11 ms·

This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at wor

This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer. This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that. Unless they explicitly and unambiguously say “tell me about the day your mom and dog died in the same day when you found out you had cancer” they mean “tell me about your worst day _at work_.” And even if they ask about the time your dog died (they won’t), they are not asking you “tell me about the worst day you’ve had in your life”. They are asking “tell me about a time you experienced adversity and overcame it, exhibiting problem solving, resilience, and grit AT WORK. (Or - if you are operating in executive mode or you like to live dangerously - some non-work context that maps obviously and unambiguously to a work context).” You failed the “knows how to interact with people in a professional setting” part of the interview. Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). Or the “read between the lines” part. Yeah, inartfully asked questions - but also totally flubbed the answers. Sorry, chalk it up to you had a bad interview or day or whatever, and never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”.

anyfoo 4mo ago
And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.) That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you like to hike? Oh, I did that, too. Might I suggest hiking there and there? I bet you'd like it. Anyway, moving on!" Common ground helps conversations flow. But an employer asking about your personal relationships? Your needs, fears, and desires outside of any technical context? (My needs, fears, and desires from compiler toolchains are totally within scope.) Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory. They have no business of asking.
- fsckboy 4mo ago
  >Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions' asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. Young people often don't have enough other experience to fall back on, and in a context in which you are expected to make yourself look good, the filter that is expected is to emphasize something that you were successful/resourceful at.
  - anyfoo 4mo ago
    Well, I have no idea what they actually specifically asked or didn't ask, because the article is light on details. So I just elaborated on what I consider crossing into unacceptable (which I believe is based on commonly shared conventions), and everyone can draw their own conclusions for any particular situation.
  - freehorse 4mo ago
    > asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question Is that true? Is that a cultural thing that I do not get? I am in the same boat as OP and consider these questions, if intended for no-work specific context, very inappropriate. The age is irrelevant. If you are interviewing a young applicant who is not expected to have work experience, ask them about sth in the school context instead of work context. Young people can still have really bad experiences. Especially when you interview a big number of people, you are guaranteed to fall upon some pretty bad. It seems to me that the right expected way to answer such a question is to find some personal experience that is bad, but not _that bad_, and then try to flip it and show you persevered. It seems to me that you are selecting for people who are better in making up stories this way, than anything else, because there is very often no way to answer such a question in any truthful, factual manner. Personally I would only give answers in a work related context, and make sure to be clear that this is the way I interpreted the question.
  - 4mo ago
fsckboy 4mo ago
>It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer. you are stating your opinion as fact, and I don't think there is a basis beyond your opinion, you simply don't know. I agree with you the interviewee could have handled the questions better to not be so revealing about himself, setting boundaries the interviewer was crossing, but it might have been precisely the intent of the mental health company interviewer to elicit responses like that to stay away from emotionally wounded people.
- mavelikara 4mo ago
  Adding “this is my opinion” to every post would be tedious, rt? :-)
neilv 4mo ago
> Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). I think that "generally..." is a little harsh. The person might just not have worked in a stereotypical corporate drone environment before. Or they might normally have been able to handle the corporate drone interview theatre, but are overextended by the context (e.g., laid off in this job market, which can easily be more stressful and existential than most actual work situations), and a bad interview hazing just yanks on that. There's going to be more and more overstressed people showing up to tech job interviews, and people on the other side of the table will need empathy and understanding, if they're going to make good assessments despite the context.
- MattRogish 4mo ago
  Thank you; you’re right - context matters and now more than ever there are a ton of folks looking involuntarily. Grace is always needed, but now especially.
Aurornis 4mo ago
The job is described as "founding engineer at a mental health startup". Generally getting called in for a "founding engineer" interview is code for a company that doesn't have money for a full salary but hopes they'll find someone willing to work for some token equity grant. These jobs usually come with amateur founders who aren't good at hiring. They could have really been pushing for life experiences, thinking they were doing some breaking-the-mold interview technique. I do agree that every candidate should know to deliver answers in the context of a work interview. Even when the interviewer starts asking personal questions, you bring it back to something related to the job every time. Everything that comes out of your mouth should have a focus of showing how you'll work well at this company because you've worked well in the past at other companies. The interviewers may have been shocked when someone didn't know this and actually unloaded their personal life struggles without a filter. I bet every other candidate they talked to had been giving interview-appropriate answers so they didn't realize how broken their questions were. Chalk it up to a learning experience. I am certain you didn't miss out on any great opportunity with these amateurs. You will probably never see them again. We all have embarrassing work experiences at some point, but this is a good one to learn from and then promptly try to forget.
victorbojica 4mo ago
I was also part of this sort of interview once. They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc. Definitely not work related. It was indeed a very strange and exhausting experience. I could've definetly refused to answer some of the questions or drop out of the interview altogether, but not sure why I haven't. So yeah, this type of interview exists so I highly doubt the interviewer interviewing OP was asking about work stuff...
- BugsJustFindMe 4mo ago
  > They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc. In the US any employer who asks you about personal relationships during an interview is opening themselves up to an illegal discrimination lawsuit.
  - calcifer 4mo ago
    Which protected characteristic does "personal relationships" fall under? It's vague enough to mean almost anything you want it to be, and I struggle to imagine any sort of successful prosecution.
    - taberiand 4mo ago
      Discrimination of sexual orientation, for example, depending on how it's asked. Just one of those areas best left alone in an interview
    - nkrisc 4mo ago
      There’s a reason interviewers in the US won’t (or shouldn’t) even ask if the candidate has a spouse. If they ask something about that specifically, and the answer indicates some kind of protected status (a man says “my husband” or reveal which place of worship they got married in) and they then decline the candidate, the candidate could make the claim they were denied because they’re gay or practice whatever religion or something else. Asking personal questions could be seen as a way to elicit information about a protected status and thus give a rejected candidate ammunition for a claim, whether warranted or not. It’s best to just keep questions focused on the workplace.
alanbernstein 4mo ago
Do you experience many "life challenges" at work?
dnnddidiej 4mo ago
Or at uni, at work-likes (volunteering, toastmasters etc.). It has to be in the pursuit of a commercial-like goal really. But yeah avoid friends, family, travel, pets...
bigfatkitten 4mo ago
> This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that. They don’t like it when I tell them about the day I performed CPR on a guy who jumped from the roof of the office building across the street.
globular-toast 4mo ago
I'm prepared to give the author the benefit of the doubt here. We weren't there and maybe they really were asking what the hardest day of their life was. Your take is the author is completely incapable of basic communication, essentially.
traumabaited 4mo ago
Absolutely not. I've been in an interview like this, and the interviewer specifically prompted me for for personal struggles, which I had to then fake having been way more affected over '"friends" asked me to take a photo so I'd be out of it' type incident than I actually was, just to satisfy them. "... at work" expectation in an interview advertised as non-technical can be ableist screening anyways. Gonna poke that elephant since you're drapping it.
nailer 4mo ago
> never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work” I think the mental health startup part and the wide scope of the questions (hardest day in life, not hardest day in career) made it clear that this meant what it said.
Scandiravian 4mo ago
I think this is a very cultural thing. When I interview candidates at my current job, we are interested in hearing about their life outside of work, since we want to know how we can best collaborate If they have to pick up their kids in the afternoon, then it's probably better that they work closer with the other parents than of they're late risers who prefer coming to the office at 10
- lljk_kennedy 4mo ago
  This sounds more like post-hiring admin, unless you're discriminating against parents?
- supriyo-biswas 4mo ago
  If the interviewer was fishing around for information for when I start work or if I have kids, the only thing that'd come to mind is whether they're trying to frame me as a slacker to disqualify me from the interview process. Maybe the above is an European thing.
  - wink 4mo ago
    I think it is. My hunch is that in most EU countries the labor laws are good enough that, in general, it just doesn't become a problem. I don't even remember (been a while since I did lots of interviews) if you're allowed or not allowed to ask any of the aforementioned things but I can tell you from experience that about half the candidates would mention their partner and/or kids anyway, because it just is usually not a problem. But it's not such standard fare that someone not mentioning would raise a flag either. I guess most of us just don't think about it. Also, tech is a bit different and I am not that old - but in Germany you could see a ton of personal details absolutely no one is interested in on CVs, but it's getting better. (What your parents do for work, if you are married, what name you had before marrying, if you have a driver's license for a desk job, what primary school you went to, etc.pp)
- knorker 4mo ago
  An employer making career-affecting decisions for their employees based on whether they have kids or not sounds like a great way to get sued. That said, I have been asked if I had kids, in an interview. Later in my career, when I was trained to perform interviews, I was explicitly told to NEEEEEVER ask that. And if the candidate volunteers it, to basically pretend you didn't hear it.
lukan 4mo ago
"The follow-up, they described over email, would be a bit non traditional - a ~90 minute culture fit chat" "I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical" "This person gave the impression that it was a safe space to share" I mean yes, the correct way would have been to politely decline to answer - but it very much reads as the intention of the interviewer was to get into all the personal stuff, to better evaluate - and sueing them possibly the right move.
ramon156 4mo ago
You're so right, i prefer my colleagues perfectly mentally healthy, can't have these issues around! .... why can we never find hires? I think people (especially HR) need to realize we all pretend to be mentally sounds. These issues make us human, and if you are trying to filter by this, you'll end up with maskers as colleagues.
denkmoon 4mo ago
If you're interviewing, you get that kind of mismatched response and don't jump in to clarify the scope of the question, I'm not sure that says much about the culture you're supposed to fit into.
neoden 4mo ago
> is scoped to "… at work" It should be but nothing guarantees you from meeting an interviewer that somehow misunderstands their role and then you will be in a situation when you need to choose what to do next: try to be open or resist. Once during an interview (for a software engineer position) I was asked if I had a family and when I replied that I didn't, I was asked why. You might be able to cut it down in an appropriate way but in a situation of stress (which a job interview represents of course) you might not.
- GJim 4mo ago
  > I was asked if I had a family and when I replied that I didn't, I was asked why. In Blighty, that would surely have garnered a response along the lines of 'they were all lost in an industrial accident involving a steamroller and a packet of Lurpak'.
  - TRiG_Ireland 4mo ago
    "I lost both parents. ... I was careless."
Jean-Papoulos 4mo ago
From the way this is written, it's clear that the interview was not about "at work". If it was the interview would have stopped OP to say it after the first question, which obviously didn't happen.
havnagiggle 4mo ago
I was being interviewed by two owners of a small engineer firm. They asked, "tell us where you see yourself in 5 years". I rambled for ~30 seconds about marrying my girlfriend and other personal details. I still remember their faces; super awkward, and then they slowly clarified: "we meant professionally" hahaha. It ended up fine in the end, but I feel like there's probably some missing education on social culture of interviewing somewhere and you just have to have those experiences at some point to understand.
wink 4mo ago
What about when they ask you to prepare something that is definitely worded as you should talk 5min about a random non-tech (so kinda explicitly non-work) topic (with some examples like poems and songs iirc) and then they are completely weirded out when you talk about a hobby? But it was also part of the worst interview I have ever had and these misguided 5 minutes for a weird intro were on the low end of the wtf scale.
jrflo 4mo ago
Another pro tip for interviews: even if they explicitly ask for something like "the worst day of your life, including personal circumstances not at work", just answer about work anyways. You don't have to answer every question as posed. Pretend the worst day of your life was at work and was work related. There are a lot of interview questions asked as bait. If someone asks "What is your greatest weakness?", you better not respond with your actual greatest weakness.
- freehorse 4mo ago
  In my understanding, interviewers expect sth like: > What is your greatest weakness? > I am too good at my work
  - eamag 4mo ago
    That's not correct. You are expected to actually share a weekend and how you're handling it
  - SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
    This is a common misunderstanding, and I don't want to sound like I'm blaming you for it, but it's based on a misconception of how the process works. What interviewers are looking for is genuine introspection of the kind a high-quality hire would be expected to have. One answer I've given before, for example, is that I instinctively focus too deeply on technical requirements; I have to regularly prompt myself to answer "why does the customer care", or I get too deep into the details and end up with solutions that fail to serve their needs. The fact that I can recognize this weakness and take action to mitigate it is a positive signal. What interviewers are looking to avoid is terrible answers that reveal underlying flaws or show you can't introspect at all. "I don't have any weaknesses", "I have trouble dealing with dumb people who give me bad ideas", "I get frustrated when people come to me with problems but don't explain what program I should write to solve them", etc. Lame, humble-bragging answers are not the intent of the question and will not impress the interviewer, but probably won't prevent you from being hired if the interview otherwise went great. So maybe they're useful strategically if you're worried about giving a bad answer.
duxup 4mo ago
> It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer. If the interviewer did in fact share their personal trauma story as the author says then it would seem to indicate that was what they were asking for. I know of places where that kind of sharing was the norm.
aaron695 4mo ago
[dead]
Gimpei 4mo ago
I’m inclined to believe that you are being too charitable to the interviewers. This is an early stage mental health startup. They totally could have been asking very personal questions. I believe this used to be standard when interviewing psychoanalysts. They could have stopped the author at any time too. That would be the most natural thing. I’m inclined to believe that it was a clown show and they conducted borderline abusive interviews. Shame on them. But also, beware early stage startups. It’s a real roll of the dice and the dice are weighted against you.
chaosharmonic 4mo ago
These aren't at all the same thing though. A candidate can be aware that these kinds of questions are supposed to have boundaries, but that's different from whether an interviewer understands or respects that. And if they don't, those people are also in a decision-making capacity that doesn't often empower you to just say "no." Even when those things are scoped to "...at work," there are still answers that happen at work that are equally inappropriate to go digging for. "Tell me about a time you experienced adversity," for instance, could turn up health or family details that people might have juggled with their jobs -- things that you aren't actually supposed be considering as a factor in these decisions. I also don't know, when someone is spending 90min screening you for "culture fit," that you can assume they're asking you for things that are strictly related to the job. They should be, but that's different from whether that's always a realistic presumption you can make.

anyfoo 4mo ago

And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.) That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you like to hike? Oh, I did that, too. Might I suggest hiking there and there? I bet you'd like it. Anyway, moving on!" Common ground helps conversations flow. But an employer asking about your personal relationships? Your needs, fears, and desires outside of any technical context? (My needs, fears, and desires from compiler toolchains are totally within scope.) Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory. They have no business of asking.

fsckboy 4mo ago
>Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions' asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. Young people often don't have enough other experience to fall back on, and in a context in which you are expected to make yourself look good, the filter that is expected is to emphasize something that you were successful/resourceful at.
- anyfoo 4mo ago
  Well, I have no idea what they actually specifically asked or didn't ask, because the article is light on details. So I just elaborated on what I consider crossing into unacceptable (which I believe is based on commonly shared conventions), and everyone can draw their own conclusions for any particular situation.
- freehorse 4mo ago
  > asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question Is that true? Is that a cultural thing that I do not get? I am in the same boat as OP and consider these questions, if intended for no-work specific context, very inappropriate. The age is irrelevant. If you are interviewing a young applicant who is not expected to have work experience, ask them about sth in the school context instead of work context. Young people can still have really bad experiences. Especially when you interview a big number of people, you are guaranteed to fall upon some pretty bad. It seems to me that the right expected way to answer such a question is to find some personal experience that is bad, but not _that bad_, and then try to flip it and show you persevered. It seems to me that you are selecting for people who are better in making up stories this way, than anything else, because there is very often no way to answer such a question in any truthful, factual manner. Personally I would only give answers in a work related context, and make sure to be clear that this is the way I interpreted the question.
- 4mo ago

fsckboy 4mo ago

>It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer. you are stating your opinion as fact, and I don't think there is a basis beyond your opinion, you simply don't know. I agree with you the interviewee could have handled the questions better to not be so revealing about himself, setting boundaries the interviewer was crossing, but it might have been precisely the intent of the mental health company interviewer to elicit responses like that to stay away from emotionally wounded people.

mavelikara 4mo ago
Adding “this is my opinion” to every post would be tedious, rt? :-)

neilv 4mo ago

> Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). I think that "generally..." is a little harsh. The person might just not have worked in a stereotypical corporate drone environment before. Or they might normally have been able to handle the corporate drone interview theatre, but are overextended by the context (e.g., laid off in this job market, which can easily be more stressful and existential than most actual work situations), and a bad interview hazing just yanks on that. There's going to be more and more overstressed people showing up to tech job interviews, and people on the other side of the table will need empathy and understanding, if they're going to make good assessments despite the context.

MattRogish 4mo ago
Thank you; you’re right - context matters and now more than ever there are a ton of folks looking involuntarily. Grace is always needed, but now especially.

Aurornis 4mo ago

The job is described as "founding engineer at a mental health startup". Generally getting called in for a "founding engineer" interview is code for a company that doesn't have money for a full salary but hopes they'll find someone willing to work for some token equity grant. These jobs usually come with amateur founders who aren't good at hiring. They could have really been pushing for life experiences, thinking they were doing some breaking-the-mold interview technique. I do agree that every candidate should know to deliver answers in the context of a work interview. Even when the interviewer starts asking personal questions, you bring it back to something related to the job every time. Everything that comes out of your mouth should have a focus of showing how you'll work well at this company because you've worked well in the past at other companies. The interviewers may have been shocked when someone didn't know this and actually unloaded their personal life struggles without a filter. I bet every other candidate they talked to had been giving interview-appropriate answers so they didn't realize how broken their questions were. Chalk it up to a learning experience. I am certain you didn't miss out on any great opportunity with these amateurs. You will probably never see them again. We all have embarrassing work experiences at some point, but this is a good one to learn from and then promptly try to forget.

victorbojica 4mo ago

I was also part of this sort of interview once. They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc. Definitely not work related. It was indeed a very strange and exhausting experience. I could've definetly refused to answer some of the questions or drop out of the interview altogether, but not sure why I haven't. So yeah, this type of interview exists so I highly doubt the interviewer interviewing OP was asking about work stuff...

BugsJustFindMe 4mo ago
> They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc. In the US any employer who asks you about personal relationships during an interview is opening themselves up to an illegal discrimination lawsuit.
- calcifer 4mo ago
  Which protected characteristic does "personal relationships" fall under? It's vague enough to mean almost anything you want it to be, and I struggle to imagine any sort of successful prosecution.
  - taberiand 4mo ago
    Discrimination of sexual orientation, for example, depending on how it's asked. Just one of those areas best left alone in an interview
  - nkrisc 4mo ago
    There’s a reason interviewers in the US won’t (or shouldn’t) even ask if the candidate has a spouse. If they ask something about that specifically, and the answer indicates some kind of protected status (a man says “my husband” or reveal which place of worship they got married in) and they then decline the candidate, the candidate could make the claim they were denied because they’re gay or practice whatever religion or something else. Asking personal questions could be seen as a way to elicit information about a protected status and thus give a rejected candidate ammunition for a claim, whether warranted or not. It’s best to just keep questions focused on the workplace.

alanbernstein 4mo ago

Do you experience many "life challenges" at work?

dnnddidiej 4mo ago

Or at uni, at work-likes (volunteering, toastmasters etc.). It has to be in the pursuit of a commercial-like goal really. But yeah avoid friends, family, travel, pets...

bigfatkitten 4mo ago

> This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that. They don’t like it when I tell them about the day I performed CPR on a guy who jumped from the roof of the office building across the street.

globular-toast 4mo ago

I'm prepared to give the author the benefit of the doubt here. We weren't there and maybe they really were asking what the hardest day of their life was. Your take is the author is completely incapable of basic communication, essentially.

traumabaited 4mo ago

Absolutely not. I've been in an interview like this, and the interviewer specifically prompted me for for personal struggles, which I had to then fake having been way more affected over '"friends" asked me to take a photo so I'd be out of it' type incident than I actually was, just to satisfy them. "... at work" expectation in an interview advertised as non-technical can be ableist screening anyways. Gonna poke that elephant since you're drapping it.

nailer 4mo ago

> never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work” I think the mental health startup part and the wide scope of the questions (hardest day in life, not hardest day in career) made it clear that this meant what it said.

Scandiravian 4mo ago

I think this is a very cultural thing. When I interview candidates at my current job, we are interested in hearing about their life outside of work, since we want to know how we can best collaborate If they have to pick up their kids in the afternoon, then it's probably better that they work closer with the other parents than of they're late risers who prefer coming to the office at 10

lljk_kennedy 4mo ago
This sounds more like post-hiring admin, unless you're discriminating against parents?
supriyo-biswas 4mo ago
If the interviewer was fishing around for information for when I start work or if I have kids, the only thing that'd come to mind is whether they're trying to frame me as a slacker to disqualify me from the interview process. Maybe the above is an European thing.
- wink 4mo ago
  I think it is. My hunch is that in most EU countries the labor laws are good enough that, in general, it just doesn't become a problem. I don't even remember (been a while since I did lots of interviews) if you're allowed or not allowed to ask any of the aforementioned things but I can tell you from experience that about half the candidates would mention their partner and/or kids anyway, because it just is usually not a problem. But it's not such standard fare that someone not mentioning would raise a flag either. I guess most of us just don't think about it. Also, tech is a bit different and I am not that old - but in Germany you could see a ton of personal details absolutely no one is interested in on CVs, but it's getting better. (What your parents do for work, if you are married, what name you had before marrying, if you have a driver's license for a desk job, what primary school you went to, etc.pp)
knorker 4mo ago
An employer making career-affecting decisions for their employees based on whether they have kids or not sounds like a great way to get sued. That said, I have been asked if I had kids, in an interview. Later in my career, when I was trained to perform interviews, I was explicitly told to NEEEEEVER ask that. And if the candidate volunteers it, to basically pretend you didn't hear it.

lukan 4mo ago

"The follow-up, they described over email, would be a bit non traditional - a ~90 minute culture fit chat" "I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical" "This person gave the impression that it was a safe space to share" I mean yes, the correct way would have been to politely decline to answer - but it very much reads as the intention of the interviewer was to get into all the personal stuff, to better evaluate - and sueing them possibly the right move.

ramon156 4mo ago

You're so right, i prefer my colleagues perfectly mentally healthy, can't have these issues around! .... why can we never find hires? I think people (especially HR) need to realize we all pretend to be mentally sounds. These issues make us human, and if you are trying to filter by this, you'll end up with maskers as colleagues.

denkmoon 4mo ago

If you're interviewing, you get that kind of mismatched response and don't jump in to clarify the scope of the question, I'm not sure that says much about the culture you're supposed to fit into.

neoden 4mo ago

> is scoped to "… at work" It should be but nothing guarantees you from meeting an interviewer that somehow misunderstands their role and then you will be in a situation when you need to choose what to do next: try to be open or resist. Once during an interview (for a software engineer position) I was asked if I had a family and when I replied that I didn't, I was asked why. You might be able to cut it down in an appropriate way but in a situation of stress (which a job interview represents of course) you might not.

GJim 4mo ago
> I was asked if I had a family and when I replied that I didn't, I was asked why. In Blighty, that would surely have garnered a response along the lines of 'they were all lost in an industrial accident involving a steamroller and a packet of Lurpak'.
- TRiG_Ireland 4mo ago
  "I lost both parents. ... I was careless."

Jean-Papoulos 4mo ago

From the way this is written, it's clear that the interview was not about "at work". If it was the interview would have stopped OP to say it after the first question, which obviously didn't happen.

havnagiggle 4mo ago

I was being interviewed by two owners of a small engineer firm. They asked, "tell us where you see yourself in 5 years". I rambled for ~30 seconds about marrying my girlfriend and other personal details. I still remember their faces; super awkward, and then they slowly clarified: "we meant professionally" hahaha. It ended up fine in the end, but I feel like there's probably some missing education on social culture of interviewing somewhere and you just have to have those experiences at some point to understand.

wink 4mo ago

What about when they ask you to prepare something that is definitely worded as you should talk 5min about a random non-tech (so kinda explicitly non-work) topic (with some examples like poems and songs iirc) and then they are completely weirded out when you talk about a hobby? But it was also part of the worst interview I have ever had and these misguided 5 minutes for a weird intro were on the low end of the wtf scale.

jrflo 4mo ago

Another pro tip for interviews: even if they explicitly ask for something like "the worst day of your life, including personal circumstances not at work", just answer about work anyways. You don't have to answer every question as posed. Pretend the worst day of your life was at work and was work related. There are a lot of interview questions asked as bait. If someone asks "What is your greatest weakness?", you better not respond with your actual greatest weakness.

freehorse 4mo ago
In my understanding, interviewers expect sth like: > What is your greatest weakness? > I am too good at my work
- eamag 4mo ago
  That's not correct. You are expected to actually share a weekend and how you're handling it
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  This is a common misunderstanding, and I don't want to sound like I'm blaming you for it, but it's based on a misconception of how the process works. What interviewers are looking for is genuine introspection of the kind a high-quality hire would be expected to have. One answer I've given before, for example, is that I instinctively focus too deeply on technical requirements; I have to regularly prompt myself to answer "why does the customer care", or I get too deep into the details and end up with solutions that fail to serve their needs. The fact that I can recognize this weakness and take action to mitigate it is a positive signal. What interviewers are looking to avoid is terrible answers that reveal underlying flaws or show you can't introspect at all. "I don't have any weaknesses", "I have trouble dealing with dumb people who give me bad ideas", "I get frustrated when people come to me with problems but don't explain what program I should write to solve them", etc. Lame, humble-bragging answers are not the intent of the question and will not impress the interviewer, but probably won't prevent you from being hired if the interview otherwise went great. So maybe they're useful strategically if you're worried about giving a bad answer.

duxup 4mo ago

> It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer. If the interviewer did in fact share their personal trauma story as the author says then it would seem to indicate that was what they were asking for. I know of places where that kind of sharing was the norm.

aaron695 4mo ago

[dead]

Gimpei 4mo ago

I’m inclined to believe that you are being too charitable to the interviewers. This is an early stage mental health startup. They totally could have been asking very personal questions. I believe this used to be standard when interviewing psychoanalysts. They could have stopped the author at any time too. That would be the most natural thing. I’m inclined to believe that it was a clown show and they conducted borderline abusive interviews. Shame on them. But also, beware early stage startups. It’s a real roll of the dice and the dice are weighted against you.

chaosharmonic 4mo ago

These aren't at all the same thing though. A candidate can be aware that these kinds of questions are supposed to have boundaries, but that's different from whether an interviewer understands or respects that. And if they don't, those people are also in a decision-making capacity that doesn't often empower you to just say "no." Even when those things are scoped to "...at work," there are still answers that happen at work that are equally inappropriate to go digging for. "Tell me about a time you experienced adversity," for instance, could turn up health or family details that people might have juggled with their jobs -- things that you aren't actually supposed be considering as a factor in these decisions. I also don't know, when someone is spending 90min screening you for "culture fit," that you can assume they're asking you for things that are strictly related to the job. They should be, but that's different from whether that's always a realistic presumption you can make.