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Comment by Kranar | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't be able to answer this. This is too dramatic of a question and has some implicit assumptions that I don't think applies to many well established and organized companies.

The best I could do, and I'm the owner of the company, is give a vague and overly general answer that doesn't really help anyone.

1. "My company isn't organized around a single dimension that can be used to measure one problem in absolute terms against all others. Every team is working on a series of problems on a month to month basis and in turn every individual is working on problems of their own."

2. "The biggest threat to our company is the one we don't know about."

3. "Nothing keeps me up at night, I sleep fairly well."

Am I alone in this or are people responsible for hiring able to give an actual informative answer rather than some canned response?

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Respectfully, your answer seems like the exact type of sidestep/intentional opacity that causes this blog post/problem to exist in the first place. Much less, flip the table around. If you asked a question to a candidate and they responded as vaguely as they possibly could, would you hire them? Would you just let them give extremely vague answers without asking further clarifying questions?

> 1. "My company isn't organized around a single dimension that can be used to measure one problem in absolute terms against all others. Every team is working on a series of problems on a month to month basis and in turn every individual is working on problems of their own."

Are you saying your company internals have no shared issues? Each business unit is totally agnostic from all the others? There aren't any company-level concerns you have as a business owner?

Some common examples include: Massive refactors/re-orgs, changing of company direction, growing pains, changes in sales strategy, offshore development problems, remote work problems

> 2. "The biggest threat to our company is the one we don't know about."

This again feels intentionally vague. It seems like one could've assumed "that you know about", as your answer is inherent to all companies.

> 3. "Nothing keeps me up at night, I sleep fairly well."

"What's your biggest weakness?" "My biggest weakness is that I have no weakness."

If I asked a vague question to a candidate I wouldn't be surprised to get a vague response, which is why I don't ask vague questions.

No, I don't have any massive refactors, massive reorgs, massive anything for that matter. As I said the question presumes a degree of drama that just doesn't exist either at my company or most fairly well established companies I know about. As surprising as this may seem, there are a lot of companies out there that are not undergoing massive or dramatic change.

Should there be?

>"What's your biggest weakness?"

Exactly, I consider a question like what's your biggest weakness to be completely worthless. Do people still ask that with a straight face?

When I get a vague question on an interview, it's an opportunity to answer the interpretation of the question that puts me in the best light. It's generous. Failing that question is a little sad, really.

It's ok if you don't have "big" problems. Pick a little one. It's all relative anyway. If you can't speak candidly about some of the problems your company faces, you are naive, lazy, or dishonest.

I cant answer that question honestly, but I don't accept your accusation that I am therefore lazy, dishonest or naive. As a candidate when you ask a vague question to a company, you are inviting them to BS you and that's what you'll get as a result of it.

I don't wish to spend time during the interview BSing people about my work culture, so either I am one of those things you mentioned, or that question isn't really a good way to get to know my company's culture, or the culture of many other companies.

My advice is to ask specific questions to a company; how much overtime have developers worked in the past year? Is it compensated? How big are the various teams at the company? How is performance measured and how can I ensure that I am progressing in my career? How much time and money can developers spend on self-improvement, training, conferences, etc... How frequently do people get to work from home?

Once details about your current compensation have been disclosed, ask about how future compensation works, are raised given out yearly? On what basis?

Those questions are tangible and are much more likely to get an actual answer instead of asking the moral equivalent of "What's your biggest flaw that keeps you up at night?"

I think jumping to the conclusion you did about me is poor form and overly judgmental off of very little information, but that said people can come to their own conclusion on the matter.

I think there's more truth to the GP's comment than you realize.

Speaking of dishonesty, you made this same post and when it got downvoted to be barely visible you deleted it only to repost it again.

That's pretty shameful in and of itself.

I'm sorry my original comment hurt you. For what it's worth, I deleted the original after I realized it was indeed too sharp. I wrote the new comment to be nicer.

I agree my concluding statement should not have been personal but directed at the action. I apologize for that.

I think my broader point stands. You can argue that a question is philosophically moot because of dimensionality, or you can steer the conversation in a productive direction.

> As surprising as this may seem, there are a lot of companies out there that are not undergoing massive or dramatic change.

By definition, every company that exists has a "biggest" problem internally. That is the point of the question. To say "Nope, no problems here", is either a bold-faced lie or a level of oblivious-ness that would signal to a candidate to steer clear.

Nobody's demanding to hear about all the skeletons. Acknowledging that every business has problems and could improve is not an admission of guilt. "Things are generally pretty good but moving to Salesforce has caused some frustrations that we're working through" is not"massive or dramatic change" and still satisfies the question.

>By definition, every company that exists has a "biggest" problem internally.

This is absolutely false. Problems are not all measured along the same axis so that two problems can be directly compared to each other. If I have one problem related to customer acquisition, and another problem related to legal/regulatory issues, they are both problems but neither of them has to be bigger than the other.

Furthermore saying I don't have a singular biggest problem that keeps me up at night isn't the same thing as saying I have no problems whatsoever.

Every business has many problems they are working on along many dimensions: legal, sales, development, hiring, accounting, you name it... they are all important and separate problems. Usually if one area of the company has such a big problem compared to the others that it can be considered the "biggest" problem then it's a sign of a poorly managed company. Most decently sized and well managed companies do not face such single-dimensional or dramatic issues. Problems manifest themselves locally and are dealt with locally in a fairly boring/undramatic manner.

>Things are generally pretty good but moving to Salesforce has caused some frustrations that we're working through

Exactly, it's an answer that satisfies the question and says absolutely nothing to the candidate. I could give you some other menial answer "Yeah things are good but the biggest problem right now is integrating our build system with a new platform we're targetting..."

Satisfies the question and really tells you nothing of value. Instead I'd suggest asking questions that can't be satisfied superficially and that actually reveal valuable information.

Spend your time on tangible questions that can be used to make a concrete decision about whether you want to work there... clarify details about work conditions, work hours, compensation, career progression, management structure, meetings, those things matter and are reveal facets of a company's culture.

Knowing a company is moving to Salesforce or some other BS a company says about itself is not going to tell you anything worth knowing, it just wastes time for the both of us.

I think you highlight a weakness of formal "tell me about a time" type questions generally. They are more about testing the framing (spin) abilities of the candidate vs the underlying competencies you ask about. That is largely how the questions in the article feel to me as well.

I have interviewed a lot of people, and been interviewed now and then, and in both cases I think the best info, especially about less definable things like culture, comes out through informal discussion rather than single questions. So actively breaking out of the Q and A style and getting a discussion going is how I would approach learning about the culture.

The goal makes sense, but more specific questions can get substantially better responses. An example of what I'd find to be a more effective line of questions with a similar goal:

1. Is there a substantial technical or organizational change your company/org/team is currently executing? (Choosing scope based on who you're talking to.)

2. (If not) What was the last one you executed successfully? (Alternative: unsuccessfully)

3. What problem is/was this change aiming to solve?

4. Did the change introduce an anticipated or unanticipated tradeoff?

The goal would be to understand what the company currently or recently found challenging and what they're motivated to solve. It can also gauge the company's realism in evaluating the outcome.

Can you acknowledge real problems and tradeoffs, drive a change, and know when it's accomplished (or when it's time to rethink it)?

Op's questions seem to be ones where they're looking to join an ambitious company that is looking to grow and change and attack and defend against others. If the business is stable with no existential risks and your job is to just maintain the status quo, then I'd say your response is totally accurate and gives a hint to the candidate the type of company and culture they'd be signing up for. Or, if they think that such questions should have relevant answers, but their interviewer can't answer them, that might indicate that individual employees are largely disconnected from the vision of the company and don't understand what its top goals and risks are. Again, sometimes people look for that in a company and sometimes people look to avoid that.

To be fair that third one is usually about your biggest worry in general. It doesn't need to literally keep you up at night - though it's a positive signal if you never lose sleep over your company.

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