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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

This is a pretty bad question. Since I know what job I'm applying for, I will tailor my answer to fit the job. You're hiring me as a developer? OK, my ideal job is a developer, i love building things and getting down to the nitty-gritty. You're hiring a manager? OK, my ideal job is a manager, i love being part of the bigger picture and breaking a project up into small pieces is my forte.

An interview should just be there to weed out people with immediately obvious problems. Use 3 month probations to determine if they are a good fit.

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This is where the BS detector goes off and where a lot of follow-up questions are needed.

What about building things and getting down to the nitty-gritty appeals to you? Why?

He's a developer he should be able to drill down into those fairly easy. Sure if you're just trying to weed out people who aren't actually developers, (or managers or whatever the job title is) the question might work. As long as they lie on the first question and say their dream job is whatever job you're offering.

The question is bad because it's basically encouraging you to lie--along the lines of "what is your greatest weakness".

I'm a developer and I love it, but my dream job would be philanthropic roboticist who designs swarms of robots to build affordable housing for the impoverished, and my dream salary would be $100 billion dollars per year.

   The question is bad because it's basically encouraging you to lie

No, it really isn't. Being unable or unwilling to engage with the question meaningfully is a useful signal in an of itself.

But think of this another way around: Sometimes hiring managers are currently trying to fill N positions, with a few more that are opening soon but aren't even posted yet. You may be interviewing for job A when and even better fit, job B, is on offer if you don't play around with this sort of questioning. It's a shame to miss opportunities like that...

Do you think "what is your greatest weakness?" encourages you to lie?

If you ask "what is your dream job, and your dream salary" you will get a dishonest answer 9 times out of 10. Why encourage dishonesty. Why not just ask "what do you like about being a developer?" Or "describe your ideal developer work environment?"

>Sometimes hiring managers are currently trying to fill N positions, with a few more that are opening soon but aren't even posted yet. You may be interviewing for job A when and even better fit, job B, is on offer if you don't play around with this sort of questioning. It's a shame to miss opportunities like that...

This question isn't going to help very much with that because almost everyone is going to lie and say their dream job is the job they are interviewing for. And if they don't lie, they're going to say that it's something like billionaire philanthropist, President of the United States, or Batman.

As the author states in the article, there is a limitation of "you start on Monday". This rules out the billionaire philanthropist, POTUS, and batman.

What is your dream job given your skills, your resources and ability, that you could operate at within a week.

And yet he says you can set your own salary. I'm pretty sure I could operate just fine on monday as a billionaire philanthropist given that I get to set my own salary.

Setting aside hyperbole, I can think of several practical things I'd rather do than what I'm doing now, but I don't do them because they don't pay well, and I enjoy my current profession well enough.

If I could set my own salary, I'd like to run a barbecue restaurant, write for a newspaper, make computer games, or build robots. However, none of those pay well enough (or I lack the credentials--and time to get the credentials--to make them pay well enough), so they are relegated to hobbies.

The salary isn't the point:

> I immediately exclude discussion of company, title, and salary, because these are the things people think they want but can't really affect my decision.

> So by stating that these three things, company, title, and salary, are already taken care of, it frees candidates to think about what really matters to them.

Salary matters in that it allows you to pick jobs that aren't ordinarily practical.

Most people have something else they would be doing if salary weren't a constraint. So the honest answer isn't likely to be a job like the one the candidate is interviewing for, but most people will be dishonest and say that the job they are applying for is their dream job because that's what they think the interviewer wants.

> The salary isn't the point

Except it is. I earn 3x more as an enterprise developer than I could as a games developer and work significantly fewer hours.

The truth is spending time with my family, and having the money to support them, is more important than having my "ideal" job.

HE specifically says you can NOT set the salary.

> It's at your ideal company with your ideal job title and salary.

This means that your title/company/salary is already set in the question.

No, he just says you don't discuss it. It's my ideal salary. Who else get's to decide what my ideal salary is other than me?

I guess you're right. But I also think you're missing the point. The point is to focus on the work itself, not the surrounding information.

The problem with "what is your greatest weakness?" and the like is that the person asking doesn't actually want an honest answer.

I'd probably re-word the OP's question a little bit to make it more clear, but it is a fundamentally different style of question, and can be quite useful.

Being able to understand when to game the interview question (always, no exceptions, ever-- just remember that faking sincerity and warmth is part of gaming all questions properly)

You're engaging with the question by gaming it effectively. After all, they're hiring you for your ability to reconfigure your mind to be a tool for solving whatever task. Gaming questions properly demonstrates a spry mind.

> Gaming questions properly demonstrates a spry mind.

Gaming questions properly demonstrates a willingness to deceive. There exist people who are quite clever and flexible, but entirely unwilling to deceive a potential future co-worker or employer.

There's an inherent frame of mind disconnect in this question. As long as the interviewer is able to engage with the many frames of mind someone might approach this question with, then it'll work.

One possibility: I want my job to look like this, pay in this salary range, I want to learn these things, get better in these areas, build some cool tech, etc.

Another possibility: I wouldn't mind getting paid exorbitantly to do whatever I would want if money weren't an issue. However, I could also answer your question as "what job do I realistically think I can get, from an economic supply/demand perspective, while still maximizing my enjoyment of the job?"

I inherently think in terms of the second perspective, so my answer may be inherently at a disadvantage because my "ideal" is unrealistic, but then if you wanted the pragmatic version I'm sure I could give you an assessment of my skills and what jobs I think I'm a good fit for, that I would enjoy doing.

> but my dream job would be philanthropic roboticist who designs swarms of robots to build affordable housing...

Unless you have been curating a very specific set of skills during your spare time, I believe this line of reasoning would be cut off with the "And you are ready to start doing that Monday?" followup.

That said, I'm curious because that's a very specific off the cuff answer - is it entirely pie in the sky? Do you have a background in robotics? Are you playing around with it in your spare time?

My degree specialization was in embedded systems, and I designed all of the hardware for my current startup. I've also been known to play around with robots.

There are plenty of other things I would love to start doing full-time on Monday if I money weren't an issue; start an indie games studio, write a novel, or teach.

Instead these are hobbies. I'd say most people have some kind of hobby they'd do full-time if it paid as well as their current job.

But these are all hobbies,

What does it even mean in this context to start doing something? In my circles, the first step usually is to review the respective literature and poke it with a stick to see what works. I can't think of anything right now that this would not work with, thus, I'm ready for anything. Nobody said I had to do a good job off the bat.

Pretty much this. Anything I want to do, nobody is qualified to go do it on Monday. But they can start figuring out how to do it.

If that's your answer, it's a terrible answer to the question from the linked article.

The question asks for:

1) Company 2) Job title and description 3) Salary

with the qualification that you're starting on Monday.

You just said something silly that doesn't answer the question asked.

The question doesn't ask for company, job title, and salary it just asks what you'll do at the job. He says you just tell the company what you want to do, how much they pay you, and the job is yours.

The author actually bars discussion of those 3 topics--so you never tell him any of them.

That being said, my answer was obviously meant to be snarky. The questions is silly and most people will lie about it. If you are trying to determine whether someone will tell the truth when pressured to lie, it's a good question. If you want to find out how good someone is at bullshitting interviews, it's a good question.

Is such a 'probationary period' a common thing? Seems like it would be very inefficient since the majority of the hiring cost is up-front.

As a candidate, I would be attracted to an offer from a company saying 'we like you, you're hired!' much more than one saying 'you can have this job for now, but we might take it away in 3 months if we don't like you.'

It is very common in my experience, and in some places entrenched in law if I recall correctly. It's also not uncommon for benefits to be contingent on this period.

Its common in many european countries. After the probation period ends, employee protection laws kick in, e.g. you cannot simply fire an employee after that period.

IMO it's a good way to learn about each other without the negative consquences for both parties. (Not only the employer has a disincentive to fire after the probation period: Leaving as an employee in Germany means you're blocked from the higher variant of unemployment benefits.)

Same in Brazil.

It's how things work in Ontario, Canada, at least. Every single job I've ever had had 3 month probation periods. It was always great as a student finishing the probation period right around the time you were going to quit to go back to school.

It's just standard here, nobody is shocked by it. It's beneficial to both the employer and the employee. Don't like the company? You can leave with an hour's notice.

Also completely ubiquitous in the UK.

I've never heard of a UK company offering any professional role (software or otherwise) that doesn't have a probationary period written into the standard contract.

Since a majority of the U.S. is at-will employment anyway, a formal probationary period isn't needed because it's built in to the law. (Unlike some other countries where it becomes much more difficult to fire an employee, as noted in other comments.)

It's common in Brazil too, but with the exception of companies who abuse it to hire temp people every 3 months, you won't lose your job unless you give a reason to be fired.

In the US I would never consider any such job. I've got a family to feed and I can't dick around with a "maybe you'll have a job in 3 months, maybe you won't" type job.

I nearly quit a job I had when they suggested doing that to new hires. I knew immediately that we'd never get any good candidates in that way, as the good candidates will have legitimate offers from other companies where they weren't "on probation."

If labor laws in the US actually protected normal workers, it might make sense, but since they don't, it's entirely favorable to the employer and unfavorable to the employee. Right now, if I don't like a job, I can still quit whenever I want, so that's no loss.

The follow up questions are going to kill you though, if the interviewer is any good.

This is actually a pretty good question, handled properly. I don't disagree that probation is useful in ways you can't reproduce in an interview, but you should be filtering well enough that you rarely drop someone during the probation.

"The follow up questions are going to kill you though,"

I don't buy that. If I was applying for a job as a social worker, is about the last thing I want to do, I could pretty easily say the kinds of things that a social worker needs to do. And that is far from my current career. I could trivially answer the follow up questions for any position in a tech company.

If you disagree - I'm a developer, have done light team management. Specify the questions you think I, or anyone on here would fail for whatever position you want.

Tailoring answers to what you think the interviewer wants to hear is part of any interview question, and being able to do so well shows a certain level of empathy or at least awareness that would make me think you'll be able to communicate well.

Most experienced interviewers can smell that a mile off and will pull you apart like slow-cooked meat.

Yes, my point is that, as a semi-experienced interviewer, when I see somebody doing it well, it at least shows me they're smart/aware enough to understand what I'm looking for – which is not always the case, surprisingly enough.

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