Most jobs are pretty shitty, the idea that you need to demonstrate toxic positivity about how shitty it was is just so inauthentic.
Honestly, I get much better along with malcontents than with these "annoyingly positive" people. So, tastes differ.
> An interviewer can assume that most quality candidates are also aware of this dynamic and will wisely choose to represent the positive aspects of their job history.
Many highly qualified candidates are bad actors and/or bad self-promoters.
In Silicon Valley that is called a Founder.
Otherwise you will be forced to reject him because there might be a possibility that the problem was him.
Seems like you are hiring the best liars. Or at least the best at playing an arbitrary game of saying and not saying the correct things that won't trigger a rejection.
At this point, are you even needed? Maybe we could replace the interview process with a lottery system. Same result, less expensive.
Even if the complaints are about things which are individually valid, the pattern is toxic.
Imagine a sports team. After running around for 45 minutes you're all probably tired. Would you rather work with someone who says "I'm tired, it's hot in here" or someone who focuses on encouraging those around them and talking about the team's accomplishments?
Part of the interview is proving you can avoid griping and focus on positives for at least 30-60 minutes, which is an essential skill anywhere.
This is what literally makes tech workers go dream about farming.
When interviewing people, it’s usually possible to identify both extremes.
I’d prefer to hire someone who is not toxic. That goes for both extremes.
But what a person chooses to focus on does say something about how that person thinks.
If I ask someone what they dislike about their previous job, and they say something like "there were times when management would change directions at the last minute and cause the whole team to scramble", that's relatable and not necessarily a red flag.
If someone starts venting about low quality coworkers and shitty management, that's probably a red flag.
If someone volunteers negativity unprompted, that's probably a red flag.
My point here is that discerning between toxicity and honesty is usually possible, and what a person chooses to be negative about is a signal that helps tell the difference.
What I don't want on my team is a culture of negativity. A negative/pessimistic default is a wet blanket that shuts things down before they have a chance to get started. It creates tension where it need not exist. And it requires significant effort to counteract once it exists on the team. And to reiterate, I'm not looking for toxic positivity either. That's a separate problem.
1) Stick to the prompt
2) Don't rant negatively without a clear point that might be appreciated for the given position
Is that fair? Anything else? Thanks for expounding.
I'm sure there are people out there who do have a toxic positivity problem, but my own anecdotal experience leads me to prefer to err on the side of rejecting unnecessarily grumpy people, because they tend to more frequently be a problem.
I think that may be a very cultural thing. I love gallows humor (I understand, enjoy, and cultivate it myself), but some cultures don't even understand it.
For example, if you try pulling US-style toxic positivity on a dev team from Poland or Russia, the result isn't going to be pretty all around.
Maybe it works out in big orgs but if it infects the team of a small org your work environment will be ruined when you are all laid off after months or years of overworking to make a blind optimist happy. Unemployment coincident with burnout is worse than some negative feedback during the process.
Maybe, but I think there's a piece where you can be genuinely demonstrating in the interview context that you know how to reflect positively on an experience which obviously wasn't that all great or why would you have left it.
As an interviewer I'm not looking for IT WAS THE BEST WOO but rather "these were the elements I most appreciated, these were where I had opportunities to grow and push myself and here's what I ultimately got out of it." Yes, the "what went wrong" will be discussed too, but that's a different question, and as interviewee I look to pitch the downsides less in terms of "I had the worst boss/colleagues/projects/clients/whatever" and more of a circumspect kind of "elements A and B that had been really good early on were less of a priority later in my tenure, and I felt that management and I had differing priorities which was increasingly leading to unhelpful compromises in how things were done; although I stuck it out for some time to ensure as smooth a transition as possible, ultimately I came to feel that my seat would be better filled by some more aligned to the company goals."
This is a toxic framing of an essential test. Constructing polite fictions is an essential skill for collaboration - no less essential than coding. Saying you're leaving in part because "your vision for the product has drfted from leadership's" tells me you probably think they were a pack of moronic baboons and that if you feel that way about some of your future team mates you can keep it under wraps.
Notably, in aviation, when things go wrong it is generally looked at in a non-blame way so that training cam be updated to prevent similar problems in the future.
It might not be what makes you happy, but ATC isn't in the business of making you happy. They're in the business of saving lives, which this method accomplishes better than what you're expecting.
This same tests is applied in banking, finance, consulting, sales, or any number of other highly renumerative white collar professions. The farther up the ladder you go the more important it becomes.
This is very much culture-dependent, not some fundamental truth.
It is true for American culture, yes. There are many others.
This is an important skill, because this job sucks too :P
If everywhere smells like shit, it’s time to check under your own shoe. I’ve had shitty jobs, snd while nowhere is perfect it’s definitely a stretch to say most jobs are shitty.
> the idea that you need to demonstrate toxic positivity
Nobody is asking you to do that. When I’m interviewing a candidate I’m assuming that this is a situation that they’re trying to impress/show themselves and if you’re shit talking your previous jobs then what are you going to be like if we disagree, or when you are interviewing for your next job? All I’m asking for is don’t shit talk your previous jobs and managers. If you can’t do that for 45 minutes I’m not going to hire you.
LOL, are you kidding? The human condition is mostly shitty.
This has been scientifically proved wrong. Sonja Lyubomirsky writes that people come with innate levels of happiness, and apart from temporary swings (in either direction, in response to life events and activities), and apart from hugely intrusive, foundational trauma, "level of happiness" tends to remain constant for any given person's lifetime, and said level covers a huge spectrum, when viewed across people.
You can train your mind and habits to increase your happiness, but still, in her famous book, she assigns 50% weight to what level you are born with, and says that, however you fine-tune yourself only amounts to the other 50%. And, since her book was published, more recent research assigns an even higher weight to the innate level of happiness (i.e., higher than 50%). The sun does shine differently on different people, and it's not a mental health issue, it's just a given.
Think about it: if someone is born with 100% happiness, and never thinks consciously about their own happiness level, they will still be more happy (1 * 0.6 + 0 * 0.4 = 0.6), roughly speaking, than a person who is born with 0% happiness, but does everything in their power to improve (0 * 0.6 + 1 * 0.4 = 0.4).
> If you find yourself unable to be consistently at least /neutral/ in a first world country[,] that tends to be a mental health issue worth addressing.
I do agree about this; just know that the playing field is not level at all, and people who are less than moderately happy most of the time are not outliers; they are frequent.
I agree and resent that work is just a place where I go to get lied to and lie right back. We've found that lying is a highly successful workplace strategy. But the point of the lying game is to never admit we're lying.
The pretzels people will twist themselves in to avoid the cognitive dissonance of lying all the time and not wanting to be a lair is maddening. I find facing it head on is a refreshing frame.
A bit of clarity taken from "The Complex Problem Of Lying For Jobs"
> But over the years, I have broadened my definition of a lie, and I have realized that most of my interlocutors (including my younger self) had actually narrowed our definition of lie into uselessness in an attempt to feel better about our behavior in the job market.
> If we set aside pedantic obsession over the technicalities of whether the exact words you said were a lie, as if we're all capricious djinn [...] If you have a good idea of what impression you are leaving your interlocutor with, and you are crafting statements such that the image in their head does not map to reality, then you are lying.
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-complex-problem-of-lying...
in many polite circumstances people don't want to hear a truth, they want things to go smoothly and easily.
They... kinda are tho. We even have a term specifically for that: "white lie."
Sometimes, like in your "how are you?" example, various patterns of white lie ossify into social protocol where both participants are saying things they don't literally mean, but both participants know the game.
You've probably heard of cases where anglosphere people go traveling, ask people how they are (or use any of our other non-literal pleasantries), and are surprised when a real answer is given.
This is exactly how many people outside of US feel when they observe the customary American greeting exchange of "How are you?" / "I'm fine, thanks." when it's patently obvious that the person asking doesn't actually expect any other response even though the person responding is obviously not fine.
Like, we get that this is a cultural thing and that it would be wrong to ascribe some profound meaning to such individual interactions. At the same time, it does make the overall culture look bad when that sort of thing is expected and even enforced.
Rather than giving in to it, I've taken it as a signal that something needs to change -- I'm surrounded by the wrong people, in a business with bad market fit (a root cause of this kind of toxic culture that isn't talked about enough IMO), etc. Sometimes a good place has just rotted. Like entropy, I don't think this sort of thing can be reversed once it's set in.
I recently interviewed with a great company full of great folks, and I was given the chance to frankly but firmly (and slightly humorously in a gallows humor sort of way) state precisely why I was leaving my last company; in fact, I used it as part of the interview where I interview them. This section of the interview went well, because as far as I could tell, these people are smart, down-to-earth, no bullshit, and appreciate living in the truth. They're a small company, so people can't hide behind bullshit as easily. I much prefer that.
The cognitive dissonance displayed all over this thread and tendency to hand-wave it away by painting anything that isn't playing along as not understanding social cues, lacking tact, etc, makes me sick. The whole culture is childish, literally -- it reeks of the particular brand of lack of accountability, tendency to gaslight, and so on that is displayed by children. When coming out of a 4-year-old's mouth, it's easy to disarm and work around and excuse, almost cute in its ineffectiveness; when coming out of a company, as a matter of policy, it's authoritarian and frightening.
I really, really can't stand it. The good people are out there, however.
A lot of people can’t, and a lot of companies try to avoid those people.
I honestly tend to get much better along with cynic people (and find them much more pleasant). In other words: tastes differ.
In my experience most companies work with a wide distribution of people. This "we avoid hiring people who have defects" reads as disconnected from reality. Nobody is perfect, and most companies are average and have average people.
Conversely, when upper management fucks up, and refuses to take responsibility (for example: admit to making the wrong decision, or even reverse the decision), that's when cynicism runs rampant among the rank and file. And gee, what a surprise, VPs and CEOs try to avoid underlings that speak up about the screw-ups of the brass.