode hazing, class shibboleths, corporate theatre, etc.)

poutrathor 4y ago
I am surprised by your feedback as we have heard for years that Chinese students cheat all the time. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cheating+chinese+student&t=newext&atb=v353-1&ia=news https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cheating+chinese+student&t=newext&...
- neilv 4y ago
  The first hit I got from that search URL was of severe prison terms to people caught cheating on a national exam in a huge country. (Meanwhile, I read of rampant cheating by US college students, and professors bemoaning that administration won't even punish caught students.) Also, I wouldn't know what to make of all the search hits I might read, especially since presumably there's cultural context I don't understand. If you work with engineers from China, I suspect you'll notice many favorable qualities. Maybe including an implicit "No Jerks policy" (in American tech company terms). You'll also notice that they're all distinct individuals (in American terms), and though it might be human to prejudge groups/labels of others, that's not fair to individuals, and we strive to be better than that.
- tgv 4y ago

andirk 4y ago

Biggest weakness: I'm slow. Where do I see myself in 5 years: Not here. How many peas in pod: Don't use Quicksort (stole that answer form Obama) Why should I-- : I've traversed your red/black tree and found the jade monkey, I have proven that I'm worth more than the position pays therefore you will need to increase said position's compensation, and I'm very hungover. I did all of this while wicked hungover. Do you have a beer for me or can I leave now? I have a lot of dogs to count for my next interview.

nlitened 4y ago
We will call you back, Sir. Have a good day!

neilv 4y ago

> 5. Why are you the best candidate for this job? This could be a good question, when it's a high-value position of which a big part of it involves depending on the person's advice/judgment. If they give what seems like a very honest and thoughtful assessment, that's a good sign. But seems useless or counterproductive, if it comes off to them as just a nonsense ritual or trying to assert power. And if you don't alienate them, they might still give you a counterproductive sales answer, and that also then sets the tone for if you hire them and want honest assessments.

perlgeek 4y ago
> If they give what seems like a very honest and thoughtful assessment, that's a good sign. In 99% of cases, the real, honest answer is "I couldn't possibly know, because I don't know all the candidates for this job". Which makes it a very boring interview question. The only time where that doesn't apply is a very, very tiny niche where you know all of the qualified people. You could also see that as a prompt "pitch us why you're a good candidate", which also seems pointless, because pitching yourself is a big part of the interview already.

neilv 4y ago

> 4. Why do you change jobs so often (so rarely)? If an engineering candidate's last few positions have all been about a 1-year vest, that's definitely going to be on my mind. I'd prefer to build a coherent, highly-effective development team who can see us through the whole lifecycles of this and successive projects -- not what might as well be fly-by-night gig contractors, tossing less-aligned check-off sprint deliverables over the wall. I don't currently have a standard way to ask about this, and would play it by ear. Maybe their answer is that there was something about recent positions that they didn't like, or maybe they've been doing early startups, or maybe they were junior but just now hitting their stride as experienced and know what they want and how to perform, or maybe they give what seems like a dishonest answer, or maybe they're only looking for particular kind of short-term transactional engagements (which we might need).

ownagefool 4y ago
I mean most people will just tell you what you want to hear, but the reality it's usually about the following things: Pay - Almost always, wages don't keep up with your progression, and never with the market. Progression - Not just promotions, but being given the interesting work to run with. Once someone sees you as junior, it's easier to go somewhere else to be treated with a bit more gravitas. Morale - Quite a lot of tech leadership is terrible. Various problems make people sad. Skill - They might actually be terrible / or skilled but terrible at actually finishing anything. It makes a lot of sense to hop about until you find a company that constantly rewards you, but the reality is they barely exist and even in the top companies there's hopping about for the same reasons. I'm in the UK and spent many years as a contractor. It was never a case of not caring, or not wanting a long term home, and since most of the work and platforms were similar org to org, not understanding longer term consequences of decisions doesn't entirly apply. Mostly, the negativity just writes off ambitious people. Though it might make sense given your org, like others, might just have the same reward problems.
- throwaway9870 4y ago
  > Mostly, the negativity just writes off ambitious people. Though it might make sense given your org, like others, might just have the same reward problems. Or the person has unreasonable expectations. On top of that, they are bad at selecting a job that will make them happy. In any case, I would not hire then either. Maybe if I just had some boring app that needed some maintenance I would hire them, but that is not what I do.

neilv 4y ago

> 3. Do you have bad habits? This might be a worse version of the "greatest weaknesses" question. It sounds like it could get closer to protected status that you consciously don't go anywhere near in an interview context. Also, some of my favorite and most capable colleagues might answer honestly, about some random quirk, and not only is it problematic to have asked, but -- if that quirk got transmitted through some corporate telephone game, like an interviewer wrote down the answer -- someone elsewhere in the org will probably get a garbled impression (from "drinks too much coffee" or whatever), and then maybe bureaucracy breaks down during the offer process for the person you most should've hired, and they get alienated and go somewhere else.

hawkeye224 4y ago

The common denominator of most of these questions is that they promote dishonesty and punish honesty.. and both sides usually know that. Why play this stupid game? It does make me feel less about an interviewer or company asking such questions

neilv 4y ago

> 1. Have a family/children? How does this affect your work? I think this is a huge no-no to ask in the US, since a company can't discriminate in hiring on the basis of family/children, and this is sounding too close to that. (It's about ideals like fairness, and also about company liability.) When I'm an interviewee, I don't read too much into early startups doing things like asking that question, since startups are still learning lots of things. But if someone is doing this in a big established company, there might be a disconnect from conventional HR practices there, and who knows what other surprises are in store.

itronitron 4y ago
It's never appropriate. I've never been asked that question but my wife has, which suggests to me that the question places women at a disadvantage when applying to jobs.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  My wife and basically all of my friends who are women have gone through the exercise of deciding whether to wear a wedding ring to interviews. There's unfortunately a lot of biased nonsense around married/unmarried women in job interviews.
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kcartlidge 4y ago

I love interviews. And in contrast to most of the advice on that page, I'm totally honest even if I get the questions about strengths and weaknesses etc. * If I'm going to be working with/for these people I want it to be a good fit. Honesty increases the chance of that, and reduces the chance I'm going through the whole job-hunting process again in the near future. * Interviews can be a great opportunity to assess the current expectations of others in the industry, which is really helpful for staying current. This isn't always true of course, but enough of my interviews are of a pretty technical nature that it generally is. * If the interviewer asks probing enough questions I can often learn something new about myself by seeing what (honest) answers I arrive at. They're also fun; interesting opportunities to meet new people. It helps that I've got a good track record of getting the roles I apply for, but I'm not sure whether I enjoy them because I'm usually successful or whether I'm usually successful because I enjoy them. Either way, whilst not all of those questions are appropriate I'll still answer them honestly. And to me, the worst interview questions are leetcode and algorithms (unless they directly reflect the nature of the work expected of course). I have a general background awareness of such stuff, but you'd be better off checking my search engine skills to make sure I can find them if I ever need them.

mylons 4y ago

how about a tree traversal algorithm when you're about to become a developer on a CRUD app? edit: someone downvoted this -- i'd love to know why you think an inorder, preorder, and/or postorder implementation would help in an application that uses SQL to query a db for primary keys in a couple tables?

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> Have a family/children? How does this affect your work? I'm pretty sure that question is illegal. I do know that asking if someone is married, is illegal (in my state). We got lots of CYA training from HR, telling us to not ask these questions.

amelius 4y ago
How should the interviewee respond to illegal questions?
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  Can't answer that for others, but for me, I would end the interview, and walk out. But I have the luxury of having the means to do that.
  - LanceH 4y ago
    I'm completely up front about having a family or my age, because if that's a problem, I'd prefer to know it before starting there. If it is a problem for them, I would probably let them know what they've asked is illegal. I would probably also let any recruiter who brought me in know as well.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  Either fight back or lie as much as possible to get the best possible answer. "I was in a relationship and it broke me, never again. I do not even like cats" "I like being in a couple where we are both enthusiastic about our work. And I am sterile" (or something more sensible - but honestly: lie, lie, lie)
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  I might go with, "Why do you ask?" Seems like a polite noncommittal refusal. And if, by some miracle, they have a legitimate reason to want to talk about that topic, then they get a chance to clarify.
- 4y ago

weitzj 4y ago

Worst interview question I got: “Imagine you are on an island with your peoples…. How do you protect your population?” Then this interview kind of went weirder further along… “Some predators are entering your island and rape your women. What do you do?” Well: not joining the company making up these weird questions ;) I guess this “island question” was somehow picked up by the engineer watching too many hiring talks on YouTube and I think the island question was remotely connected to some person doing these questions at Dropbox (besides the rape stuff of course)

A_Venom_Roll 4y ago
That question is really weird man.

mabbo 4y ago

The only "creative brain teaser" question I've ever been asked was "How would you hide an elephant?" Without thinking I replied "Alive or dead?". I followed this up with the logistics around solving the problem in each scenario. Most of the solutions involved "I know some very rural people who will take our money and help us solve this problem." At no point did it occur to me that they might be speaking metaphorically. I did get the job though.

antihero 4y ago
Just get a shitload more elephants and put them in the same place.

laurels-marts 4y ago

Most of these questions are valid and need to be interpreted to understand their real meaning. For example, the question "Why are you the best candidate for this job?" is not there for you to make a passive-aggressive comment about how you don't know other candidates personally and therefore cannot answer this question. Rather, it's an invitation for you to put your best foot forward and make the most compelling case you possibly can for why you want and should get the role regardless of anyone or anything else.

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cramjabsyn 4y ago

Please add fizzbuzz and other stupid code trivia to the list. If you want to see how a developer really works, ask them to submit a patch, participate in a real code review and review their public facing code contributions.

Terretta 4y ago
By its very ubiquity, FizzBuzz is a beautiful filter. It's shocking how many interviewees can't do it, so bullets dodged. Then for those who regurgitate the conventional solution, extend the problem to FizzBuzzBang with Bang when divisible by 7, and see if light dawns. I dislike your tools based "do it live" test unless you pre-configure their preferred tool chain end to end. Many devs are rote in their tools of choice while lost in anything else. That's ok.
- peatfreak 4y ago
  Ooh, I've never heard of FizzBuzzBang before, but this seems like such a natural (and surprisingly interesting) extension. Thanks for mentioning it. I'm going to check it out.

Terretta 4y ago

Question 10 is a situation / behavior / analysis question in disguise, sometimes called a Fermi problem but that doesn't say why it's useful. Question 10 with a 'walk me through the thinking' reveals aptitude for modeling and dimensional analysis, but at a higher level, shows ability to break complex problems down into many simpler and easier to solve problems. That is the essence of dev. It shows thinking through and around the problem, identifying the first component to pull out, revealing key threads to other components, that together tell you if you're in the ballpark on modeling and analysis. All dev is breaking problems down well. A thinking aloud response to 10 reveals a lot. The estimate itself (the Fermi part) isn't actually what matters.

lizardactivist 4y ago

I think this is a cultural thing as well. I am reminded of how Daniel Stenberg (author of curl) interviewed with Mozilla, and mentioned it was several interviews taking place over several days. Obviously questions like these made up the bulk of the interviews, because they could not seriously have any doubts of his skill as a software developer. Several interviews stretching over several days; accused serial killers have had to endure less before going to trial.

ughOk 4y ago

I love the "what's your greatest weakness" question. It's pretty silly to interpret this as looking for something deeply personal. This is a professional context. You should answer this question with your greatest weakness in the context of the interview. It's such a good opportunity! It's so awful feeling like an interview went great but stressing about something you didn't talk about - maybe your lack of experience or lack of degree. Whatever you're worried about that you didn't get to talk about. You get to actually talk about it and address it to the best of your ability. It also looks great that you're talking about something real. Something you're nervous about. You are being honest and vulnerable. It reflects incredibly well on you if you can be vulnerable and professional. If I don't get the opportunity to answer a question like this in an interview, I'll use some of my question time (usually with the hiring manager) for it. Having the ability to anticipate and address a teammate's (interviewers) hard-to-discuss questions is such a strong, positive signal.

xwdv 4y ago
The best answer to this question is to simply say your greatest weakness is interviews.

Scubabear68 4y ago

When I interview, two things I always look for at as things to be concerned about are many short term (and not contract) jobs, and big inconsistencies between LinkedIn and their submitted CV. This is of course on top of discussing their recent projects and seeing how far they can drill down into them. I do this to weed out people who are very suave at interviewing, but turn out to be not only incompetent at the position, but actively poison the org. These folks are rare, but they do exist and can cause lots of organizational harm. They are aggressively self-promoting people who don’t know what they’re doing, but can fake it convincingly for awhile somehow, and who work energetically for higher and higher positions. Often CV and LinkedIn are way out of whack because of the level of creative nonsense they have gone through about their pasts to get a job. I don’t mean this in the “CV is marketing you” sense, I mean this more as “saying you were CTO when you were a junior QA person” sense. Many short stints can mean they were found out within a few months/year of being hired. An odd variation on this is talking about very important sounding positions that turn out to be their own one-person consulting company. In the past 5 years I have seen three cases of this where they were hired (2 I did not interview, 1 I did and was a “no”). All three imploded rather spectacularly. I have also seen good candidates with bizarre CV inconsistencies or several short stints in a row who explained it all very sensibly and turned out to be great. This is why these aren’t CV screening red flags, but points of discussion.

99112000 4y ago

> How many ping pong balls do you need to lift a Ferrari from the bottom of a lake? I estimate about 55,000? Ferarri is 1300kg, needs 1300 liters, 1.3m^3 of air to be buoyant, and assuming square pingpong ball of 3cm, that be ballpark 46k. Add some extra for current, drag, mud

lykahb 4y ago

Shopify is infamous for asking the question 1. It is a part of what they call "life story" interview.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

Got this once... "I don't want to ask you where you'd like to be in five years… … but where do you see yourself in five years?"

dekleinewolf 4y ago

> The only worse option is asking female candidates if they’re planning a pregnancy This happened to me in my very first grown-up job interview.

SergeAx 4y ago

> My opinion on such a hypothetical question? I hate these riddles fiercely. Then maybe you just not a good fit for the company, and it is actually a very good question for that company's interview, after all?

jasmer 4y ago

Most of those are decent questions. Open ended problem solving problems can be done well. 'Where are you in 5 years' is really helpful to understand aspirations aka 'I want to be a Senior Dev/Architect' vs. 'I want to go in to Product' etc..