The one interview question I always ask | Hacker News Reader

The one interview question I always ask

codercofounder.wordpress.com

256 pointsibagrak202 comments

The question is simple: Imagine if you are extended multiple job offers from different companies, and you are trying to decide which one you will accept. Imagine that they way you go about this is that you write down the things that matter to you from most to least and that you use 3-5 things at the top of that list to decide. Those are your decision drivers. What are they?

My response is simple: Imagine if you have multiple candidates for the same job, and you are trying to decide which one you will hire. Imagine that the way you go about this is that you write down the things that matter to you from most to least and that you use 3-5 things at the top of that list to decide. Those are your decision drivers. What are they?

[ASIDE: I really don't mean to be disrespectful to OP; this may be one of the better interview hacks I've seen. But that's just the point: it is a hack. Hack ones and zeros and earn our respect. But hack us and earn our contempt.]

I'm on the other side of the table (employer, not employee) and totally agree. This obsession with interview questions is complete egomaniacal bullshit. Get the person in and start working with them. Either get them on a project for even a few hours or hire them on a temporary basis.

And please don't respond by saying "some-big-company" does it by asking why manhole covers are round. The interview process in most companies is broken, especially the big ones. It seems to forget that you're hiring someone to get a job done and instead provides an inflation mechanism for already large egos by saying "We have a gate. And we're smart. Fuck you if you want to work here."

Actually, I think "hire them on a temporary basis" is more egomaniacal than obsessing over job interview questions. For someone to work for you as a temp, they have to leave their current full time job and put their benefits in jeopardy. When you hire someone, you should be ready to commit.

I actually don't see what's so manipulative about asking a candidate what their decision drivers are. Every consultant who's spent a few years in the business knows to ask potential clients what their "key metrics" for success are. It's good to get everyone speaking the same language.

It's a strange kind of humility that demands that other people put their whole life on hold to see if it'll work out to join your team, isn't it?

In my experience, when someone is hired on to a new company, they are on a trial basis for a certain number of days anyway. This may seem less risky than being explicitly labelled as a temporary-to-hire worker, but they could still find themselves and their benefits in jeopardy if within that trial period either decides this is not as good a fit as the recruitment process suggested it would be.

I think that underneath the intuitive reaction we have to "temporary worker" vs. "permanent worker on a trial basis", they're actually very alike from an individual risk perspective. Either way, in 30/60/90 days, you could find yourself unemployed and still in the same bind. There may be benefits consequences the direction of a temporary worker, especially if you are temped through an agency. On the other hand, that agency might find you another role if the one you are in doesn't work out.

There may be a different discussion about whether or not having this trial period is right, or ethical, or good business, or whatever, regardless of what whatever label gets put on it. My stance on this is that a good process will inevitably make very bad decisions from time to time, and it's not always the best idea to force those bad decisions to be irreversible.

Maybe my experience with the occasional mistakes of what I've seen as otherwise good processes in my past has made me a little less hard-lined about this.

EDIT: get my quoting italicized correctly.

I somewhat agree with you in a sense that it's not on in my books to ask someone to put their aspirations on hold while I figure out if "they are the right fit".

Man up and make the call about what you feel for a candidate.

What most employers don't do - either by system or personally - is man up and admit they hired the wrong person, replace them with severance and move on. Very few people actually do this. Why not?

A candidate who is at an elevated risk of being replaced by severance, which is a position most new hires are in, is probably putting their aspirations on hold while you figure out if they are the right fit. Severance is typically enough to keep an employee above water for a time while they find a new position that fits them better, but it certainly isn't anything people can build dreams on top of.

I think there is a common point of view that wants to assume that recruiting a good fit is something that you determine based on a set of input, and then commit to. If you have to reassess at a later time, and especially if you have to reverse your decision, you've failed at recruiting, and in a way that is preventable in a deterministic way. Experience suggests that people who believe this do one of two things: either they attach an ethical weight to the employee/employer relationship that means you have to weight the cost to your business against the cost to your sense of self-worth; or, they have gotten lucky enough up to this point to meet/interview/hire people who have not misrepresented themselves or otherwise projected an image that they would be much more valuable than they proved to be.

Having been involved in a number of instances in the last two years that have exposed me to the randomness of recruitment and hiring, even using all of the hacks people use to remove the error, I'm honestly a little surprised that people can have any imperatives about recruitment. The whole things seems at best stochastic, and errors are unpreventable.

I think the reason why people are so reluctant to man up is because it means they failed at something we believe they shouldn't fail at. I would argue they've failed as something we all fail at, and that accepting that will make the whole process better for everyone.

> What most employers don't do - either by system or personally - is man up and admit they hired the wrong person, replace them with severance and move on.

For better or worse, that is legally difficult in many places. Once you commit to hiring a permanent employee, you are obligated to some extent to try to work with them and resolve any problems. Firing them outright can be almost impossible unless either their position is literally redundant (in which case obviously you won't immediately be hiring someone else to do the job, will you?) or they are guilty of gross misconduct (such as doing something that involved the police being called to remove them from the office).

It seems common in the jurisdictions I know about for the full employee protections and benefits to kick in over a period of time, maybe on a sliding scale so they aren't fully in effect until a year or two after taking a job, so it's not completely one-sided. But you definitely get employees who play the game and make things that IMHO should be their personal responsibility into an employer's problem. For example, here in the UK there are rules about statutory pay for things like maternity leave. It's not uncommon for someone to take maternity leave for several months, with their employer required to keep paying them at a certain level throughout, and then not go back to work at the end. The problem is, sometimes an action as significant as having a child really does change your perspective and priorities that much, and the employee did go on leave genuinely expecting to return, and other times they knew damn well they weren't coming back the moment they walked out the door but cashed in anyway, and there's no objective way to tell the difference.

To a larger company, where this isn't going to happen very often, you can to some extent write it off as a cost of doing business. But to a small company, being down a member of staff at all can be seriously damaging, and paying out a load of statutory benefits and then getting screwed can literally cause your business to fail. But the rules are what they are, and as long as you have to play by those rules, any employer in such a context is going to be very careful about who they agree to hire on a permanent basis, and a probationary period after hiring isn't unreasonable IMHO.

I'm not aware of the maternity rules in the UK, but I believe that in Canada if somebody attempted the same thing and didn't go back to work they would owe the maternity top-up provided by the company. Of course, there is a certain amount provided by national/federal benefits, however that doesn't affect the employer net-net cash if they get that back.*

I agree though that there is a certain amount of uncertainty when folks are close to coming back from maternity leave. However, keep in mind that the organization (big or small) would have had to fill the position in any case during the maternity period.

* In Canada, maternity leave can take up to something like 50 weeks if the father chooses not to use up their paternity leave.

Well, the reason is probably that some people are just dipshits when it comes to hiring. Or managing.

Just to add, I have a sizable chunk of money waiting to vest. For the right opportunity I would be willing to jump ship before then, but if you need some sort of trial period to make up your mind how about no. Also, like most talented developers I have a decent job, if you can't make up your mind quickly I am not interested. This includes a Google style interview process, if you need to schedule more than 3 hours of interviews sorry I have better things to do with my time than talk with you.

I've said this before, and I don't mind rehashing it here. It isn't meant as a personal slight in the least, your priorities are yours to have, but as someone who does hiring, I do not operate under any desire to keep interviews short for that exact reason.

If my interviews are a waste of your time, then you aren't likely to be the guy I want to hire. I want to hire someone who wants to work for me for more of a reason than to collect a paycheck. I want new hires to believe in our purpose, to fit in with our team, yadda yadda, but ideally, I'd like our interview candidates to actually _want to work_ for our company because they like or admire it independently of whether or not they are collecting their checks from us.

Perhaps I'm biased, but that ideal candidate, in my mind, doesn't consider an extended interview a waste of their time.

Keep in mind that these selection criteria enrich your employee pool in impulsivity and borderline personality disorder.

I think it's safe to go this way with jobless developers looking to get a job. If your candidate is on a full-time job, you should certainly commit.

You forget that there is another sub-set of people: the ones that just graduated and currently don't have a job. I think that for a recent college graduate the whole temp thing would sound to bad. Now, if you already have a job, then I believe you are more likely to play the whole hiring process game. When I was trying to get that first job, I absolutely hated the HR games. Now that I have a job, I know that I would be more indifferent to the whole random bs questions.

> you should be ready to commit.

Exactly, I won't be ready to commit until working with them.

I never liked the manhole cover question because most people really don't like it when you tell them that the answer they have is wrong. It's not entirely because they don't fall in the hole, that's part of it, but it's also because of the two shapes that satisfy that requirement they are far easier to manufacture.

The second shape is an equilateral triangle and they have been used in the past for manhole covers, most notably in New Hampshire. They're falling out of use because of the fact that circular ones really are that much easier to manufacture and have a few other advantages such as the fact that they have no tips to break off (though to be honest I don't know how easy it is to break the point off a triangular manhole cover).

And this is wrong answer as well.

Manhole covers are round because manholes are round. The question is why manholes are round?

Manholes are round because round shaft requires less material for the walls to hold soil pressure. The same reason why most wells are round. As a matter of fact when this is not a concern manholes and their covers quite often are not round - just walk on the sidewalk in any modern city.

The question is why are American manholes round.

You can walk quite a way in Britain before you see a circular manhole cover. Domestic drain covers are almost always rectangular galvanized steel, and aren't actually that heavy, so dropping one doesn't happen that often.

Digging and constructing a rectangular inspection pit is much easier than a circular one.

> And this is wrong answer as well.

There isn't a wrong answer to this question unless you are asking an engineer about a specific manhole cover they have data about.

> Manhole covers are round because manholes are round.

That's clearly not the whole story. There is no reason why a shaft has to be covered by the same shape as the shaft. If there were significant drawbacks to having round manhole covers, we'd just have another shape with dimensions large enough to not fall down. There aren't, in fact round covers are fairly easy to manufacture as long as high precision isn't required, as simcop2387 noted.

There is a strong reason for the shaft to be covered by the cover of the same shape: it requires less material than any other shape. So with all else being equal, it's the optimal shape; it makes sense to use other shape only if there are other outweighing concerns.

I'd be fine if a candidate asked me this question as employer at the end of the interview. I'd answer honestly.

But if this was your stock response -- to immediately mirror question, it'd be a big turn off and tell me that you're gonna be a pain in the ass to work with.

Might want to refer to this:

>> Hack ones and zeros and earn our respect. But hack us and earn our contempt.

By you asking the question you have already earned the interviewee's contempt - now it is only a matter of how that is expressed. Some people express it openly, others are more diplomatic. The result is the same though -- a person who is not going to take your offer.

Bottom line: the question is manipulative, and everyone with a bit of self-awareness will figure that out. Nobody wants to work for a manipulative person.

I don't see it as manipulative. I'm not a massive fan of the phrasing, but the question is just a differently-dressed version of 'what are your priorities'.

If you get worked up about that, then it would be a definite black mark against employing you. If you would refuse a job offer because of it, I would say it was a bullet dodged.

My top priority is to not have someone gaming my other priorities.

> By you asking the question you have already earned the interviewee's contempt

An interviewee who holds me in contempt for asking them a question?

They're probably not really suited to working with grownups.

It's often the case that we criticize others for our own faults, and I would apply that here.

You have asked a loaded question which has a nasty underlying implication. You might not have intended it that way, but it does have that subtext. Just to make it totally explicit, suppose I answer "money" in my top 5 then you might say "oh, he cares too much about money, he's some greedy person, not the upstanding sort we want here", but if I don't answer "money" in my top 5 you might say, "well money isn't important to you so I won't pay you what you're worth."

It's like the more-famous question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" -- which presumes a statement as fact without asserting it, and therefore is offensive and difficult to reply to.

The difference is, the factual state presumed -- even if you didn't intend it (though the author certainly did) -- is, "I am an armchair psychoanalyst. Let me psychoanalyze you." You've taken your role as "someone who will decide whether you could make this company money" and raised it to the power of "someone who might decide whether you're a worthwhile human being."

If you're not prepared to see that this might offend some people, and to apologize and admit that you hadn't thought of it that way, then you're probably not really suited to working with grownups. ^_^

You're right! Getting defensive in job interviews is a cracking idea. Job interviews are a perfect example of two-way rapport-building conversation, and should be therefore treated as a battle-field, thrust and counter thrust, until you finally defeat your interviewer in intellectual combat, emerging victorious, pious, and ... uh ... without a job.

I don't see how this could possibly have been a response to what I said, nor how I could be construed as saying that. (Actually, the closest it comes is that "You're right! X is a good idea!" is the same sort of crap that "Have you stopped beating your wife?" pulls.)

I will also reiterate that we often accuse others of our own faults. When you find yourself accusing me of "getting defensive", you should ask "is this comment that I am writing right now getting defensive?" Because it certainly sounds that way to me.

For the record, I do not think that holding you in contempt for asking a loaded question constitutes "intellectual combat." Let's review. In this hypothetical situation, we are given that you have asked, "so, imagine that you had a bunch of job offers, how would you choose between them?" and someone really responded, "so, imagine that you had a bunch of job candidates, how do you choose between them?".

You have a number of options. One is, you could handle it gracefully. You wouldn't say "oh this person is a pain in the ass!" because what they've asked is no more dickish than what you've asked, and if anything they've showed you the way in which you are being dickish. Your question was -- even though you might not have intended it -- potentially quite manipulative, and you might have significant conflicts of interest. So the graceful way is to try to recover the interview: "Okay, so yeah, I guess my question has a manipulative subtext. Sorry. I didn't mean it in that way, was just trying to be friendly and make my workplace better."

That's not what you suggested. You suggested that your reaction, facing this situation, was to say, "you probably can't deal with grownups, I'm not hiring you, get out." The irony which I'm trying to show you is: this is a childish way to handle the situation, to accuse the other of being childish rather than admit your own fault and strive to be better.

Now, would you care to tell me where I said 'Getting defensive in job interviews is a cracking idea'?

>tell me that you're gonna be a pain in the ass to work with. //

It does the reverse too surely. It tells a prospective employee that the employer is all about jumping through needless hoops - that they're going to be a pain in the ass and require things that are rather unrelated to actual productive work.

Personally I think I'd find it a turn off from either side. Is it a useful question? I can see how it could give a good indication about ability to think on the fly to provide a politic answer. If that's part of the job then it seems not completely unreasonable.

Are you saying that trying to better understand a prospective employee's motivations for coming to work is "needless hoops"?

It might be. Suppose that you're hiring service staff - a waiter or waitress is a good example. It is often better to show a professional respect for their abstraction layers than to invite them to talk about the fact that they're aspiring to become an actor or actress. Asking such a person "what are your priorities?" is first off the invitation, "bullshit me, I want to see how well you do." So they might answer "well, my first priorities are making people happy and cleaning tables." That's a hoop -- needless or not I'll leave you to judge, but demanding that they jump through that hoop to work with you could make you a pretty sucky person to work with, if that's the attitude you take towards all of your employee interactions.

Even if you sincerely care about your waiters and waitresses and want to encourage their acting careers on the side, it still stretches a bit into the unprofessional, no? You're asking them to imaginatively mix their contexts around in ways that they might not be intending to do when they work for you. The fact that you've asked me to simultaneously be frank with you about my external life, and that you also expect me to censor things which might be deemed 'irrelevant' like "well, I need a software company that I can leave after six months because I want to go and build schools in India once I get enough money," or to confess them even though they might make it much less likely for you to hire me, is potentially a needless hoop.

If you're hiring for a job where a) the person doesn't really want it, they are just desperate for a job, any job and b) you don't really care about the motivation of your staff, then yes you've got a point - it possibly is a needless hoop.

But for a lot of jobs, that's not really the case. If I was going for a job as a step up from the one I've got now, I'd be delighted to be asked this question and would give an honest answer. If my actual motivations didn't align with what the company believed it was offering (if, for instance, they were only interested in trying to push you higher and higher into management rather than allowing you to become truly expert at your current job), then I'd want to make sure I found out before I took the job.

I think it's totally cool to ask that question, but if you're going to ask that instead of answering mine, I'm going to assume you're an argumentative dick and probably wrap up the interview pretty quickly. The "I know you are, but what am I?" line of responses doesn't really fly well for me when I'm interviewing people.

Argumentative dicks are often your key employees. If they aren't talking, you know the idea is good.

In fact, I'd argue that yes men and the under-confident but easy to get along with are the absolute worst kind of employees - They won't tell you that the car is headed off a cliff until it's already three feet off the edge.

There's a pretty wide range of employees between the dude who is mocking his interviewer because he disagrees with a question, and an under-confident yes man who just goes along with everything. Arguing for the sake of improving things is different than arguing for the sake of arguing. Argumentative dicks, in my experience, do the latter more often than the former.

Be clear here however that our "argumentative dick" has simply asked the same question of the employer that was asked of him.

Sometimes, forcing someone to answer the very question they have posed is a great way of pointing out any flaws.

The taking of offense here is the bigger enemy to progress than anything else in this exchange, and that didn't come from the interviewee.

I'm all for people being cordial and polite, and many programmers could learn a thing or two about human interaction, but the idea that asking a question in response during an evaluation of capability (on both sides) is an insult is a little bit of a stretch.

Right on. You've clearly got your head on straight.

Others here seem more interested in giving snarky half-truths.

I agree. At my work, disagreeing with the upper management gets you fired. Sometimes you just shut up if you want a paycheck. Then you get where you can actually discuss why something is a bad idea (like with my DIRECT supervisor).

You don't have to be an argumentative dick to express doubt in something. Nor are you necessarily an underconfident yes man if you dont speak up. Circumstances dictates a lot of behavior.

> At my work, disagreeing with the upper management gets you fired.

Even if they're wrong? Well, in that case, good riddance.

The takeaway is you don't want spineless employees, you want them free thinking and unafraid to speak up when they sense something is wrong. That being said, "argumentative dick" doesn't immediately equate to star employee, in fact I'd say that moniker is for people who have some of the qualities you are referring to, but haven't learned to adapt themselves to team environments and/or are unable to apply their challenges and criticisms constructively.

In regard to the original situation, I think the interview question in the link is a reasonable one to ask for most places and most positions. The question in reverse is also pretty useful and any candidate genuinely asking it in return (after answering yours) would be a Good Sign. A candidate who doesn't answer, however, and just fires back the question in reverse is showing flags of being an argumentative dick.

That strategy pretty much guarantees that you will eliminate both argumentative dicks and A-players. Good luck with that.

I disagree. The only people that would pull this trick (answering the question with a question) have a lack of judgement and social skills.

Having said that, I'm against gimmicks in interviews.

Augmentative dicks always think they are A-players. That's very rarely the case, but they'll never rise far enough to find that out.

Perhaps. But I'd much rather pass on someone who might have been exceptional than hire someone who has already proven themselves to be a bit of an asshole.

Agreed, but this is also a shame. So many exceptional people don't have a chance to get hired because we're fitting the process towards the median of the distribution. Isn't there a system to recruit and develop truly great people?

Or someone who's willing to call out your bullshit.

If they think a question that gets at "What are your main priorities in looking for new employment?" is bullshit, I hope they do walk out of the interview so I don't waste anymore time on them.

I like argumentative dicks. The important thing is that the arguments are good, not that precious feelings are protected. Though I would prefer if we could refrain from being dicks about it, if at all possible.

Ding!

It's so hard for companies to find good talent, it's silly to dick around with mind games and petty power plays.

Find good folks. Realize that on average you're going to have them around for maybe three years, five if you are super lucky, ten if you win the lottery, one if you rub them the wrong way. Treat them with respect, ask yourself how the HELL you can bend over backwards to try to make their experience working at your company good enough to keep them around for a while. Don't talk down to them. Don't imagine that they are beholden to you for anything.

If you are unlucky enough to end up in a situation where you as an employer are holding all of the cards in a hiring situation then I have some bad news for you. You aren't hiring the best candidate possible, you're hiring a mediocre candidate.

Not to play an "argumentative dick" or anything :), but...

Sometimes mediocre is good enough. Not every employee needs to be a superstar. Personally, I don't care that the receptionist is the best receptionist in the world; I care that he/she is polite and competent enough that I don't need to worry about reception.

Also, be careful in deluding yourself that there aren't surprisingly good candidates out there that don't have such a high opinion of themselves. Some of the best people I've ever worked with didn't get the best wages and deals. In fact, the people with the "best" packages were often 2-3 rungs lower than the best employees.

Mediocre is always good enough for employer. But mediocre employee will put additional burden on your top employees, so they will wear off quickly and jump off the board.

A receptionist that does her job well enough to be a problem is much less of a headache than a receptionist that has aspirations and talent to be a programmer.

I think this can be more diplomatically put.

E.G. One could respond to the question, saying that this is an important process that they would go through - even if there was only ONE offer letter to decide upon, but still provide your answer.

Then ask, in a more respectful manner, something along the lines of:

"Based on this question, what are the top three things you/your company values in an employee and further, what are the top three things the company values about itself."

You can also ask the interviewer what the top 3 things he values about working for that company.

---

One of the toughest questions I have had to answer in an interview was from Twitter, where the manager asked me "What would be the one thing, should we work together, that could cause problems for us?"

This was a pain to answer because, frankly I know nothing of this guy, so I replied "Poor communication. If we can't communicate well with each other, it will make both our jobs hard."

He said "Great thanks, when are you available to start?"

I told him, the interview was over, and I never heard back.

"He said "Great thanks, when are you available to start?" I told him, the interview was over, and I never heard back."

Is there something I'm missing? I don't quite get how him asking that question led to you turning down the job so abruptly

samstave didn't turn down the job-he told the interviewer his start date. That was the end of the interview. Afterwards, samstave never heard back from twitter.

Yep.

But the way it was stated after the multi round interviews appeared to imply that they were interested in me.

After a few weeks of nothing, I emailed the recruiter and got a terse "we've decided to go another direction" email.

I thought it was ironic that I had said poor communication would be a bad thing for us, and then there was poor communication in telling me they weren't interested.

It all worked out great for both of us though, because the job I have now is such a better fit for me than twitter would have been.

There's a difference between "I told him, the interview was over" and "I told him the interview was over"

yes, right, I tend to overlook punctuation when reading comments, etc but he did punctuate correctly there, my mistake

I wish employers would ask both of these questions during interviews. They often focus on what I currently know, and not the overall work experience component. As a Web/Mobile developer and hiring Project Manager, I've switched jobs often, never working more than 1 year in each job until recently, for the past 10 years. My answers at this point are:

I'd like to work as close as possible to home. I live in DC, commutes add to stress, and you end up having little personal/family time working further away from home. This is worth even sacrificing a income because time matters more to me now than $10k. It doesn't hurt that it saves on gas with rising prices.

Secondly, working in an environment of people that pull their weight. This is a paramount to me. If there are a bunch of unqualified employees that don't work hard to improve their English speaking and writing skills, communication becomes a major issue in meeting objectives, and I often end up with a ton of proofreading assignments. Having people around me that know answers, and that also put in the work, rather than just a bunch of blind "decision makers" or "oversight managers" is paramount to a good working space. Personal attitudes are also paramount, people don't need to be overjoyed and silly, but I can't tell you how many interviews I've said no to when they ask me about how I get along with difficult people. Its a company's responsibility to breed a mutually respectful, productive, and cordial business culture. Too many companies allow negative and difficult people to climb their ranks, I'll never work for them long if that's the case.

Lastly, I expect a company to offer a good work/life balance. I want to work for a company that clearly defines objectives, and when they're met, I don't want to be "nickeled" and "dimed" over my hours... If my work is high quality, and all goals are met, don't squeeze me. i realize that its even good to pull extra hours on projects, but a company that doesn't realize that they should "ease up" on employees in quiet times is a company that faces high turnover, they're throwing away all the intellectual capital they build by pressing employees (that eventually leave or get burnt out) too hard. This issue is usually fixed by careful attention to contract terms during bidding. If there's a requirement for a performance based contract, if you want to be happy, avoid the trend. Your oversight managers should be the ones responsible for maintaining quality and upholding employee conduct through reasonable oversight. Don't turn your company into a metric-driven juggernaut by giving in to strict SLAs/Contract terms, or you'll suffer crippling turnovers and you'll eventually lose your contract holding through (continually) rising expectations, or through liability for errors.

Do you think the subject matter of the question is off-limits, or do you object to the way it's being asked?

No, I think that the subject matter is perfectly appropriate and that OP is either pretty clever or quite experienced to come up with it. In fact, I would even hope to have a such a discussion to know that the prospective employer is serious and has put as much thought into the process as I have.

I have always believed the the interview process must be a 2 way street; we are equals interviewing each other for mutually beneficial long term possibilities. The way OP presented this seemed way too manipulative for my taste; it destroyed that "equal plane" I covet.

So yes, my problem was not with the subject material, but the way it's being asked. (Which is also why I added the little ASIDE; I wanted to demonstrate that without just looking like a snarky response.)

Noted. I didn't mean to come off as adversarial or manipulative. This is really a conversation starter, and I rarely just write down the answer and move on.

But I do feel like it helps me learn a whole lot about the candidate without compromising that trust or condescending to them with "what's your biggest weakness?" or some such.

I admit it's a hack. Or rather, it's just a tool, like many other that helps me learn something about the candidate. So yeah, all those caveats definitely apply.

I think the OP's explanation and reasoning demonstrate why it isn't a "hack" or at least why that word conveys the wrong meaning. The thing is that all preconceived, non-knowledge based interview questions are hacky... they're asked to get a certain response. In my opinion, a poor interviewer will expect a right or wrong or specific answer in those responses. A good interviewer will genuinely try to get to know the candidate through those questions. He says something to that effect here:

"Mind you there isn’t a right answer. It just helps to place the candidate in a coordinate system that I can understand and interpret."

It's all about coming to understand the person, rather than evaluating them on a set of criteria. The difference is critical.

Edw519 - very good point.. the interview question comes off adverserial. I'm sure that is not the intent.. but the tone definitely makes it seem that way.

Then again.. its their company. :/ I noticed many companies forget that the employer/employee relationship is symbiotic.

> Be sure to lean on the word “imagine”, as you’ll get more sincere answers as a result. I think imagining things just liberates the candidate from the scripted answers

Of course smart people you want to hire will never recognize this clever mental trick.

>it explores a candidate’s motivation and value system.

Wrong. It explores candidate's ability to guess the answers you want to hear. And you have no way to tell whether candidate is sincere or just trying to please you.

Come on, this is a typical BS question, along the lines of "tell me your weaknesses" etc...

I'm inclined to agree. You should never ever ask a question where you can't tell the difference between an honest answer and a good BS answer (and no, you don't have some superhuman power to tell if someone is BSing you). You'll likely just end up with more charlatans than legitimate candidates.

The fact is, anyone who's spent any amount of time on proggit/HN knows the correct answers here: work environment, smart people, interesting projects, cool technology, making a difference, etc. What you really want to ask is "how do you keep up with technology" and see if they say HN.

Nothing is stopping people from knowing proggit/HN/etc as a short list of tech sites that they should say they keep up with in case the question gets asked. This becomes cyclical when you view the interview as a meta-game of right answer seeking vs. right answer providing. Viewing interviews this way turns it into an arms race and in the end you will just come off as being guarded/mistrustful no matter what side of the table you're on.

It's not about the questions you ask, or at the least it counts for less than say 20% of the interview. It's about the discussions that come out from them. You'll get noticed if you're BSing when it comes to holding a 15 second to 2 minute chitchat about tech news sites, or your big factors when considering an employer/employee and why.

It's totally fine to have a set list of questions in mind before going in (for employer and employee both), and the content of those questions do matter a bit, but it's all about what discussions it can lead to and how easily it can. But if you only focus on what questions you bring and expect them to do all the heavy lifting of evaluating an employer/employee then you're already doing it wrong. You need to follow through or else anyone can BS anything you throw at them (excepting detailed technical skillset type questions).

That being said, there are some questions that are stronger than others. "What are your weaknesses?" isn't a strong question because it is far too direct. It is seeking a quantity in an area where you should be seeking a discussion. So it's of some value to seek out new questions every now and then, but only if you're keeping the goal of an interview in mind and not using new questions as bland ammunition.

>It's not about the questions you ask, or at the least it counts for less than say 20% of the interview. It's about the discussions that come out from them.

I definitely agree with this. I suspect though, that its extremely hard for someone to police themselves to avoid giving a candidate points for giving the "right answer". It's just so easy to be drawn towards people who seem to be like us that most people will be easily fooled by a good BS artist.

The trick is to completely ignore their initial response as signal, and then engage them with their response, whatever it may be. It shouldn't matter what they say at all, but the discussion should be enlightening either way. This is where you can tell if the person has depth and has really considered their opinion. That should be what you're trying to find out, not whether they say "work on interesting projects".

You're right, hiring is an arms race. Especially when we have endless blogs about the next hack for hiring rockstars, and thousands of job seekers studying these to get that edge. As a candidate I know that I better give him the answers he expects, even if they don't paint a completely accurate picture.

Case-in-point: for this question my #1 would be salary. This answer would likely immediately disqualify me with 95% of the people who would ask this question. If they would engage me with it I would answer that

"salary is the #1 criteria for most people, they just don't realize it themselves. If someone were to offer you a dream job, perfect in every way, except they offer you zero salary, literally zero, of course you would turn it down without hesitation. But if it were another criteria you would consider it assuming everything else checked out. Thus salary is always the single biggest factor when looking for a job."

Sounds reasonable, right? Unfortunately we would likely never get this far. The interviewer would have already written me off to even bother probing for my rationale. Until interviewers stop hiring/writing off candidates on seemingly arbitrary criteria, the candidate will always phrase his or her response in what they assume the interviewer wants to hear.

> I suspect though, that its extremely hard for someone to police themselves to avoid giving a candidate points for giving the "right answer".

It can be hard. But I'd argue getting caught up with what to say and what to ask only makes it harder. Questions and answers both shouldn't be doing all the heavy lifting for an interview. They do some, certainly, but IMO the best interviews are when we get out of the Q&A cycle and wind up talking about our views on X, Y, Z (topics that are: a) business related, b) company specific or c) tech appropriate, about 90% of the time).

> The trick is to completely ignore their initial response as signal, and then engage them with their response, whatever it may be.

I think I'd agree, but would modify that with "the trick is to not make a snap judgement on their response, but first engage ....". I mean really we could hash out all the initial responses we'd expect to hear from the question. Advancement opportunities, Salary, Autonomy, Culture, and so on, and that list by itself is not all that interesting, so it's dubious to make any conclusions on someone on their 3-5 choices until you get into the reasons behind them. And we're not really trying to make any judgements or conclusions about them, with this question. This is more a backdrop to their professional persona and their career goals along with their day-to-day work goals, and will come up as support behind your decision later on whether or not to continue with the hire, one way or another. EDIT: I should also note it helps the employer communicate back what areas they think will or will not work well with what the employee is looking for, so it is useful to both parties for making a decision.

> You're right, hiring is an arms race. Especially when we have endless blogs about the next hack for hiring rockstars, and thousands of job seekers studying these to get that edge. As a candidate I know that I better give him the answers he expects, even if they don't paint a completely accurate picture.

When you're talking to a recruiter or someone in HR who is several layers removed from those you would answer to or work with, then yes that interview will be more about aligning skillsets and experience and so on, and I've had only a rare few interviews with recruiters who didn't just stick to a script. For someone with real say in the final hire, though, I would highly advise against contributing to that arms race and instead treat the interview as a real no shit normal conversation (but about important stuff to both of you). If they get even a whiff that you're calibrating what you say with what they want to hear instead of actually considering their prompt and discussing it like an honest adult, it doesn't matter if you are months ahead of them on the latest interview game theory or not, they're going to weigh that behavior against your other good qualities.

> Case-in-point: for this question my #1 would be salary. This answer would likely immediately disqualify me with 95% of the people who would ask this question.

What's the rationale behind that assumption? I imagine salary/compensation will make the short list for most commonly occurring response to the original question. I mean, the company you're applying to is a for-profit entity, most likely, so why would they count it as a mark against you (much less "immediately disqualify" you) when you have the same motives as they do for getting out there and working hard every day? It's an obvious and unimaginative response, yes, but then they go "Okay, why salary? would you look primarily at salary or would other forms of compensation supplement your salary considerations, such as: more vacation/PTO, quarterly/annual bonus programs, insurance plans, misc. stipends, share options..." and you can respond on down the line and go into what exactly they offer or would consider offering. It shows you are comfortable navigating the different employer/employee dynamics that can exist (NOTE: Startups especially tend to have wide ranges of different compensation packages and we devs often find ourselves at one or another during our career) and also have a good sense of what you're looking for in those regards. I don't just want to hire the one who will cost me the least on paper, and I won't take offense when someone is looking to make good money working with me and is confident they can add enough value to the company over time that it will be justified; I will be willing to pay more for someone who knows what they want and what they're doing and isn't guarded about talking about it when the time is appropriate, they'll probably be a far better investment than someone who says (or acts like) they don't really care what you pay them as long as it covers their bills. (That being said, people starting out in their career usually don't think much on this sort of stuff so it's not like I always expect a new hire to have all this sorted out)

Anyway, I don't disagree with you all the way or anything but in my experience it's best to walk away from the game of tricky questions and stock "best" answers. Anywhere you are hired will be needing you problem solving and communicating by your first week, which are the two things those trick questions are imitating. So (ignoring technical acumen and so on) demonstrate you can do those in the interview and look for that when giving an interview.

Disclaimer: I actually love interviews, either side of the table, so I'm a little weird.

Sorry for the late reply.

>What's the rationale behind that assumption? I imagine salary/compensation will make the short list for most commonly occurring response to the original question.

My rationale is based on the sentiment that I see repeated around HN and the blogosphere that surrounds it. Granted, this may be a case of people who spend so much time talking about X aren't out doing X, but its a pretty clear impression that anyone who expresses salary as being overly important is not "passionate" enough or just sees programming as a job. I think anyone who regularly parses these blogs for hiring advice, and thus who would actually ask this question in an interview, are precisely the ones to eat up the sentiment that "the best programmers don't care much about salary". And since every startup thinks they need rockstars or ninjas, they'll happily write off anyone who seemingly expresses this sentiment. Admittedly, I don't really have any first hand experience interviewing for the typical Silicon Valley startup, so I'd be happy to hear that my impression is totally wrong.

As someone graduating from college soon and hunting for a job, I ask this of my interviewers. If they can't tell me where their tech news comes from or they give me an answer like CNet, I know it's not a place I want to work.

I literally LOLed at CNet. That's a good one, I think I'll have to keep that in my toolbox for future interviews.

>What you really want to ask is "how do you keep up with technology" and see if they say HN.

I actually disagree. HN is about 1/3 new technology but 2/3 business news.

I think hacker news can provide you with enough mentions of new languages/ frameworks/ libraries and techniques that you can use it as a starting point for discovery over a long period of time. You can then do your own follow up on the mentions.

It is good for an overview to, lots of other sites and blogs are focusing on say one language or framework.

Well in that case inquiring minds would like to know: How do YOU keep up with technology?

I don't. Then again, I write systems C, so I don't really need to keep up with technology much. If anything, I keep up by reading the emails intel sends me.

This is very domain-specific.

Proggit, OSNews, and Lambda the Ultimate mostly.

Personally, I'd answer honestly and wouldn't BS. I do agree, though, that the word "imagine" is way overplayed. Most people who are having a conversation like this would likely miss that word and concentrate on the bulk of the question which is "name 3-5 things on how you rank companies."

I'm not sure why people are so offended by this question. While I've never asked this question as the interviewer, I've been asked similar questions whilst interviewing and felt they always lead down a path that was helpful to both sides.

If the things I care about in a job don't jive with the things your company cares about, why would I even want an offer from you? In my specific case, when interviewing in the past, things I've cared strongly about are things like test-driven development, a culture that values code quality as well as shipping products, and having a meaningful stake in the success of the company. If you aren't going to provide these things, or they don't matter to you, I sure as fuck don't want to work for you. If people are strictly upset about the word 'imagine', then that's one thing. Thinking this question is 'overly revealing' or something seems bizarre to me. Don't you want to work somewhere where the things you care about are valued?

>I'm not sure why people are so offended by this question.

Here's why :

>In my specific case, when interviewing in the past, things I've cared strongly about are things like test-driven development, a culture that values code quality as well as shipping products, and having a meaningful stake in the success of the company.

Platitudes like "a culture that values code quality as well as shipping products" and "meaningful stake" are useless, unless you're expecting the interviewer to say that his company values low quality code and not shipping products and that you're going to be a low paid code grunt down in the salt mines. As for testing, even if they don't use it nothing prevents them from lying - and if you think lying about it is stupid - not using testing is also stupid - so it's likely a pattern in decision making. It works the other way as well, it's really easy to fake what the interviewer wants to hear with this sort of generic questions that don't touch on the things that actually matter to the job (and I would say that the only reason to resort to these kind of questions is because you can't ask insightful technical questions, ie. talking about a previous project and the persons involvement/duties will allow you to collect actual information about the person, but you need to be able to understand what he was doing to evaluate it).

Questions and evaluations like these are things that HR people sell to management to make themselves appear useful without actually having skill to meaningfully evaluate the candidate, "corporate culture", "team player", "company values", etc. are all vague buzzwords with no quantifiable metrics behind them, but they are simple to pound on with simplistic intuition and anecdotal evidence. Even if the supposed attributes were somehow meaningful from my experience companies that focus on that sort of talk when interviewing end up with exactly the kind of people you would want to avoid - bullshiters with nothing to back their talk, that usually end up hijacking some part of the system by introducing random bullshit that only they can wade trough - to ensure job security. So even if the metrics are right the interviewers suck at measuring them. When I hear questions like these it's usually a red flag.

> Generic platitudes like "a culture that values code quality as well as shipping products" and "meaningful stake" are useless

This makes the assumption that you just stop there and cannot ask follow up. Follow up questions that can garner a more clear answer on how code quality and shipping happens in a practical sense:

* How do you ensure code quality? * Do you perform code reviews? What's the procedure there? * What's code rollup like? * How often do you deploy? * Can I watch a deployment? * What SCM do you use? * Do you use any CR tools like gerrit or Crucible? * What's the process for a product from inception to launch?

These are just a few questions you can use to determine help you find out if the company values code quality and shipping products.

People often forget that an interview isn't one way. Just as it's important for the company to be prepared with questions for an interview, it's equally important for the interviewee to be prepared as well. However, this is often the case. People are so focused on providing good answers to questions, they forget to prepare good questions themselves. Often times good questions can help provide answers to questions not yet asked, and make the entire affair much more enjoyable.

>This makes the assumption that you just stop there and cannot ask follow up.

And your followup assumes that you're talking to a programmer and not a recruiter. I guess it depends on where you're interviewing but I've had more than one interview with HR/management only (needless to say that even tough it was the "first round" I didn't stick around). Anyway I would just ask them what for a technical description of my role in the company, things like SCM and CR assume that I know what tools are good/bad, it's perfectly possible that they are using something that I think is bad but makes sense for them, so I guess it goes both ways, I expect the interviewer to be competent, and I trust my instinct on evaluating that, and then just do the trial period.

Also if you're going to ask the details, then skip the platitude entirely and focus on what you're interested, unless you consider them courteous prelude to detailed questions.

> And your followup assumes that you're talking to a programmer and not a recruiter?

Assume? I'd know if I was talking to a programmer rather than a recruiter. Doesn't change what questions I would ask or expect answers to.

Let me ask you this: do you feel it's important that someone in HR be able to answer your technical questions? Do you feel you should be able to ask whatever programmer you interview with about compensation and moving expenses? Interviewing isn't just a one and done thing.

> I guess it depends on where you're interviewing but I've had more than one interview with HR/management only

And?

Still doesn't change anything I said.

> it's perfectly possible that they are using something that I think is bad but makes sense for them,

That's why you ask: so you can discuss this.

I don't understand: it seems like you talk about these things, but are disagreeing with me... just to disagree?

Whatever point your trying to make, you aren't making it.

> unless you consider them courteous prelude to detailed questions.

I felt that was obvious from the OP's comment. It's not uncommon. In fact, it's quite common.

Coming out and saying "What CSM do you use?" gives no real background no what you really want to know.

However, saying that "code quality is important to me. So, I'm curious about your methods of CR and SC? Also, I'd be interested in discussing your deployment methods."

And, frankly, that's what I got from the OP. Certain things were important to him. He merely didn't bother with the details, because, let's be honest, what's the point (the point is, as we both know, to avoid having people pick over that one meaningless word he used or missed).

Which leads me back to this:

> And your followup assumes that you're talking to a programmer and not a recruiter.

Yes. I thought that was obvious given the context.

>Do you feel you should be able to ask whatever programmer you interview with about compensation and moving expenses?

I feel like those things can be handled after the initial interview - when we establish that I'm a suitable candidate and they are actually worth working for. I feel that the programmer/CTO/who ever is qualified to make a technical evaluation should be the one to approve the hire and HR can do the negotiation afterward.

I think we're disagreeing about the context tough. I was quoting his statement because he used it as a example of the argument the article made from employees perspective - and my criticism is mostly about the article/recruiters using shallow questions that provide no information and focusing on trivial things and corporate speak on "company culture", "team skills", "decision drivers" and similar vague pseudo sociology/psychology and other buzzwords that allow you to pretend like you're doing something useful when you actually aren't qualified to evaluate/manage.

> I feel like those things can be handled after the initial interview - when we establish that I'm a suitable candidate and they are actually worth working for.

Then, that really negates most of what you were saying with regards to who is being asked. With that being the case, what was the point?

> I think we're disagreeing about the context tough.

Judging by what you just said, I'd say that you're having a difficult time with the context, and should reread what was written without bias this time.

Yes, although I believe there is a component of conversational implicature in these phrases. Mention of "corporate culture" implies the speaker is interested in control--and probably more interested in the control of behavior than technical subjects. The emphasis on corporate culture, team playing and company values indicates the extent to which management values will be imposed top down. The preference for platitudes over definitional clarity indicates a lack of candor and the intention to conceal motives. Talk of silo busting is, in my experience, uttered by individuals inhabiting impenetrable management silos.

But all of those answers can be followed up by more detailed questions with specifics. If you are a company that values code quality, how do you back up that value? Do you have coding standards, do you do code reviews and so on. Either way, this provides a jumping off point for further discussion. If the interviewer cannot provide information about why working for them would satisfy those wants, then that company might not be a fit for you.

TBH my criticism was mostly related to the original article and the suggested kind of interviewing, from my experience they don't go in to details, it's a jumping off in to more useless buzzword questions and pseudo psychoanalysis (does money matter to you, what are your goals, what are your motivations, etc.) without touching on the important stuff (like can you code, did you work as a part of a team environment, what did you accomplish) I'm a fan of "describe a project you were involved in and feel is representative of your skill" as a jumping off point.

That's a reasonable question, and I think the strong reaction stems from two things.

First, the question seems designed to discover either personal attributes that are irrelevant to work or contractual preferences that can be used to hardball you during negotiations. Something like the Joel test is relevant to the questions you mention above. But the OP doesn't seem interested in Joel-test like answers, he says he wants something deeper and more revealing.

Secondly, virtually everyone is going to answer questions like this with trying to guess what the interviewer wants to hear. So it becomes a stupid waste-of-time mind game. As someone mentioned below, it's a lot like the "what are your weaknesses" question.

The biggest danger in interviewing is the tendency to hire clones of oneself. Questions like this are a huge contributor to that. It would be easy to re-word this question to make it more work-related and fit the kind of thing you're talking about, but the OP doesn't seem interested in that.

Secondly, virtually everyone is going to answer questions like this with trying to guess what the interviewer wants to hear.

Personally I'd take the opportunity to answer that question by telling the interviewer about things that I genuinely care about, and try to gauge his reaction. If he balks and any of them it's nice to know that up front and not a few month down the road.

I agree with you. I think people are overreacting.

With that said, I don't find the question any better than how it's currently done.

I think companies would be a lot better if they administered the a Myers-Briggs personality test (or something along those lines). Having people choose and prioritize options that have no clear right or wrong answer speak better to their value system.

For example, a question could ask:

What do you value when it comes to coding (priorize)?

a) Quickness of delivery b) Stability, solid code c) Building for the future d) Efficiency (code execution)

There is no right or wrong answer. Some may say, "well it depends on the situation!" But picking a priority order will speak to the default way in which people think.

Myers-Briggs is not really a reliable instrument [e.g., 1, 2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyers-Briggs#Validity [2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Personality-Testing-Misunders...

If you're going to do personality tests to hire people, do it right.[1] And unless you're hiring me to keep state secrets, carry weapons, or join a moon colony, it's probably not necessary to do that.

I'm certainly not going to fill out some amateur-hour multiple-choice quiz so that some HR flack or hiring manager with no training or experience in psychological screening can get an insight into my "value system". If you want to know my value system, talk to me like a human being.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personali...

Do you know what buzzword bingo is?

It's when HR looks at your CV / experience / whatever, and tries to match up what you wrote up beforehand to what they need.

Do you know why it doesn't work well?

It's because the items listed in the CV / etc. are not necessarily comprehensive, and the matching process is one-sided and based from a position of limited data.

This question is an attempt at psychological buzzword bingo. When I'm looking for a job, I'm always trading multiple things off with one another. There is no single ranking. I'll consider what's on the table based on a fairly complex preference function. But this question is attempting to pigeonhole me a priori, before I know where which pigeonhole the company itself thinks it's looking for. I might be a great fit but have bad luck in my random choice of pigeonhole - random because my preference function isn't a ranked list of attributes, no more than my abilities are a list of technologies I've worked with.

The "drivers" change depending on the situation and as such this question is impossible to answer. They themselves are subject to the hierarchy of needs so to speak.

For example, if money is my number one driver, yet all positions satisfy that driver by offering more than I want, it ceases to become my main driver, and I move down the list.

It's possible - in fact likely - that I receive one or more offers that fulfill all my drivers. At that point, I'm not making the decision based on these items, but might instead create a new driver - say, the chance to work on a space startup over a social media one - and use that to choose between the offers.

The answers you receive for this question aren't telling you the things they think you are telling you.

In addition to that, imagining anything is going to give you what the candidate thinks they are like, not what they are actually like. If you stick to assessing actions that they have actually done, you'll get a better idea of what they will do in the future, rather than what they think they will do. My experience has told me that - sadly - few people know themselves well at all.

Agreed. I couldn't answer this question without the answer being a very complicated and branching flowchart.

If I were choosing between a job that paid $120k and one that paid $110k, the money wouldn't even factor into it, but if I were choosing between a job that paid $110k and $250k, then the money would certainly factor into it. Which isn't to say that I'd automatically choose the $250k job, but that the $110k job would have to score MUCH better on other factors.

The criteria I'd use in evaluating which job to take is way too fluid to be boiled down to a list of 3-5 things.

This kind of interview question really pisses me off. It's basically an attempt at amateur psychologizing in the interview process, and since the questioner is generally completely unqualified to seriously analyze the answer, the reaction generally has nothing to do with "corporate culture" but everything to do with the prejudices and preferences of the interviewer. Sometimes those prejudices are trivial ("oh, he cares about external noise and so do I") but often they are windows through which more serious cultural and gender prejudices sneak in.

I mean, so if the interviewee says that healthcare is incredibly important because they have a sick child, that doesn't tell you anything at all about how well they'll do at the job (but hiring managers often have strong feelings one way or another about the importance of family). And so what if you manage to trick them into saying they felt unappreciated at their last job: you have no idea what the last job was really like, what information could you possibly gain?

It's true that questions like this can be very revealing. They seldom review anything relevant about the interviewee, but they do reveal that the hiring manager is an incompetent jerk.

Immediate alarm bells ringing. As an interviewer, you do not want to know that. Whenever a candidate would mention something that revealed a lifestyle choice or other circumstance that was or might be covered by discrimination legislation, I'd have to painstakingly fill out the HR forms so if I rejected them, all our bases were covered. Otherwise it was a simple one liner, like "weak X skills".

I really hate this kind of questions. It will make any candidate feel like they're being tricked, and any "wrong answer" (look at the list there of "externalities") will surely be confronted with plenty more follow-up questions. I don't see how this would select the right person for a job. You want to know if they fit in (company culture, your "externalities") and you want to know if they'll be capable of doing the job, that's all. Why should one be required to bare their soul, check any privacy at the door and jump through hoops for a job?

I'd reply:

Since I have to assess this opportunity using the process you seek to understand, I'd prefer to keep that to myself.

That's your discretion but for the sake of argument, what's the value in keeping that information private?

If both the candidate and the employer are honest in communicating their priorities in regard to what they hope to get out of the relationship it allows both parties to better understand each other. Additionally, assuming they are sufficiently aligned, such discussion allows both parties to focus on things that matter to everybody involved and not waste time quibbling over things nobody cares about.

Try a simpler example to understand the value. Imagine employer asks you in the interview "what's the minimum salary you are willing to accept for this position? Come on, just be honest - tell me what you want to make"

PS. In a perfect world every job posting would state compensation, all perks, and an honest and detailed description of work environment. And every interview would consist of just one simple question: "are you qualified to do the job?". Unfortunately, the world we live in is a bit more complicated.

Yeah, give me all the information I need to take all of the advantage.

Trading off something you pretend to care about for something you actually care about is one standard negotiating ploy.

If everybody is honest about their priorities, does the question need to be asked at all? Why wouldn't the interviewer, or even the job ad/posting/req/etc. itself, list them?

I think this is a great question - the ensuing conversation can tell the interviewee as much about the place they'll be working as it can the interviewer about the candidate. I think the point isn't there's a "right" or "wrong" answer, as much as it's a test for cultural and directional fit - presumably, it's better for everyone involved to figure out if the company and the candidate have completely different near-term or long-term goals.

I understand why someone would hate this kind of question, but ultimately the point of any interview is to evaluate the candidate as a match for a particular role and position. I've always been told that there is not such thing as a bad candidate, only a bad fit. I find that it's helpful to think of this in those terms. Also, I really do mean that there isn't the one "correct" answer.

The best interview question I ever got asked was, "What's your favorite algorithm?" I was completely and utterly taken aback: I'd never been asked such a thing before, and had no answer whatsoever.

So I reached back into my past hobby work, and pulled out "lottery scheduling". A 30-40 minute conversation on the description, performance, trade-offs, implementation trade-offs, features and misfeatures of lottery scheduling ensued.

This worked more brilliantly as a way to interview than anything else I'd ever been through, because it gave me and my experience a place to shine. Most interviews really don't. They are idiot-test after idiot-test, designed to wash out bad hackers, but in the process producing a crop of Most Assuredly Not Idiots who may not actually be good, while accidentally washing out some really good hackers who, for example (first-hand experience), wrote a recursive function instead of a while-loop and a Stack<T>.

If you want good, give good a chance to shine. If you want not-bad, keep stacking on the idiot tests.

I've asked, "what's your favorite part of math?" for the same reason. Something open-ended, but allowing the person being interviewed to be on their home turf. Seems more fair than only focusing on a topic I happen to know backwards and forwards, but that they, through happenstance, might not.

This can get at a part of creativity that's independent from questions about, say, the last project someone worked on.

One drawback with that phrasing, which is the one I've used, is that "favorite" can cause lockup, because choosing that one thing can be hard in real-time.

I would expect that the answers to this question are highly susceptible to the availability heuristic, and would change massively based on priming. Talk about office environment for 30 seconds, then ask this question; talk about motivation for 30 seconds, then ask this question; for the same person, I'd be willing to bet you'd get completely different answers, the first on your "external" things, the second on your "internal" things.

So I don't think it is as useful for placing someone within a coordinate system as you think. It's too easily led astray, and won't have a lot of consistency over time. Your interpretation of the answer will have much of the qualities of a Rorschach test - but on yourself, not the candidate. You can read into it whatever you like.

I'd find it somewhat offensive for a simple reason: because it presumes to psychoanalyze me, to try and figure out what makes me tick. Being a person with an ego, I like to think I'm slightly more subtle than that. So the thought of this question coming up in an interview makes me curl my lip in contempt. I doubt I'd consider an offer from someone who tried this technique.

I would immediately thank the interviewer(s) for his or her time, offer to shake hands and leave.

My reasoning is that if they want to manipulate me in an interview, chances are they would spend too much time manipulating me in my work. I respond far better to direct, honest questions. Ask me honestly and I reward that with the truth. I would tell them this if they asked. They would have their answer, and I would have demonstrated its truth.

Is that a manipulation in its self?

I totally agree. He even admits as such that this is the purpose of the question:

  "Instead the question ... taps something deeper and more
  closely held.  ... If I know what matters to them, I can
  right away tell if the same things matter to ...
  the organization at large."

In other words: "expose something tender and honest, so that we can exploit it as directly as possible."

I really don't see how this is manipulative, who exactly are they trying to fool? The "tapping into something deeper" isn't some tricksy ploy to reveal more than you want, it just means the question is crafted to address several layers of discussion about what you're looking for, all at once.

Unless you're trying to dig into their compensation priorities so you can lowball them in the right areas, this is just a question aimed at seeing how well they'd fit in to the company in terms of their own career/strategic goals, working environment, QA/testing standards, etc. I'd rather get those things out there in the interview and find out "Oh, yeah we have source control, and staging/dev servers, but I'd say our devs push about half their code changes straight to production via scp right off of their workstations. Saves time that way.", rather than on my second week when I've made X number of changes and commitments in my lifestyle & career for this job.

Well, actually, that's the whole point of the people side of an interview: to understand the human on the other side of the table

It's not exactly exploiting. It's ensuring goal alignment and team alignment.

It's better for everyone if misaligned people don't work together.

> My reasoning is that if they want to manipulate me in an interview, chances are they would spend too much time manipulating me in my work.

What is manipulative about the question? The poster mentions trying to get interviewees to talk about things, or to think in ways, that they wouldn't normally. I suppose that's manipulative, but I wouldn't think of it as deceptive in the way that your comment seems to me to imply.

The manipulation is that the questioner is asking a question to get an answer which will be used to answer an unasked question, when asking the actual question would be easier and open. (Hope that makes sense)

Its like asking what your favourite colour is and implying life style from it. Fine if you are doing a medical psychological test, because the patient doctor trust exists, but, IMHO, not fine for a mere job interview. OK, the CIA or MI5 can play at that, but not a bog standard IT job.

(Just so you understand where I am coming from; this sort of psychological manipulation is an interest of mine, from advertising to political speech to NLP parlour tricks. So I will happily accept accusations of over sensitivity to this and an exaggerated position. I accept my argument is extreme)

I can certainly see your point, but the article seemed to me to be describing the manipulation done by a psychologist, not a con artist; that is, the interviewer is trying to simulate a natural conversational environment to allow the interviewee to speak freely, not trying to trick the interviewee into revealing something he or she wants to keep secret. (EDIT: As Gnolfo said better about 6 hours ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3726756)

I guess that my reaction is motivated by not understanding what the actual, unasked question is. It seems to me that the interviewer is asking pretty much what he or she wants to know. Would the question be more palatable if it came with more of a preface about how the response would be interpreted?

P.S. Rather than asking about favourite colours, one may ask about fish. http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/87/7950.html

For many people, an honest answer to this question has to include partner/family considerations, which aren't at all appropriate for an interviewer to be asking about.

I'd only ever ask this question by first making clear that I only want to know what you're looking for in a workplace or career goals.

If I got asked this, I'd tell them that the things on the top of my list aren't things I'm willing to discuss with them, at least until I've established a friendship with them , and then tell them what I'm looking for in a workplace, team, and product.

One of the pieces of advice that is drilled into anyone that is looking to improve their interview skills is to _never_ criticize previous employers. This question practically begs for that. As a result, a hiring manager is practically guaranteed to get awkward stilted answers from candidates who are trying desperately to frame their response in a way that doesn't criticize the previous employer.

It is all a head-game, sadly.

Candidates never really know if their dealing with someone who expects smooth, calculated responses or if they're dealing with someone who expects brutal uncomfortable truth.

It's simple really - if the recruiter expects smooth, calculated responses, chances are the company sucks - so, by being sincere, you just avoided a potentially frustrating experience of working for them.

Since I ask this all the time, I can vouch that it rarely results in the candidate criticizing their previous employer (unless the previous employer did something truly egregious).

This is like asking a poker player to show you his cards before you bet. Sorry but no thanks.

Exactly, which is why skilled players will do something called bluff when asked such a noob question.

This could get meta fast. Employer knowingly asking a noob question, expecting a candidate to bluff. Candidate knowing the employer is expecting a bluff, and making their answer believable as a bluff. Employer evaluating the believability of the bluff...

Which makes the question fairly worthless, if the good answers are bluff.

In general you are much better off just asking what you want to know. "What kinds of things have you enjoyed about your previous jobs? What kinds of things have annoyed you about them?"

One important take-away from his question, as he mentioned in the article, is how influenced the person is by events that are difficult for him/her, or anybody else, to control. In general, the more you tie your satisfaction to things within your control the happier you are likely to be.

But the problem with trying to ascertain such things by making up "fake" scenario questions is you can't control how your question is being interpreted. And when you don't know what question is being answered, you are randomly interpreting the response. And that means the question is, literally, a waste of time. Again, you are better off asking a direct question.

His question would probably work, however, if the candidate actually does have such a list for determining which offer to take. If this is the case, the candidate should hopefully recognize that s/he is (or could be) in a negotiation and treat his/her answers appropriately.

If an interviewer asked me this then sat back grinning all over themselves like they'd just knocked it out of the park with this ingenious keyhole to my soul, it'd definitely make my decisions on whether or not I wanted to work there easier. Still lol'ing at using the word "imagine" to knock someone off script.

My favorite interviewing question is: When was the last time you used your skills/ability outside of a work context to make your life easier?

I feel like it's important to have people who think practically about the kinds of problems they feel like solving and whether they actually make an attempt to solve them. There's nothing wrong with leaving work at the office but we tend to look people who are extremely passionate about technology in general, not just people who use it as a paycheck.

One of my friends always asked "what was the last thing you programmed that wasn't school or job related". He didn't care what is was (e.g. "I wrote and Excel macro for my Dad"), he just wanted any answer to show that they used the skills for themselves.

I like your phrasing better.

I created an account just to reply to this because I found so many errors in its logic. First, the question is not simple: it's convoluted (and there's a typo). An question that would have actually been simple is, "what are your top 3-5 decision drivers for accepting an offer from a company/between multiple companies?"

Second, leaning on the word "imagine" does nothing to "liberate" your candidate from scripted answers; it's a common way of introducing a hypothetical and could be replaced by any number of stock phrases. If you put too much stock in that phrase for the question-design, you're thinking shallowly, and doing a disservice to yourself, the interviewee, and language itself. The ironic is that in posting the question, especially if it circulates widely, you're guaranteed to eventually get scripted answers. Third, what you focus on as externalities vs. interalities seem interrelated, e.g., "I want to do X" is the same as saying "I want to work for a company that allows me to do X".

I understand the desire for interviewers to get past scripted answers and find easier ways to select the right people for the job, but questions like this aren't silver bullets. I also find it funny that people in software would be so against interviewees having scripted answers; it impresses me that people can quickly come up with quick answers to difficult questions, not because

Not wanting to end with all criticisms, I do think the last point about a question like this revealing things about the current/prior employment. If you get people talking about things they like or dislike, unless they give you patently stock crap, they're drawing off recent or salient experience.

You can’t script imagining, so it forces them away from the script and toward considering the question from scratch.

You can't script imaginging, but you can script your answer to this question...

I think it's a reasonable question. I might try it. One I've started asking recently that's interesting is "tell me about some interesting programming books/articles you've read recently." If they have ready answers, it indicates that they're really engaged in the field. If they come up blank, it's not a good sign, though admittedly, they may be in a lull or have other priorities, so the question can't be viewed in isolation.

I think all of these questions can be gamed to some extent, if a candidate really does a lot of research/preparation. Of course. that someone is willing to put in the time to research/prepare for interviews is probably a good sign. But just because I've learned to say "I love solving problems!" doesn't mean I'm great at solving problems.

Hence, when interviewing I prefer to focus on technical problems.

See, my first thought on reading the question is that this guy was fishing for answers to the sorts of questions he's not legally allowed to ask—relationship status, family plans, and so on. This is reinforced (at least to me, unless I'm misreading) by the comment that "If I know what matters to them, I can right away tell if the same things matter to me (the hiring manager) and the organization at large."

So, aside from being manipulative, which lots of interview questions are, this one also struck me as unethical and borderline illegal.

A pity your comment is so low on the list. This isn't even borderline illegal - at least here in South Africa, if you ask a question like this of me and I don't get the job, and I think it's because I mentioned my 10 kids in answering this question, I have pretty solid grounds to charge this as a unfair discriminatory question and seek recourse from the CCMA (the legal entity that deals with these sorts of issues in SA).

In fact I've heard of many cases being taken to the CCMA for this very reason.

Can interviewees ask you the same question? I'd imagine money would be at the very top. If it isn't, my salary requirements just increased.

When I'm hiring, money is a real an notable concern. But it is rarely the TOP concern.

I can't speak for others, but when I have a candidate ask challenging questions during the interview, I give them bonus points. In fact, looking to see what questions the candidate asks is one of the basic factors in my assessment.

I'm going to drastically oversimplify, but there are two types of interviewees, and two types of interviewers, but only one of the four matches leads to a deadly clash as expressed by many other users here in their disdain for the question.

Interviewees: There are people who Need a Job Now and interviewing all over and will likely say yes to almost any opportunity, and there are people who are casually looking around seeing what else is out there, they are in no hurry and they can easily afford to say no. The first type needs money to live, they view themselves as a wage slave; the second type could just as well go start a startup but instead choose to rent out their brain for someone else's use (and they view themselves as this way, renting a service).

Interviewers: The first type, they do a competence test and they do a culture/personality test. This can be accomplished in an informal luncheon or the like. The second type, they pull questions like these, trying to extract as much information from the candidate's personal life as possible--perhaps even asking for a Facebook password--or they put the candidate through coding hoops that don't really test talent but memorization and retention of Java-school-undergrad-level material that's just a single Google away. (Though personally I wouldn't mind being asked to implement the binary search correctly in a statically-sized-int language, especially since even in Java the official version was wrong for quite some time due to integer overflow. But this is just a piece of trivia I enjoy, I don't know if I would ask it unless the job required a good familiarity with architecture and language detail...)

The job-hunters will fit fine with either interviewer. They'll talk at length about their own mothers if they think it will help them get the job offer. The casual brain-renting candidates only match with the casual interviewer, however, and will happily walk away from the nosy interviewers. It's nice to see that principle at work in this community, even if there are some that oppose; we need more people in general, not just hackers, willing to say no to jobs even at the start of the interview stage when they sense something they don't like on principle.

No way on earth I answer that question as asked, cos quite frankly , how I decide on which job offer to accept is none of your business. More than likely, I would answer with "Are you asking me to list the things I find attractive about this job?"

Ethics aside, isn't telling what the interviewer wants to hear the optimal strategy for a rational candidate? I mean, if your goal is to get the job, why would you be honest with this type of question when it might put you at a disadvantage?

What's unethical about giving a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical question?

That's right, but often the goal is to look for a right job, not for any job. In that case, sincere answer to the question could help forsee any number of problems (like culture/values mismatch etc.), which benefits both candidate and recruiter.

It could help but it's not necessary. You can easily get that information by researching the company, asking questions to the interviewer, asking questions to current and past employees, etc. If you find out on your own there is a culture mismatch, you probably still want to get that offer just in case.

Not quite. Your goal in an interview is to get an offer. Then you decide, when you know what your options are.

Most rational people would be willing to take less than their perfect job in order to pay the rent...

You may also have a goal of learning more about the company, so that you can make the later decision more effectively. The goals must be balanced off one another.

This goal can be more dominant if you already have a pretty good offer (perhaps continuing at your present employer), so you only benefit from passing this interview if this company is better.

I wouldn't have a problem with that question and I'd answer: Team, scope for promotion/exploring other roles within the company in the future and commutability - in that order. Don't know what that says about me (or my interviewing technique) but that's how I'd automatically respond (because it's true).

The problem with the author of this is that there seems to be a smug arrogance in that he thinks he has invented a super special unique question which no one will have considered in advance, or have something in their answer kit that can be quickly and easily altered to fit the question. Which is exactly what you and some others have quite rightly done.

It is wise to ask foundational, self-reflective questions in an interview. At the very least it gives insight into the interviewer's level of self-awareness, or at least whether or not they are comfortable introspecting. And, based on the book "Pragmatic Thinking & Learning" by Andy Hunt it seems that introspection is an essential skill to anyone who has "learned how to learn".

Knowing who you are and what drives you is a very difficult question for most people. Most of us don't take the time to seriously ask the question of what drives us. And yet, once we find those drivers, why not be honest about that insight? What do we have to lose? Isn't this the kind of information we should be shouting from the rooftops, to find like-minded people and to express ourselves most fully?

That said, I would choose to ignore the rather obvious attempt to make me reveal details about past employers and answer the question as if it was about purely about my principles and motivations.

For the record, I want to use technology to combat the ever-growing tyranny of complexity, which is the source of an extraordinary volume of what I term petty injustice. I don't believe in the efficacy of central authority, so my work must empower individuals to take action for themselves - to select simpler contracts for example. It is my belief that fighting for a principle I believe in is the most crucial aspect of selecting a team. That said, competent work-mates and managers, a viable technology platform and good compensation are also important, if only from a simple, practical standpoint.

> For the record, I want to use technology to combat the ever-growing tyranny of complexity, which is the source of an extraordinary volume of what I term petty injustice. I don't believe in the efficacy of central authority, so my work must empower individuals to take action for themselves - to select simpler contracts for example.

You sound a lot like me. Somehow I woke up one day and started seeing groups as a network of nodes with poorly designed interfaces. ;)

Good heavens, we should talk then. Drop me a line at javajosh@gmail.com

I would be interested to see how other Hacker News readers would answer this question. Feel free to post an answer as a reply to this comment.

My top 3-5 would be something like (not necessarily in exactly this order)

1) Culture. I want to work in an environment where excellence is expected, and where employees are empowered and engaged.

2) Physical environment. No "open plan" crap for me. Show me open plan or low walled cubicles, I'm on my way out the door with a polite "thanks, but no thanks" more often than not. The only way I'd accept this would be if I'd rarely be in the office, ala a consulting gig.

3) Money. I expect to be paid fairly... I don't need or demand to be the highest paid guy around, or anything, but if you try to pay me a low-ball salary, you're telling me something very important about what your values are and how you treat employees.

4) Location. I hate long commutes. Being closer to my home is a huge win.

5) Problems. If the problems you're working on are interesting and challenging that's a big perk in my book.

My list would be exactly the same, though I'd reorder it slightly.

My decision drivers: (1) Will I personally be able to make a difference for the company (and the world at large) in this position? (2) Who will I be working with? Do I like them? Will I learn from them? (3) Do I have the skills needed to excel at this job? (4) Will I get reasonable remuneration in pay/benefits/opportunities?

1. The quality of the other employees

2. The quality AND purpose of the products being built

3. The quality of management

4. Required hours.. Do you want me to work 70 hours a week? If so, thanks but no thanks. I'm a team player and willing to pull extra hours when the occasion arises, but I have other hobbies that I like to indulge in.

5. Salary

My decision drivers: (context: I have just 1 year of web dev under my belt).

1) How much responsibility and ownership will I have over my projects or pieces of the project. 2) I want to be surrounded by a smart team (both coworkers and managers). 3) Will I be challenged? 4) Money.

Disclaimer: We write distributed systems software.

The question I always ask of programmers is this:

You have n=10 computers in a cluster. Every one of them is connected to every other (but not to itself), using bidirectional TCP connections. How many TCP connections total in the cluster?

If they can't figure it out, I change it to n=4, then n=3 and ask them to work their way up from there.

Is that supposed to be a trick question?

I can't tell if the answer is n(n-1)/2 or just n(n-1), because I'm unsure whether you would be looking to count a "bidirectional TCP connection" as 1 or 2 TCP connections...

When I give this question I always make sure it's clear that I mean the "/2" case by saying something like "so there's only connection between each pair of computers" or "so you only count one connection between each pair computers".

Anyways, the point is to weed out people who say nonsense like 10^9 and 9^10 and 10! and whatever else pops into their head. In cases when people give these incorrect answers, it's always clear that they're just guessing, and when I tell them it's wrong they stress out and that's that. They refuse to even answer the n=3 case, because they've already given up.

The reason we found this a good filter is because people who are unwilling to think a little to give the right answer, are usually unimpressive in other parts of the interview, too. Ie. they give stock answers, and if we ask more or would like to drill down, they give up. That's our limited experience.

Yeah, I wasn't sure the way the question was posed either if it was n(n-1)/2 or n(n-1).

The bidirectional piece needs to be clarified in the way the question is posed.

Perhaps it is how you are communicating that... I have no idea what you are looking for. Are you really asking the answer to 9 x 9?

Am I missing something?

It's new years eve and the bell chimes. You are with 9 other people. How often do you toast, if everyone toasts with everyone else once?

for n=2, are you counting 1 total connection between 2 computers, or EACH conection from a server to another meaning 2 total connections? Assuming each connection, is it simply n! or 3628800 for n=10, or is my math wrong?

It's not factorial.

SPOILER (do not click): http://johnmcmanus7742.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/calculate-fu...

I also thought it would be factorial at first, but a moment's thought proves that wrong. Imagine adding a new computer to an already connected cluster. How many new connections?

It's a great question...for a performance review where there is rapport between the employee and employer.

In an interview, anything one says can be used against you. Those who engage in amateur psychobabble are most likely to do so.

To put it another way, it's sincere once salary and benefits have been negotiated.

If you are a job hunter, you should know the answer to this because you've already thought about it.

I usually start a job hunt with a spreadsheet so I can track progress and also scoring along my key metrics. When I get asked questions similar to this, I reveal that I have thought about this deeply and discuss my criteria and how I operationalize things like "good coworkers". So far, the reaction to this revelation has been quite telling about the person on the other side of the table; I have gotten everything from disbelief to disgust to admiration. The marginal cost of being organized (and combatting things like recency bias or charisma) is minuscule compared to the marginal gain.

I'd love to hear more about your criteria and metrics and how you operationalize them, especially for less-tangible things like good coworkers.

metrics: position, notes on boss, code love, product social good, location, $, required hours, good coworkers,

Operationalizing good coworkers: while evaluating "good" I try to take notes about skills, morality, humor and pre-existing relationships. Skills are the easiest and I like to get a sense of their skill level relative to mine for overlapping skills and also the breadth of skills that they have that I do not. I have found that morality is binary: are there any red flags? Humor is trickier. I like to work with people that enjoy themselves but not at the expense of others. About the last point; there has only been one group that can have gentle ribbing between coworkers that wasn't an excuse to be mean, and it was a lot of fun, but ultimately I know that I changed the list of people that I would want to invite into that environment because it can be off-putting for people and other people would be tempted to shift the dynamic for the worst. Self-deprecation, puns, deriding microsoft and your own old code:yes. Fat jokes: no.

I don't gather info about every metric for every company, as red flags short-circuit the process.

Gee, I'd value an employer who values definitional clarity about the work, and who is uninterested in psychological manipulation. The managers should be very very smart. Also it should be possible to build on what you know over time (somewhat like compound interest), instead of dissipating and scattering your focus on unrelated projects and duties that undermine growth. If there is concern about "silos" then there should not be a management silo that can decide to restructure departments and reassign positions without advance warning. And the statement by Joseph Stiglitz that "change has no inherent value" ought to be internalized.

I have no problem with answering a question like this nor do I really understand why people are so upset over it. When I'm at an interview I try to be genuine and honest.. I'm not going to worry about fitting my answers to what you want them to be in an ideal employee.

I'm also not looking to debate/argue over whether or not it's a good question. But here would be my response:

1. The quality of the other employees

2. The quality AND purpose of the products being built

3. The quality of management

5. Salary

I would put money near the top for ethical reasons [1] and then feel the need to justify it awkwardly. How much I make is very important to me because it determines how much I can give to effective charities [2]. But this doesn't mean I'll be a bad employee who's "only in it for the money".

[1] http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/make-money.html

[2] http://givewell.org/charities/top-charities

A better question that I always ask, before any other questions in the interview: "Why do you want to work here?" Then I reject any answer that's not somewhat unique to our business. "You could do that anywhere, is there anything specific to this place?" Then I probe the final answer to make sure it's not BS.

Bad answers: I've heard you make a lot of money here, I want to work on software development, I like Java. Better: I have friends who've told me about it and it sounds like the kind of place I want to work. The best answer: I understand a lot about how your business works and it is a win-win for me to be here for the following reasons... despite the following minuses...

I was playing Resistance this weekend for the first time. Essentially Resistance is Mafia with rules, blue vs. red. One of the first things I did was ask people, "are you a spy?" Like a melodramatic detective. I think there is an instinct to try this first, and win the game on the basis of a twitching lip or "say no, nod yes" sort of reaction.

This may work on easily startled people. Same with slamming your hand on the table in a security clearance interview.

A smarter candidate will figure out you're playing games, which defeats the purpose. I think you also want to consider the reaction of the candidate after the interview. Suppose they answer honestly, then figure out what you did to them.

There's a big difference between trying to learn a prospective employee's motivations the old fashioned way and trying to trick it out of them. Especially when a highly motivated employee can be lowballed in a salary negotiation.

> A smarter candidate will figure out you're playing games, which defeats the purpose. I think you also want to consider the reaction of the candidate after the interview. Suppose they answer honestly, then figure out what you did to them.

It won't make any difference. A smarter candidate would know you're playing a game but not care. They would give you their honest answer because if you were not interested you wouldn't hire them and they would not care because of the manipulation, and if you were interested in hiring them they would not be as interested because of the manipulation but would understand that despite their honest answer on a personal question you were impressed by them -- this would help even things out.

It's win/win.

That's an even stranger question, given how little I know about a given business before I have worked there. I can't help but think my answer would be, "I don't know, I've only seen you guys in person for about five minutes. Why do you want to work here? What about this place makes you smile every day?"

We all know the reality of the situation. This idea that the word "imagine" somehow frames the question in a different light is nonsense.

My first response would be "Ok, so you're asking me what my job priorities are" and go from there. Let's bring things back to reality, and be honest about what each other is doing.

Also, the question is a classic rehearsal question and its use may be limited. There may be a lack of honesty and even with an honest answer a person's priorities are subject to change.

I think the 'imagine' asks for an insincere and interviewer pleasing answer.

The way to get a real answer is to ask about a real situation.

Have you ever had two job offers to consider? What were they? What was interesting about each of them? Which did you pick? After you worked there how did it go? Would you evaluate them differently based on your experience of how it worked out.

Get real detail about real situations and it is much harder to fake. At least that is what they taught us at 'big company' that I last worked at.

During an interview both sides should be asking questions in an attempt to explore whether the position is a good fit for the prospective employee. If as an interviewee I'm free to ask any question I want I will get to the questions that help me explore the nature of the company & position. That's the whole point of the interview process

Asking me to prioritize my decision making process into 3-5 neat little bullet points ranges from annoying and insulting. In asking the question the interviewer sounds like this:

Interviewer: "I'm assuming you haven't thought through your requirements for being an employee of my company. I could engage you in conversation like a normal human being to find out what you want. But I'm too lazy for that. Please summarize what you want in a convenient format that I can easily understand."

Interviewee: "This guy doesn't like to think. He values simple answers over process & conversation. I might have one 'bullet point' that requires a dozen questions to figure out. I might have a dozen bullet points that could be answered with two questions. Instead of talking to me he wants me to tell him what I want to hear. I'm outta here!"

.... see?

If they ask for your input and then move on to the next question, absolutely. But at that point you're blaming the tool and not the user. The conclusion to draw is the interviewer is lazy / doesn't know what they're doing if they ask a question like that and move right on without inviting 2-way discussion over it.

The article clearly intends this to be a jumping off point to talk about what you're looking for in an employer and work environment in more detail. And it gets the ball rolling a little faster rather than just saying, "talk about what you're looking for in an employer and work environment in more detail".

I can see the value as an icebreaker - and to potentially knock an interviewee out of the sycophant zone and into a more candid state of mind.

Context is everything. Re-reading the article I think I may have been hyper-parsing the question....

Heaven forbid you, as potential employee, should summarize what you want in a convenient format! That would be communication, instead of sparring, or gamesmanship.

My point wasn't to encourage obfuscation or one-up-man-ship but to encourage communication. My point is to stand against formulaic questions that tell neither party anything of value.

This is one of those questions where the answers are only relevant and understandable to the candidate themselves and even the act of answering reveals only the work-life experience of the candidate.

For the above reasons, it naturally favors older or extremely confident candidates. If this is used as a primary positive filter for employment, then it is possible to discard a lot of talent, especially young talent.

In addition, the value ambiguity and personal depth of this question could confuse or incite negative emotions for many people, including even those with extensive work-life experience. Even if this question were used purely as a filler in order to attempt to relax the candidate, it would most likely achieve the opposite response.

Therefore, if I were a hiring manager, I would never use such a broad question since you could achieve the same with a series of technical questions, resume-focussed questions, specific value questions, or a cup of coffee/tea/hot chocolate/water...

To illustrate my point, my answer would be:

1. Growth.

2. Association.

3. Skill set.

4. Balance.

5. Compensation.

What is "growth"? "Association?"

My answer would be: that's not how I would choose as it would box me into only using a limited number of parameters. Each offer must be viewed and compared as a whole, where multiple smaller benefits may outweigh a larger one so cannot be eliminated from the comparison.

What do you do with the answer to this question once you have it? If I were on hiring committee and got this in an interview report I'd be annoyed. I cannot think of any plausible answer that would make me more or less inclined to hire the candidate.

In fact, let's make that a challenge. Can anyone here think of an answer to this question that a candidate might plausibly give which would effect your hiring decision?

Employees Just Want to be appreciated, and the best way to measure appreciation is with money.

Any answer you get to that question won't negate the simple reality in the statement above. Just to reiterate because it is too important to forget!

Your Employees (and all people) Just want to be APPRECIATED! and the money you pay them is the best way to measure how much you appreciate them!!!

"That's a great question! I wish more companies cared about this sort of stuff. To save us both some time, while I'm writing these down, why don't you write down the 5 most important metrics you are going to weigh if you are deciding between multiple candidates. When we're done we'll just swap papers, OK?"

It's a good point, I think a lot of job hunters are desperate for a job. They feel like they need to answer all questions correctly. But they don't feel like they are entitled to ask those same questions back.

I have never done this but I would love to ask some tricky code puzzles to a tech interviewer after they have asked me to do their puzzles. If I have to prove that I'm good, then I'd like proof that I'm joining a team that is equally good.

I would answer "goodbye" and then leave.

I think the best interview question to ask is "what question do you think I should ask?"

That tells a lot about a candidate, and it gives him/her a chance to talk about what they're good at. It also shows some respect, which is a good thing since it's hard to find and hire good people.

Meh, not so much. The interviewer should be to telling the interviewee the requirements for the position and asking incisive questions that determine if these requirements are met. I can't tell you want you want

While I am sure that the author believes that this question drives his decision, the research indicates that most employers make a decision within five minutes - and the main driver of that decision is the extent to which the candidate is like the interviewer.

I would respond with the third thing being money obviously matters no matter what. That way in the negotiation you can ask for more while citing the question

Sorry, who is this guy, and what proof does he have that this is a system worth using or even writing about? Seems like linkbait to me.

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I guess you haven't investigated the pay scale and working conditions of wall street lately. Programmers there can make a lot more than elsewhere but at the cost of any possible social life.

The question tells us a great deal about the interviewer, though. He's insecure, pompous, pedantic. Still want to work here?

>The wording of the question is important, so follow it closely.

'Imagine that they way you go

Do I get extra credit?

This is a bullshit question. If I heard it, I would immediately know that that place will not pay well.

I'd ask the interviewer to answer his own question. He would say something like "smart team, interesting project, ability to work on side projects". And this would be pure bullshit. Why? Because if someone offers him a billion dollars per year, he will take it under any conditions. And so would I.

Holy shit, what is the drama with this question?

An employer is trying to figure out the motivations of the worker. How is this wrong? How is setting up a scenario manipulative? Why is everyone so hostile to this?

I kind of like the question, only because I like stuff that isn't run of the mill.

I'd also note that, if the question is about 'imagining' certain scenarios, then can the answer really be that honest to start with?

I.e., it's easy to think that i'd do X or X in Y circumstance, but if you ask hypotheticals, you'll never get a qualitative answer. I'm sure this scenario actually happens often, but imagining can mean you're imagining an interview with NASA as an astronaut and with McDonald's as a burger flipper.

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