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Comment by sdfx | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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?").

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.

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

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