61–69 of 69 posts
There's so much cynicism from a subset of the HN crowd every time something interview-related like this is posted. Some of that cynicism is warranted, sure, but not in this case. I'll keep it real: These aren't trick questions. They're simple, fair, and easy questions, and as such they're a good way to filter out people who have atrocious communication skills, or who possess mediocre theory of mind abilities, i.e. yo…
There's so much cynicism from a subset of the HN crowd every time something interview-related like this is posted. Some of that cynicism is warranted, sure, but not in this case. I'll keep it real: These aren't trick questions. They're simple, fair, and easy questions, and as such they're a good way to filter out people who have atrocious communication skills, or who possess mediocre theory of mind abilities, i.e. yo…
That is a carefully rehearsed answer making the weakness look fixable instead of being serious weakness.
> sincerely and honestly state a reasonable weakness.
No, the question was "what's your biggest weakness", the "I haven't practiced doing this kind of work" is not a big weakness, everyone have bigger weaknesses than that due to their personality.
An honest answer would be "I am much slower learning technical things than my peers" or "I am competitive so I often come in conflict with my peers" or "I am afraid of conflict so I have a hard time making decisions" or "I get bored easily so I have a hard time finishing things" or "I constantly wear a mask so people never learn to know the real me" or "I don't like being proven wrong" or "I judge peoples competence by how much I like them rather than what they actually do" etc.
There is not a single person who doesn't have one weakness like that since many of them are a spectrum where no position is good. The "correct" answer is of course like you said, you give an easily fixable weakness like "I don't fully understand how deployment pipelines work since someone else did most of the work where I worked previously". But such answers are so easy to come up with, and are guaranteed not to be their biggest weakness, so you are basically checking whether they are fine with lying or lack self awareness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ignore barry-cotter. People do expect you to be honest. It's not a trick question, and there is no clandestine cabal of hiring managers who only want to hire people who play a secret interview game well. > It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. In my experience, many women really do want nice, sweet, caring guys. It's just easy for men to think those are the only traits…
They do want, it is mainly that this is what they keep talking about so it is easy to misunderstand that this is all you have to be. What they are really attracted to is confidence and often during teenage years and beginning of 20s as well, people who don't give a shit about anyone or anything are the most confident. Hence what happens is the girls are with those confident guys and guys who try to have the traits gi…
But let's say you don't have that bias and instead you're taking in ALL the evidence from society, film, books, etc... Well, then it's pretty damn obvious that women tend to like confident men. Look at the hero of pretty much every movie ever. Look at the popular guys in high school and college. The evidence is overwhelming.
Men and women alike want partners who make them feel special. Part of that is how you're treated by that person, sure, but part of it is how "valuable" that person is themselves. My dog can worship the ground I walk on, but at the end of the day he's still just a dog so it doesn't mean much :)
There's so much cynicism from a subset of the HN crowd every time something interview-related like this is posted. Some of that cynicism is warranted, sure, but not in this case. I'll keep it real: These aren't trick questions. They're simple, fair, and easy questions, and as such they're a good way to filter out people who have atrocious communication skills, or who possess mediocre theory of mind abilities, i.e. yo…
> "I've spent lots of time working solo, so while I've learned how to wear many hats, I don't have much experience working as part of a team." That is a carefully rehearsed answer making the weakness look fixable instead of being serious weakness. > sincerely and honestly state a reasonable weakness. No, the question was "what's your biggest weakness", the "I haven't practiced doing this kind of work" is not a big we…
First, there's absolutely nothing wrong with rehearsing your answers to common questions like this. If anything it allows you to present yourself in the best light, which every interviewer wants. Nothing is worse than turning down a good candidate who performed poorly because they didn't take the interview seriously.
Second, I literally thought of that answer off the top of my head in a few seconds. It wasn't actually rehearsed. I don't mean this to sound arrogant. There are many millions of others who can do the same -- think on their feet, take the interviewer's desires into account, and come up with a great answer. Some of these people will be interviewing at the same places as you. It's important to know that there is a wide range of communication abilities, just like there is a wide range of programming abilities.
> No, the question was "what's your biggest weakness", the "I haven't practiced doing this kind of work" is not a big weakness, everyone have bigger weaknesses than that due to their personality… such answers are so easy to come up with, and are guaranteed not to be their biggest weakness, so you are basically checking whether they are fine with lying or lack self awareness
This is splitting hairs. A reasonable person won't expect you riff through all your weaknesses to literally find the biggest one. They just want to hear something that's not too trivial.
I can confident assert that the best communicators would instantly be aware of this when posed the question in an interview. I know a lot of engineers (myself included) who have a higher-than-normal-or-useful tendency to take things as literally as possible, as if every sentence is a spec, which makes us (relatively) poor or at least awkward communicators.
> An honest answer would be "I am much slower learning technical things than my peers" or "I am competitive so I often come in conflict with my peers" or "I am afraid of conflict so I have a hard time making decisions" or "I get bored easily so I have a hard time finishing things" or "I constantly wear a mask so people never learn to know the real me" or "I don't like being proven wrong" or "I judge peoples competence by how much I like them rather than what they actually do" etc.
Sure, and you could totally go that route if you want to. And ideally you'd go a step further, demonstrate that whatever trait you list is actually innate in humans, and that it's taken you work to be aware of it and work on it.
Hearing “What’s your biggest weakness?” from an interviewer should be a strong red flag for a candidate that they don’t know what they’re doing. Not only is it a manipulative question, the response is basically meaningless if the candidate knows the game, because you’ll get back a scripted answer. Those who don’t know the game and answer honestly will only hurt their chances at getting the job. The only question I th…
It's a dumb question, but you can just say "I can be too detail oriented sometimes!" and move on to more interesting points of conversation.
As the interviewee, dodging a question with a fake trite answer because you think it's dumb is a great way to signal that you're abnormally uncooperative and/or bad at communicating. And this is a question largely meant to determine your communication skills.
It boggles my mind that people think an interview is a great place to display smug, passive-aggressive hostility. But then again, this is why we have interviews…
There's so much cynicism from a subset of the HN crowd every time something interview-related like this is posted. Some of that cynicism is warranted, sure, but not in this case. I'll keep it real: These aren't trick questions. They're simple, fair, and easy questions, and as such they're a good way to filter out people who have atrocious communication skills, or who possess mediocre theory of mind abilities, i.e. yo…
The reality there is no objectivity in hiring, and there is no theoretically optimal global stack rank of software engineers: every person is unique and the needs of specific roles vary widely even within a single company. A lot of people treat getting a job as the continuation of a people-pleasing, hoop-jumping mentality that was honed over decades of education in the Victorian model.
I know it can be very frustrating to be rejected by seemingly clueless hiring managers for arbitrary reasons. I also know that some personality traits can be positive or negative depending on the internal situation on the team. You can never be sure of the illegitimacy of any given rejection, or whether it’s a blessing in disguise. For these reasons it’s better to focus on your craft and clear communication thereof rather than obsessing over the game-like aspects of hiring.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a manager, or even a senior engineer. But I've also noticed personally that I'm comfortable judging an interviewee's answer to my open-ended questions. I really like concise answers that make it easy for me to dig into specific details. I can have objective standards for answers about specific details. Giving a handwavy answer to an open-ended question may be better than giving a detailed answer that leads to…
> But I've also noticed personally that I'm comfortable judging an interviewee's answer to my open-ended questions. This is almost surely due to bias, almost everyone believe they are good at it but statistics say that the ones who can judge it are so few that there is no point in trying.
If I hear dumb questions in an interview, it's a red flag about that person's ability to be self-aware.
As someone who has social anxiety and depression I don't think I can be honest with a lot of these questions. My real weakness would be inability to connect with people and constant fear of doing something wrong or being terrible at what I do. I usually think up some random weaknesses that I consider irrelevant and speak about those just to prove that I can be self aware. Also I think very big portion what I am sayin…
> As someone who has social anxiety and depression I don't think I can be honest with a lot of these questions. You’re not supposed to be honest. No one expects you to be honest. Everyone knows everyone knows it’s a game. It’s like the algorithm and data structure interview; it shows preparation and intelligence to be able to answer the questions well, whether your answers are based on a real event or pure fiction. I…
I can sympathize. But learn to lie without seeming to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet managers, advice columns and books keep spouting the "honest" part. But I guess if one believes those columns one is too naive and therefore not qualified for the job. It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. But there are people who think they should follow those rules, fail and become resentful towards society for teaching them wrong things. This is just an observati…
Ignore barry-cotter. People do expect you to be honest. It's not a trick question, and there is no clandestine cabal of hiring managers who only want to hire people who play a secret interview game well. > It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. In my experience, many women really do want nice, sweet, caring guys. It's just easy for men to think those are the only traits…