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Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

as a serial victim to sets of questions exactly like this earlier in my life, i've come to realize that 'Culture-fit' is really just a coded honesty test -- and the most deceptive thing about it is that straight honesty is one of the quickest ways to do poorly at it.

in other words, answering '1. Why do you want to work for our company?' with "Because I want a salary and I need to avoid destitution.' is a wholly appropriate answer, but it's wrong.

They actually just want you to evangelize the company for a few minutes and lay on how envious you are of those that have 'the opportunity' to 'be a part of the revolution at X-Co'.

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Who would want to hire a candidate who cannot get through an interview without delving into their personal issues and giving sardonic, jaded answers? Hacker news is big on edgy developers who insist that they can work hard, solve problems and get along with everyone. But if you ask them to explain how they do that they cry oppression.

Sometimes it does appear that the dream interview for many would be: Read my CV and hire me because I did a lot of stuff at company X already.

That's pretty much how you get hired in Europe as nobody does leetcode and rarely you get whiteboard or take home problems.

If you have enough experience at some prestigious company, the job is already yours, the on site interview is pretty much a formality to discuss salary expectations and screen for red flags.

I am from Europe and I had a bit of everything. But generally I agree, even when I was conducting the interviews, it was mostly to verify that what was written on the CV was reflected in reality.

That’s a great way to hire someone. Have they produced quality product? Hire. Culture games like this speak more about the toxicity of the employer than anything about the employee. Do you really think subjective questions like this as interpreted by hr or a random manager say anything? It’s purely a power play against the prospective employee.

Good managers can manage all kinds of people. Culture fit is just looking for koolaide drinkers.

Google hiers plenty of people out of college who didn't produce a product yet. I'm guessing they want to avoid excluding all of them.

I do expect that even people fresh out of school to have made at least one interesting personal project.

Part of the whole diversity thing is to also hire people who do not have programming in their list of hobbies. When I was at uni it was more common than not that people did not have any personal projects.

I haven't had good experiences hiring people who don't have personal projects. It's a strong signal that the person is self driven, can do requirements gathering and knows how to ship.

Well, people can have other hobbies outside of programming though. Be it sports or something creative. I agree that, in general, people with personal programming projects fare better, but it is not a hard rule for me.

A huge part of CVs are full of straight up lies. When I was interviewing there was practically no good value in a CV outside of initial screening and ideas for talking points.

I actively confront people about their lies, and they are blacklisted from being hired therefter. Do not lie on your CV no matter how common your idiot friends say it is. We can and will check if we care to, and a compny that doesnt care to verify your integrity, likely has little itself.

The relevant bit in "Why do you want to work for our company" is the unstated "...as oppose to another." Ideally the answer is some property of the company that aligns well with the candidates ideals. But it presupposes that the candidate knows of some attribute that fits this frame.

A better question might be to make the company attribute hypothetical. Something like: "if you could propose a rule for all employees at the company where you want to work, what would it be." You'd definitely need follow-up questions and promoting, but it could be way more insightful.

The question "Why do you want to work for our company" can always be answered with "I want to work with great coworkers and I've heard you have really great people here" no matter what company it is.

I could nave a few in SV where this would undoubtably raise suspicion. Many of the hottest companies are well known for being successful dispite (because of?) their challanging working environments.

At first you would wonder why anyone would bother when the pay is often similar, but talented people seek a challenge. Many of the most tempermental composers always had a line of the best musicians waiting to suffer near-abuse just to have a crack at attempting something amazingly difficult that they respect.

To be fair, most Software Engineers are able to secure multiple offers and even more interviews. Or at least that’s my impression which may be the result of survivorship bias.

And it only gets easier after your first gig.

In that instance, where an engineer can easily leave your company, it makes sense to want to ensure they really want the position since interviewing and onboarding are very expensive for a company as well as having someone leave with a bunch of institutional knowledge built up over the years.

It’s also probably the easiest question in the world to totally bullshit with just a vague grasp of what the company does.

“One of the things that really excited me about <company X> is the problems you must face dealing with <such large amounts of data, securing your system, supporting N users on the app at once, syncing data across data zones>” etc etc. or “I think it’d be really neat to work at a company in the <healthcare, finance, whatever> industry because I’ve always wanted to <improve lives, learn about high frequency trading>”

And even if it’s an easy enough thing to BS it should also be genuinely easy to find an exciting reason to want to work somewhere in our field.

It depends heavily on your area and the current economy.

For example, almost nobody was hiring for software in my area during the Great Recession and I was laid off from the job I did have. Ended up having to relocate so I didn't starve.

Nowadays there's plenty of people hiring but companies around here tend to underpay.

>Nowadays there's plenty of people hiring but companies around here tend to underpay.

Mind sharing which area are you referring to? Sounds like Europe :)

No, I live in the NE USA, but outside of any big cities but definitely not in a rural area. My country has a population of ~300,000.

Nowadays I'd probably be paid more if I still lived in my hometown that I had to leave (ironically).

Job hopping definitely isn't a big thing around here like in tech hubs - new hires don't get huge salaries starting out no matter how much experience you have.

> In that instance, where an engineer can easily leave your company, it makes sense to want to ensure they really want the position since interviewing and onboarding are very expensive for a company as well as having someone leave with a bunch of institutional knowledge built up over the years.

I think that's the main thing we worry about when hiring. We do have HR do initial screenings, but we have our engineers do the rest of the interviews, so it's very costly for us. We've been bitten a few times because people wanted to use us as a strong stone. We aren't as big as a FAANG, but there are a lot of people who leave our company and go to one. If we spend months finding a person and they leave in 6mo to a year, it's very costly for us.

With all due respect, your entire reply here reads to me as someone that I would not want to work with.

My group at work is largely full of people who believe in what we do, enjoy the work we do, and feel an obligation to our users.

For many groups, the only thing more important than getting the right people in, is keeping the wrong people out. Your talented employees can probably quite easily find a lateral move. Hiring the wrong person can lose you several of your most talented team members.

I believe UBI to drastically change the style of responses to these questions.

UBI's not going get anyone very far. $1k a month or whatever it is is barely enough to afford a room in a large city

UBI isn't meant to get anyone very far, it's meant to keep people from starving to death. If you want or need more, you can still work.

Also, plenty of people don't live in large cities.

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