The Dumbest Interview Question | Hacker News Reader

The Dumbest Interview Question

laouini.blogspot.com

62 pointsreeyuk70 comments

The question may be dumb, but dodging it is foolish when it is so easy to turn it to your benefit.

My answer is, "I am too extroverted." And I go on to explain that I am unable to engage in heads-down focused programming for extended periods of time without mental breaks because of my personality. I point out that most of the public is extroverted, but most programmers are introverted and I explain the reasons for that. Then I say that despite this handicap I am a very productive programmer.

My answer is sincere, honest and true. Furthermore I set proper expectations around what I am like as a person. The fact is that I am extroverted, and I will need those mental breaks. If they are unwilling to accommodate that, then I don't want to be there. And I've found that letting people know it up front makes it easier for me to get those breaks down the road.

So I believe that the right answer to this question for you is to bring up the issue that you suspect you'll most need to be accommodated on if you get the job. Are you a religious Jew who needs to leave early on Friday? Do you have kids who get sick every so often? Are you the kind of person who works best arriving and leaving late? Whatever your need is, when you trade off your short-term goal of getting the job versus your long-term goal of being happy in that job, learning up front how they will react to that request is well worth any possible damage to your odds of getting the job.

Furthermore the mere fact that you answered the question honestly rather than transparently dodging it usually makes the questioner happy. Which usually has more weight with them than the flaw you revealed.

I disagree with the part about religion and family. Don't give them ammo to discriminate against you.

Bring up the family if you're a guy; businesses love family guys, they think it makes them more likely to stick around, etc. But if you're a woman... DON'T DO IT. It's the most sure way to not get hired (well, besides the obvious.)

That is a judgment call. My opinion is that if they are going to react badly in the interview, it will be an ongoing problem for you down the road. But that is not universally true. For instance women of reproductive age who bring up children can cause worry that they might get pregnant. If it happens, the employer is legally obligated to accommodate, but it can be a big issue during hiring.

That said, surely you can find something which you would like to be accommodated for in the workplace? The interviewer just gave you an opportunity for implicit agreement on how you need to be treated in the workplace. Don't waste the opening.

I ask this question in interviews all the time. It helps me filter for people who are liars. I ask it, and if they say "I work too hard" or "I'm a perfectionist" then I don't hire them because they're at best delusional and at worst liars.

And you know who else I don't hire? 20 somethings who proceed to say that the question is stupid. That's a tell-tale sign of young man's disease-- an ego that hasn't caught up with one's ability to relate to people without alienating them.

Of course it is an idiotic question-- one's weaknesses change on a semi-regular basis from environment to environment. But the question has some justifiably good qualities-- namely, you can catch bullshit artists fairly well.

That's all well and good, but when you look at it from the interviewee's perspective he/she has to determine, based on what little knowledge they have of the interviewer, whether or not they want to hear the bullshit answer or your preferred, realistic version of the answer. Right now, it is probably a safer bet to stick to the bullshit answer until more interviewers like yourself swing the tide back over. In the meantime, however, you could be missing out on great applicants that have just been programmed to give you the bullshit answer by the sitting majority.

Personally, I wouldn't want to work for a company that expects a bullshit answer here. I'll give them the real answer, if they then don't hire me because they expected bullshit, that's fine.

This only applies if you're not hungry, or getting booted out of your apartment in a month.

I agree-- if I get a non-bullshit answer (which happens, rarely) then all the better. I mean, it is a tremendous strength to be able to acknowledge your flaws to an employer and be open and transparent about them.

A ton of excellent developers work way to hard and are obsesive compulsive about perfection. This is so common as to warrant whole chapters about "the best is the enemy of the good" and so on.

And.. it is a weakness.. a big weakness. it is no bullshit.

But there's a difference between the common weakness ("I focus on trivial details at the expense of the big picture") and the common bullshit response ("I work too hard"). I don't ask this kind of interview question, but I imagine one could tell the difference between those two responses.

I agree. The problem with "I'm a perfectionist" is that:

1. It's a common stock answer, so giving it signifies a lack of imagination.

2. Taken at face value, it's a real weakness (good; honest), but it's one that can cause problems for the business (bad). It's a crippling trait which might prevent a person from meeting deadlines, and that's not something you want to indicate during an interview.

You want to answer the "biggest weakness" question with a genuine weakness (not "I work too hard") but one that can't, in any way, result in missed deadlines or upset clients/co-workers. This means that most people need to "lie" to the extent of selecting their #3 or #4 biggest weakness. The actual biggest weakness, for most of us, won't get the job.

You just stated that you want your staff to tell you what you would like to hear, even if that's a lie.

I would like to think I'm a reasonably truthful person, and back when I was interviewing for a job, I always replied with the "work too hard" line. In part because I I sometimes do work too hard (don't we all?) but mostly because... how to say it? because the question is silly.

To be honest, I don't think this question will unmask any liar -- you may be missing on good job candidates if you keep using this as some type of polygraph test.

Oh, and I'm in my 40's by the way.

Apparently a lot of people agree with this comment. What's interesting is that catching bullshit is the easiest thing to do in a job interview. A good interviewer never has that problem. The hard part is finding out if the person is the best candidate for the job.

Also, a job interview goes both ways: a stupid question may alienate a potentially good candidate. It's a better idea to focus on positive questions: the ones that help you learn what you want while at the same time selling yourself/your company to the candidate.

"Suppose there is a locked room with 3 light bulbs..." I hate brain teasers. I'd much rather answer the old standards than try to determine which direction Jane and Johnny should run through the tunnel to avoid being hit by the train when I just sat in traffic for hours to get to your building that has no parking. You scheduled this interview at 8:00 am, you left me sitting in your conference room alone for an hour, made me listen to your HR spiel about how awesome your company is, and now you want me to solve towers of hanoi using a truth table and I haven't had any coffee? No thanks.

Best interview I ever had involved light bulbs (this is only a slightly related anecdote).

My university application interview (for an electronics degree) consisted of a professor sitting in an office and asking "ok, lets talk about light bulbs. First tell me some interesting stuff about them".

I promptly forgot everything sensible to say about light bulbs but with a bit of prompting and some reminders we had a reasonable conversation - he even got up and taught me stuff on a white board.

At the time I though it went really bad but in the end his recommendation was a glowing one and I got the place.

When I revisited this memory a little while ago (when writing some questions for an interview I was conducting) it occurred to me that actually it was one of the best interviews I've ever been too. The subject material didnt matter too much at all (except that it was well within the limits expected of me) but it tested everything they wanted to know about me: subject recall, willingness to learn, interest in the subject, ability to actually understand the material etc.

They also got us to take a calculator apart as a group and talk about with a professor. All simple stuff but the same principles applied (I enjoyed that part a lot more :D)

This question is not as stupid as it seems. True, your answer will most likely suck if you haven't thought about it previous to the interview, but this is probably true for most of the behavioral part. The interviewer is not looking for a boilerplate answer like "I'm a perfectionist" etc.

You have a good chance to demonstrate that you are self-aware and able to recognize your weaknesses and to show that you are working on them. It's probably not a great idea to name a huge deficit thats core to the job (e.g. "I'm bad at programming"). Something like "I'm bad with names", followed by an example and a list of things you do to remember them might be the way to go.

There are also plenty of "nutters" (for want of a better word) out there who can't answer this question in a sensible way. For example I've interviewed people who claimed to be perfect in a very arrogant and, as you comment, disturbingly un self aware.

If you are a decent employee a lot of interview/employment stuff will seem formulaic but I have to say I now use more of this kind of stuff after being burnt a couple of times by taking all this boring sort of stuff as given and then the employee turning out to be unsuitable - in both cases at great cost to myself. In both cases they seemed personable and having the correct skills but the problems where much deeper and would have been turned up by probing and cross checking - which is what this kind of question is actually designed for.

If its a fair question then it is fair for the interviewee to ask the question back, but I get the sense that this is not accepted behavior - though I would not hesitate to do so.

I did that once. I asked the interviewer what he thought was his company's biggest weakness. He nervously smiled and said that his company has no weaknesses. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. Back then, I used to think that the 'What is your biggest weakness' question was pretty dumb too, but I don't anymore. I now understand that I'm not great at every aspect of my job, nobody is. The point is that I know what my weaknesses are and that I want to improve on them. Nowadays, if I get that question in an interview I answer it honestly and make sure that the interviewer knows that I would love to have the opportunity to improve on my weaknesses while I work for his company.

Feel free to ask that if I am ever interviewing you (as long as you don't do it in a sarcastic kind of way) - its a good question and way too many companies are secretive about this kind of stuff.

A company that says it has no weaknesses is just as wrong as a candidate that says that they have no weaknesses.

I cannot up-vote this enough! The only non-jackass way to ask this question is "I am XYZ and that is my biggest weakness. What is yours?" (Same goes for the sister-question "What is your biggest failure?").

What's the worst thing about working at this company? is a perfectly valid question.

"My greatest weakness is [plausible yet trivial issue]. It was a minor problem on [studly project X], but I took the bull by the horns and tackled it with [a suspiciously detailed action plan]. Now my coworkers see me as [some sort of Greek god]."

The most important thing to keep in mind with interviews is that few people conduct enough of them to really know what they're doing. Most interviewers are just asking questions they've heard others use in similar circumstances. All that really matters is that you keep cool and present a air of intelligent, affable engagement, no matter how silly the questions are.

You could always reply, "What's the worst thing about working here?"

My version of that question is, "Why did the last 3 people to leave here do so?" The way people talk about those who have departed can give some surprisingly honest information about actual problems in the workplace.

That's a fair question but it could be hard to pull off the follow-up question without it coming off as a gotcha. Tread lightly.

It is a gotcha. How on earth could you deliver that as a reply to the original question and not have it be a gotcha?

That's a perfectly good question for an interviewee to ask. The interviewee needs to figure out if they're going to like working here or not and if the inherent annoyances about this particular job are going to turn the person into an asshole, then I'd like to know about it sooner rather than later.

I admit to an honest weakness that should be irrelevant. I usually say something like "I'm not super outgoing. I get along well with people and communicate well with coworkers, but I'm not that great at schmoozing at parties and whatnot, and so you probably wouldn't want me doing sales."

This may be naive on my part, but I figure most people understand that (most) software devs are introverted anyway, so this isn't really a serious concern. However, it's a fairly honest answer, unlike "I care too much" or whatever. I've considered making "My biggest weakness is that I've never come up with a satisfying answer to this question" my answer, but that would probably come off as too snarky.

I agree with the parent article though. All this question does is test a minimal preparation for the interview game. Perhap's that's something, but there are better questions.

Why is it that so many people view interviewing as being about getting them to like you? I think it's about making sure that the job is a proper fit. Therefore, I'll answer it honestly. Worst case scenario is that I say what they don't want to hear and don't get a job I probably wasn't cut out for anyway.

"What is your greatest weakness?"

"Kryptonite"

(Seriously though - a friend was asked this, he used that answer, and the interviewer didn't laugh. Big sign)

I did that during an interview for a power company in 2002. I had decided already that I had zero interest in working for them, so I figured I might as well have fun with it.

There was nervous laughter from his side of the table.

did you consider that it's not a funny answer?

no, because it is FUCKING HILARIOUS

I hereby vow to use that if the question ever comes up. Promise!

It's not like this guy has the secret cheat code for getting around this question. A lazy interviewer might accept "I work too hard", but an strong one will just say "so basically you're saying you don't think there's anything you can improve about yourself?"

We don't ask the Wal-mart personality questions, but, as mentioned downthread, if it screens out the crazy people who literally can't even give the PR answer to the question, it's probably worth it.

This.

An interviewer that accepts the "strength-disguised-as-a-weakness" answer is missing the point (or possibly silently counting the answer against you).

A good answer to this question from the interviewer's perspective is a genuine weakness coupled with examples of specific actions the interviewee is taking to overcome this weakness.

A good answer to this question from the interviewee's perspective is a genuine weakness that is related to the job but isn't part of the core responsibilities or skills. For a trite example, for a heads down coding position one might answer "I get nervous when speaking in front a large group. I've gotten involved in Toastmasters to get more practice at public speaking, and I find it gets easier every time."

I don't understand why he has the source as [unknown]. 5 seconds and google brought me to: http://lbrandy.com/blog/page/10/ -- the original post I believe.

What percent of people that answer this question are able to accurately identify a weakness and discuss how they are working to resolve it or could compensate for it? Most people with high skill levels are in the middle of a series of incremental improvements and also have numerous actual weakness. I think if you give some canned response, you've failed the question. For example, I could easily say my greatest programming weakness is windows programming but I know .NET is similar enough to Java I could learn relatively quickly. I really think most people know bullshit when they hear it and who would you rather hire, a bullshitter or a straight shooter?

I've been asked this a few times, and my response is "what is your goal in asking that question". I wouldn't say it's stupid or inane, there's no point being rude. People who ask such a bad and cliched question obviously are not very interested (or experienced) in the job search/interview process, so I try to engage them and get them interested.

I've gotten a couple decent answers, and a couple bad ones. The good answers on their part have earned an honest answer on my part, and usually a much-improved interview. The bad ones, I usually clam up and try to end the interview as politely as possible.

I disagree with this post. If you are so personally threatened by someone asking what your weaknesses are, then I guess I understand your reaction. But personally I just view that as another question relating to your experience. For instance, my two biggest weaknesses are time estimates and unit testing (I still haven't jumped on the TDD bandwagon), so instead of being offended or threatened by that, I will explain my weaknesses and what I'm doing to correct them or my views on them.

Everyone has weaknesses, don't run from them, embrace them as an opportunity to improve.

I'm not sure I see a difference between preparing answers to 'What is your greatest weakness', and preparing answers to any other interview question.

Any interview question loses its information value once enough people know about it / blog about it / etc. And I certainly think the spirit of the question is useful... Maybe the interviewer can ask a differently worded question in the same spirit, but this question definitely doesn't deserve such contempt.

My biggest weakness is that I have no respect for authority. I work hard when I want to please someone, but the threat of punishment is the best way to get even worse work out of me.

This means that many of my employers and teachers really adored me, and went out of their way to help me. When I was writing my honor's thesis in college, a postdoc invited me to her apartment to stay overnight and help me finish it in time. I got glowing recs for grad school, etc.

It also means that there are some people who for whatever reason pissed me off, and now I make their lives a living hell. There's nothing more satisfying then having someone pull out all their stops to try and get to you, and having them fail miserably.

Yeah. If I got this question I would lie.

you are so cool.

I'll take that at face value, because I'm autistic.

Honesty is NOT an asset in a lot of corporate jobs. Someone who answers honestly in a way that makes them look bad, is more likely to be honest when around customers than those who avoid really answering the question.

I hope you don't mind my running this by you all. If I'm asked this question, I will respond that my biggest weakness is that I'm coming from academia.

I believe that many hiring managers will consider this a problem, or at least a potential problem. I believe it may be a good answer anyways because 1) it doesn't actually tell them anything "bad" that they didn't already know, and 2) it signals that I am aware that working in their company won't be the same as academia and that my being aware of this makes me more likely to be able to adapt.

Any thoughts or criticisms?

Most people in the working world have a negative opinion of "academia". On the other hand, this anti-intellectualism is more pronounced in crappy jobs, so it might be a good filtering mechanism.

If your goal is to get any job, though, it's not the best answer. Most people will see that as a real weakness.

I always ask that question and twice have received answers along the lines of "well...I'm not really that good at programming." These people should have been screened out by the hiring managers, but weren't. Their honest answer allowed me to send them home politely, cancel the remaining interviews for this candidate by my coworkers, and avoid wasting any more of the companies time on them.

I think it's dumb only if asked in a stupid way.

As a "stocking filler" question it's clearly idiotic. But we do include it in our interviews in the form: "what area would you consider your biggest weakness and why?"

(assuming they get that we mean in the context of the interview and arent going to lament their inability to settle down with a girl/boy - yep someone we work with DID get that answer once....)

Has anyone ever gotten a job after giving the answer of "My biggest weakness is that I hate answering inane questions."?

"What is your greatest weakness?"

Here's a good answer:

"That I'm not independently wealthy. It also happens to be the reason you're interviewing me."

I think it's a fair question. It's also fair to ask them about the company's weak points, why people have left, etc.

Interviewing is a two-sided process. Maybe my arrogance will be a problem for them. Maybe their widely fluctuating revenue will be a problem for me. We both have a right to ask.

Another one I was asked: "Give me 5 words that describe yourself".

It's not a dumb question. I just be honest and tell them I suck at Java because I haven't done much stuff in Java and other similar answers.

I wouldn't consider that a weakness.

It's "What is your greatest weakness?"

I also hate "Are you willing to relocate?"

"If you were a fruit or vegetable, what would you be?"

I got "if you were a dessert, what would you be" on a college interview.

I answered "a frozen honeydew ant" and left it at that. (It's really a dessert in some parts of the world, I swear.) I got waitlisted.

Good for you?

"If you were a character from Star Wars, who would it be?"

The company I work for now relies on code samples. Then the interview tests you on the sample to ensure you wrote it. The rest is purely about your personality. Seems to work well.

A couple years back, I made a great hire. He came in for the interview, and fumbled through our generic tests (program fibonacci in the language of your choice, etc). So we said "no thanks." He emailed us back and wanted another interview, said he was on a borrowed computer, bad day, etc.

So we asked him to send us a code sample. Next morning, we get a machine vision algorithm coded in impeccable C++. I read through the ~300 lines and understood it easily on the first pass. So we brought him back, asked him to explain it, and hired him immediately.

When designing interviews, you have the choice of seeing the interviewee at his best, and encouraging him to live up to it in the job, or seeing the interviewee at his worst, and knowing that you at least made a safe choice.

The problem is that most of us only have the time to make safe choices.

Selling yourself as a <whatever> is part of your job, as discomforting as that is.

It's not such a terrible question if the answer is run through a translator.

"I work too hard" => ass-kisser. "I'm a perfectionist" => not aware of what "perfectionist" means. It's a crippling trait. "Chocolate cake" => self-indulgent. "Women" => sexual harassment lawsuit magnet.

Does this blogger actually think his post among the thousands on the web complaining about this question has anything novel or insightful to offer? What a waste of time.

Worst, it isn't even his post. It's a direct copy and paste of someone else's without even the decency to google to credit the original source.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com