There are two sides to an interview | Hacker News Reader

There are two sides to an interview

slepkin.substack.com

44 pointsmooreds28 comments

Some of these questions seem a bit invasive. I've been interviewed by people I would have been a sibling of on the management chart, and I've interviewed the same.

If I was asked this question with my manager on the call:

> “What kind of critical feedback have you heard from your manager? How often does that happen?”

I would be a bit uncomfortable, and I assume most people in that situation would range from very uncomfortable to a little uncomfortable. It's not a non-management team member's obligation to share things that are privately shared (likely in one-on-ones) about their own performance, just to pass some candidate's "filter".

I think interviewing your would-be manager is fair game, and interviewing non-management interviewers about overall experience working at the company is fine, but I don't see any value to this as a filter.

One could even turn it up a notch:

> (You, in an interview with your would-be manager, and one of their reports)

> You: What is one criticism of management at the company that you haven't already shared with them

Thanks for reading! Agreed, not all of these questions are a good fit for every interview. If you're in front of a panel of manager+team, “What kind of critical feedback have you heard from that guy sitting right there?" will be awkward and uninformative. But I maintain that it's a useful question to ask 1:1 with one of your potential teammates.

Do you seriously think asking the manager what critical feedback they've given and how often would work?

They could also claim, rightfully, that it would not be appropriate to answer, then deflect to some other talking point.

Also, asking a person what they're really like is not the best way to determine what that are actually like. If it worked that way, murder mysteries would be really, really dull.

> Do you seriously think asking the manager what critical feedback they've given and how often would work?

What do you mean "would work". I don't think whether something elicits a "good signal" makes it good to do. For the companies where there's tension between employees/managers, you're putting the person on the other end of the table in a tight position that has a lot of potential to sour their relationship with their manager

Everything is a data point.

How comfortable everybody is with that question is a data point. How guarded or upfront they answer it is a data point.

Here's a freebie: my manager's feedback to me is that I need to listen more at meetings (I've been on the project for a very long time, and I "have answers" for most regular questions; but I'm not going to always be right, so I need to more proactively leave space to let others put forward their thoughts and criteria before diving into solutioning). I'm actively working on it (I've printed it above my monitor:).

I'm comfortable sharing this widely including at an interview - it's a real, genuine, useful feedback. I'm proud that my manager takes time to coach me, and I will do my best to coach others.

Inasmuch as interviews are about fit for the role, it's data point, that as as a candidate one may or may not care about, whether the interviewer is comfortable with that question.

Interviewers will just lie to you. The authors of these guides seem to forget that.

If you want to get information, as a candidate, you have to get it by asking questions that leak information in side channels, because the direct answer is usually worthless.

I don’t doubt at all that this has happened to you, but as a counterpoint, in 35 years in the industry, I don’t remember ever having been lied to by an interviewer at a company that ended up hiring me. Of course I have no way of knowing for sure about companies that didn’t hire me.

Framing things in a positive light? Sure, but that doesn’t require lying.

I’ve also never once lied to a candidate as an interviewer, nor have I ever been asked to lie. More the opposite: when my employers have addressed this question at all over the years, it has always been to tell people to be truthful with candidates.

Even leaving aside the ethical question, it would be a bad move: if I deceive someone into joining my team, I’m the one who will have to suffer through a working relationship with someone who knows I lied to them from the first moment they met me.

Edit to add: I’ve definitely been lied to by recruiters. Just never by peers or managers.

In my experience, interviewers who would be peers at work are nearly always honest. Unless things are really dire, they don't have much incentive to hire someone who would be unhappy in the role.

Recruiters have lots of incentive to lie to you, and managers may have a hard time being straightforward about the bad parts of being on a team reporting to them (though this is less often due to outright lying to you).

Agree with all of this. Recruiters are... tricky. As you say, they're usually more comfortable lying than your potential peers are, so they're not a good source of information about the company's dirty laundry.

But they are perfect advocates. More than any other interviewer, the recruiter wants you to get hired. They don't care how well you perform on the job, they just want their number to be one higher! So they can tell you what the Hiring Manager's pet peeves are, and help you craft your story so it appeals to them.

Thanks for reading!

Not necessarily. I've done hundreds of interviews and other than some more invasive questions, I answer as truthfully as I can without spending 20 minutes going in-depth.

The real problem is that some will lie to you and you don't know if your interviewer is one of those. So you do need to try to verify at least some of what was said.

In your eye, what questions are well posed to leak information in side channels?

I'd say anything you can verify by:

* looking in public

* asking via friends of friends or acquaintances

* casually asking about in a different interview session

This could be stuff about development processes, current efforts, what processes are like, what issues they have and how they're working to remediate them.

You're not typically going to hear anyone say "this place is a trainwreck" on an interviewing committee, but you may be able to sense discordance or mismatching stories.

I also agree that the title is accurate, but most job seekers don't have the luxury of being selective. In my experience, anything less than asking softball questions may label you as "difficult".

Yes, I totally agree. Unless you're a unicorn candidate, the main focus is to get any interviews.

If they make it to the final stage (which may have been several hours of work), they should have a pretty good idea about the role.

What the author should add is salary negotiations, which is the hardest part of the process.

The title is very true and very often forgotten. Other advice is helpful too.

I've been part of interviews on company / hiring side for a decade now,and had hiring authority and lead interviews for half that time. Less than 10% of people ask any meaningful questions,and I'm not sure anybody ever came as prepared as the author suggests (while some interviews have indubitably been practice / uninvested ones, that's a given percentage only). At least for last 3-r years I've been actively inviting questions at multiple opportunities. At this point, asking good question at an interview is a meaningful data point to me because even will all of this advice, few people do it :-/

See here's the thing. I believe that you believe this :). But be honest. How open and truthful would your response be if a question was close to home. (I am guilty of this too as an interviewer). For example, what was the most political thing you had engaged in that resulted in surprises (a polite way of saying been thrown under the bus) or a game of thrones for someone you were close to (in the org). Id be very surprised if you actually did not invoke leadership principles somewhere.

Or if somebody asked you about getting to the next level id be very surprised if the answer was diverting from the script and did not mention (or read out) the different role specific rubriks?

Oh fair enough, but Honest Answer - If asked a pointed question, I'll put my answers in diplomatic language, but give it fairly straight. The reason why I'm reasonably confident about this is that even without their pointed questions, I do about 25 minutes of project challenges and constraints in 2nd interview typically. I've been accused of "trying to scare the candidates" lol, but I believe (rightly or wrongly!) that the right candidate for the right role will be excited to undertake challenges and opportunities if given the right information. I've been on the same team for a long time, so clearly I'm a bit of a believer, even if I try to be open / aware of downsides as well.

Mind you, I took the same approach to dating... be your best self, sure, but do be yourself, not somebody else. So I was clearly geeky starting minute 1 of first date. I took the long-game approach and it, eventually, worked out for me :). So I believe if you're looking for an actually right, long term fit, initial transparency is positive.

Heh, most people give me 5 minutes at the end of an hour long interview to "ask questions of the company" - there's no interest in a meaningful discussion; many people think you should be coming to the company with hat in hand.

Whenever scheduling interviews I tend to ask them to add 15-30 minutes to the expected time so that I'm sure to have time for my own questions.

Do you have a repository of questions you like to ask? Or are you able to come up with them at will?

Both, actually.

Most candidates I see don't even have 5 minutes worth of questions. Maybe it's just time budgeting based on the median expectation.

If I'm SUPER interested I might ask a question or two that came up organically in the interview. But it's the tinder swiping strategy: Swipe right on all, then spend time on those that already filtered you out. I'm not going to investigate deeply EVERY company that does an initial interview. By second round, sure, at that point there's an actual possibility I'll work there and I need to know what I'm getting into, but a good job search for me usually includes about 40 initial phone screens (I'm picky).

Here I was thinking the question, "Do you have anything to ask us?" was simply another opportunity for someone at Google to belittle you by demonstrating how they already know everything you could possibly ask.

After all, you are being interviewed because you should already know everything if you want to work there, as they do and so does everyone else who applied.

Not sure exactly how much sarcasm and where it is placed (always tricky in internet comms:), but yeah - I ask that question very genuinely and at several points in the interview. Questions may be about client relationship, team or technical challenges, progression, overtime, whatever.

I have read the rules enough that I feel confident I won't commit to anything I'm not authorized to commit to, but can share realistic good/bad/ugly to ensure a good fit.

What's a meaningful question to you? Genuinely asking. All I care about is what's the pay and what's management like. What do you feel I should care about and ask about in an interview?

Good question. If I were to craft a definition, I would say "genuine question not asked for forms sake or because a website said I should" :). A question that enhances our mutual understanding of the role and fit.

If those are the only two questions that are meaningful to you, that's fair enough.

(Depending on the role, one can take this any length of levels; anything is a data point! To your second question, there are roles where I am OK with person just caring about pay; and there are roles where I expect person caring about other things. FWIW, I have never even remotely hired or eliminated somebody based on questions they do or don't ask to any large percentage of the decision - but we are all human and everything is a data point, so I'd rather be conscious/upfront than subconscious/biased).

Here is a related article I read recently: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2022/09/questions-to-ask-pro...

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