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Comment by wink | Hacker News Reader

On the plus side: I wholeheartedly agree with all those points.

On the contra side: Nothing of this really felt like it helped me. I found interviewing people absolutely horrible and almost never had a good feeling. People who seemed like they may have been a good fit didn't get offers for one reason or another, some people seemed awesome in the interview and then weren't. Overall I've been happy with the decisions I personally made (not all that the team/higher-ups then made) but even with the best of intentions.. it's hard. But it was a small company so maybe it was already a problem of not looking very interesting to some.

It still amazes me that some people seem to be utterly disinterested in what your company does or how they will work in a team, asking basically zero questions besides "how much money?" and "which language?".

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At my last employer, I sat in on an interview for a co-op with my boss. After asking the interviewee some questions the conversation went basically like this:

Boss: Do you have any questions for me?

Co-op: No

Boss: Would you like to know about the company? What we do?

Co-op: No

I couldn't help myself from laughing. I know he's just a student, but he's still a 20 something adult. No interest at all, just looking to check another box on his list of credentials. At least fake it!

I just don't really get this attitude. What exactly you want me to ask assuming I know salary and position? General information about company is usually right there on the website. I am really not sure what exactly the hiring manager is supposed to be asked at that moment, especially by someone young who does not have enough experience to distinguish between lying hiring manager and the one that tells the truth.

I could see meaningful questions about vacation policy and overtimes and such, but that comes with experience and a.) youngsters wants pretend how they don't care bout weekends in work b.) companies lie about that sort of thing.

I know that this attitude exist so I will ask something, it is not about that. But, the exercise is mostly empty for someone who is inexperienced and does not fully know yet what are situations where he fit vs where he does not fit.

"What exactly you want me to ask assuming I know salary and position?"

"Who are your most important customers?"

"What is your monthly recurring revenue?"

"What is your best selling product?"

"What's one thing you like about working here?"

"What's one thing you don't like about working here?"

This isn't very difficult. Just requires a slight interest in the industry you plan to work in.

None of them is useful for anything. They are just questions that you ask to fulfill the "must ask question" requirement. Generally, product is on company main page. Asking that one likely shows you did not seen it.

Moreover, they are unlikely to tell you monthly recurring revenue. That is just odd question. Our company would not definitely.

Hiring manager will not tell you what he does not like about working there - for the same reason why you are not truthful about why you left previous place. Seriously. I would not ask the like dislike question for similar reason - it strikes me as odd and possibly would mark me as someone with low social skills. But the risk there is not too high.

If you read the company's web site, and are a curious and interested person, then you should pretty quickly stumble upon things you would like to know which aren't written there. So if you come up empty, either you are not interested in that company at all, or your curiosity is so easily satisfied that a plain web site can answer all your questions. Both is not a great sign for a prospective employee.

Even suppose you apply to a straightforward company with an extremely detailed web site, so that all your questions have been answered already, then this is still a test if you can meet social expectations. You are indeed expected to have questions, and if you don't even follow this simple convention because you think you know everything already, then your social skills are probably underdeveloped.

Finally, even you already know much about the company (e.g., about the most important product), asking about things you know already and comparing this with what you are told in the application talk will give you additional valuable information. Are they excited about their product? Are they exaggerating? Are they bored when answering? Do they know the basic information on their own web site? If you don't use the opportunity to extract as much information as you can, it's simply not smart.

It just sounds like complete rationalization. That is not how humans work nor how companies work. That is not how interest in things work especially not in work or position.

Yes, it is test of whether you know that social thing. So, if the company is treating it as the test of that, then it is fine. Instead, the parent was almost offended over that "No interest at all, just looking to check another box on his list of credentials. At least fake it!".

> Are they excited about their product? Are they exaggerating? Are they bored when answering? Do they know the basic information on their own web site?

Christ, you are talking with hiring manager at that point. I would not mind him not knowing company web site. Most employees don't actually go there all that often. That person might not even work on that product. Unless we are talking about very small company, people do their small parts of the larger whole.

You are hiring tech person and while cooperation, ability to express oneself clearly and without pointless insults, ability to listen and such are important, ability to guess excitement from someone they don't know much less so. It is not sales position.

I generally agree with your view, an experienced candidate will be able to figure out a lot of the work environment during the interviews before meeting with the hiring manager. Although I generally have a few softball questions that I ask as either filler or to see how much thought they have given to how their development teams work.

They don't ask anything because the answer changes nothing. If they get an offer, they'll 99% take it. If they get two competing offers (I'd say this is uncommon unless you're interviewing in a very large job market like SV) they'd most likely know which one they prefer based on their individual criteria (unlikely this would come down to a question asked in an interview).

Second, most people aren't lucky enough to interview for their dream job, they usually have to settle for something else. Consequently, they really have no significant interest in their future industry. Do you blame them?

You want them to fake interest? Sure, they can do that, but does it really help anyone? They applied because they might want to work there, for whatever reason. Why not let them be concerned with how interested they are?

- Tell me about your software development methodology.

- How are requirements communicated to developers?

- How is work by developers tracked?

- What VCS do you use?

- What bug tracker, etc?

- Do you practice devops?

- What's your build process look like? Automated? Continuous deployment?

- How big is the team?

- Do you do sprints? how long typically? How do you decide what to work on in a sprint?

- How do you determine when something is "done"? Who decides?

- Describe your infrastructure.

That's usually enough to get started. You can drill down as far as you want on pretty much any of those.

I would call those good questions from someone experienced or savvy. The guy I'm talking about didn't even care to know what we make.

It's not like we were Facebook or something where he'd already know.

Right, I was responding to watwut's question of "what exactly do you want me to ask?"

He didn't even want to know what we make. He had no idea. And no interest. Hopefully he was just showing up for practice or something and not actually expecting a good outcome.

Being inexperienced can excuse a lot, but not a total lack of basic curiosity. And I'd say it's useful to know what a company is producing so you can know if you have any interest in helping produce it.

|I just don't really get this attitude.

Hopefully you just weren't understanding just how bad this was. If not, then try harder I guess?

One of my last tech interviews was for a startup. The tech team were all kids and seemed embarrassed to be interviewing me because I had much more experience than them. That all went well.

I asked to have a brief meeting with senior leadership to talk about their business model/plan -- how did they intend to make money?

CEO, COO, CFO, CTO, or the like, would do (it was a small co.). So I got an appointment for 30 minutes with the CTO or CFO (can't remember). Day of the meeting I show up and checkin with reception. 20 minutes later, I reminded them I was still here and someone came out and told me the guy I was supposed meet was out of the office on travel.

I call this "developer swagger." As in, "I'm such a hot commodity, I don't need to care about your company specifically."

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