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>>>>You're interviewing the workplace as much as they're interviewing you. Not nearly enough people realize this. If they're asking you corny questions in the

>>>>You're interviewing the workplace as much as they're interviewing you. Not nearly enough people realize this. If they're asking you corny questions in the interview, how does that reflect on their company? OP said they didn't even ask him questions about his resume - just these corny trivia questions. If I was there, I would've asked how someone thinks this is relevant to doing my job at Google. After the past three years I've done a ton of interviewing and have learned the only way to know if the company is good fit is to grill the interviewer on stuff that matters to you. I've had interviews at fortune 50 companies with people who had no idea who their competition was or where they wanted their IT department to be in 5 years. If you're not invested in your company, what makes you think I should??

VLM 13y ago
Interesting idea popped into my head... If candidate is not going to ask good questions about the job and experiences and responsibilities and challenges and the company, should the interviewer torture the candidate with random pages from Knuth until candidate either asks a good question or breaks or runs out of time. (say yes! say yes!) The other idea that popped into my head is we could develop a new "secret geek code" for HN readers where asking candidates endless queuing theory questions means we're secretly warning the interviewee about long lines in the cafeteria, lots of tree data structure trivia questions means a warning about an intensely hierarchical management style, weird trivia questions about designing thread safe interrupt handling routines means you'll be pestered a lot when you're trying to work which you may or may not be cool with, that kind of thing.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > Interesting idea popped into my head... If candidate is not going to ask good questions about the job and experiences and responsibilities and challenges and the company, should the interviewer torture the candidate with random pages from Knuth until candidate either asks a good question or breaks or runs out of time. (say yes! say yes!) General etiquette for this sort of sitch seems to be to allow the person with more leverage to lead. Most of the formulaic/cold interviews I've had they'll get to the end and then ask you if you've got any questions.
  - VLM 13y ago
    "allow the person with more leverage to lead" Hmm... I'm unemployed that means they have leverage, I'm employed and looking that means I have the leverage? Now that I think back over the years, as a stereotypical break the ice event is at the start of an interview, they usually thank me for taking the time off from work, at which point I mention I burned a vacation day to meet them and I've only got X left this year, at which point I tend to feel a little arrogant, I'm burning a rare limited day off for these guys, they'd best make it worth my while... I know they're just fishing to see if I'm ethical enough to burn vacation instead of calling in sick, or maybe lying about being currently employed...
    - 6d0debc071 13y ago
      Your leverage is something like, 'Everything someone wants that they think you can give them, or take from them, for which they think they have no acceptable, (in terms of their culture,) alternatives that aren't more costly than whatever you'd impose on them in return.' There's also an aspect of norms to it - most commonly in terms of consistency because people generally want to appear reasonable. Anyway, if you've already got a job, their position looks worse in that respect since you need them less. Though that doesn't necessarily give you any more leverage in terms of extracting concessions from them since your job doesn't necessarily make you a more desirable employee. Though, for some reason, companies seem to hang themselves in that regard - placing a great emphasis on whether you're unemployed, (which, personally, I've never found to be a great predictor.) So, while it's not an 'of necessity' thing, it probably does convert into some leverage on your part for a lot of potential jobs. It is, in a round about way, why it's generally better to try to bargain about wages after you've got some sort of buy-in established on their side. Since you'll have the greatest leverage once they've decided they want you. Things that you can point to that you can quantify, that's generally a good source of leverage - especially if you're a contractor. Anything I do that I can hang any sort of number on, I write down to use in interviews - not all of it goes onto my CV.
- chrisbennet 13y ago
  That is genius!

VLM 13y ago

Interesting idea popped into my head... If candidate is not going to ask good questions about the job and experiences and responsibilities and challenges and the company, should the interviewer torture the candidate with random pages from Knuth until candidate either asks a good question or breaks or runs out of time. (say yes! say yes!) The other idea that popped into my head is we could develop a new "secret geek code" for HN readers where asking candidates endless queuing theory questions means we're secretly warning the interviewee about long lines in the cafeteria, lots of tree data structure trivia questions means a warning about an intensely hierarchical management style, weird trivia questions about designing thread safe interrupt handling routines means you'll be pestered a lot when you're trying to work which you may or may not be cool with, that kind of thing.

6d0debc071 13y ago
> Interesting idea popped into my head... If candidate is not going to ask good questions about the job and experiences and responsibilities and challenges and the company, should the interviewer torture the candidate with random pages from Knuth until candidate either asks a good question or breaks or runs out of time. (say yes! say yes!) General etiquette for this sort of sitch seems to be to allow the person with more leverage to lead. Most of the formulaic/cold interviews I've had they'll get to the end and then ask you if you've got any questions.
- VLM 13y ago
  "allow the person with more leverage to lead" Hmm... I'm unemployed that means they have leverage, I'm employed and looking that means I have the leverage? Now that I think back over the years, as a stereotypical break the ice event is at the start of an interview, they usually thank me for taking the time off from work, at which point I mention I burned a vacation day to meet them and I've only got X left this year, at which point I tend to feel a little arrogant, I'm burning a rare limited day off for these guys, they'd best make it worth my while... I know they're just fishing to see if I'm ethical enough to burn vacation instead of calling in sick, or maybe lying about being currently employed...
  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    Your leverage is something like, 'Everything someone wants that they think you can give them, or take from them, for which they think they have no acceptable, (in terms of their culture,) alternatives that aren't more costly than whatever you'd impose on them in return.' There's also an aspect of norms to it - most commonly in terms of consistency because people generally want to appear reasonable. Anyway, if you've already got a job, their position looks worse in that respect since you need them less. Though that doesn't necessarily give you any more leverage in terms of extracting concessions from them since your job doesn't necessarily make you a more desirable employee. Though, for some reason, companies seem to hang themselves in that regard - placing a great emphasis on whether you're unemployed, (which, personally, I've never found to be a great predictor.) So, while it's not an 'of necessity' thing, it probably does convert into some leverage on your part for a lot of potential jobs. It is, in a round about way, why it's generally better to try to bargain about wages after you've got some sort of buy-in established on their side. Since you'll have the greatest leverage once they've decided they want you. Things that you can point to that you can quantify, that's generally a good source of leverage - especially if you're a contractor. Anything I do that I can hang any sort of number on, I write down to use in interviews - not all of it goes onto my CV.
chrisbennet 13y ago
That is genius!