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Comment by rightbyte | Hacker News Reader

"For interviews, it's not what you've done, it's how you explain what you've done."

Ye no. Just no.

Any interview advice that is not some general "behave and for God's sake hide your flaws" or meta discussion how to game them are bad.

"[Example] We needed to remove the cancellation feature because customers were confused by the self-service cancellation function."

Haha ... ye that is a funny example but I don't know if it was on purpose. Show how you are able to delude yourself into doing enshittification is probably a good advice for many positions.

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Behave and hide your flaws is terrible advice.

Why? It is a good advice which can help to get a better position, higher salary, etc.

It’s not good advice. You have two goals during an interview: make someone like you and convey confidence in the stuff you’re being asked to do. “Behave and hide flaws” sounds like the advice of the most utterly fungible candidate for a low skill or entry level job.

You should be trying to have an enjoyable conversation.

What are the chances that someone will like you if you're not behave and show your flaws?

High if they value sincerity, and your flaws aren't "I'm a psycho" or something that's completely within your control to fix.

I has different experience during many rounds of interviews, especially for big companies.

Hiring managers want you to be sincere, but would lie to you many times during the process. No one will tell truth like: we are looking for person who likes overtime, will work under psycho manager and with 10-years old legacy application.

Perhaps that’s because you’re interviewing yourself into grunt positions that don’t require social skills in interviews.

Behaving is not something you should need advice for. Yes, you should “behave”. Don’t shit your pants either. But if anyone comes out of an interview and says “well that guy was well behaved” I’m going to have a very unimpressed opinion.

You should 100% be comfortable showing your flaws.

Most are not in the position to behave like divas.

You got like 1s to guess what the interviewer wants you to be. Like, if he has dreadlocks you probably don't want to be uptight and stiff etc. So it always depends on the situation of course, but on average "behave and hide your flaws" is probably best.

I feel like you’re saying “like a diva” to mean basic social skills

Its great advice if you have no idea what youre doing and have been cheating/faking your way in mostly. When you really dont have any idea, keeping silent and applying what little you know could get you that job.

I've seen people who are pretending to know what theyre talking about say the most crazy shit when asked casually about something they did - like "my UI might be laggy because the server is slow" (the ui was completely clientside and offline). It would have been better if he had shut up because his UI was fine.

does this article not qualify as "meta discussion of how to game them"?

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