
If someone asks if you have any questions, ask a question - kevinburke
https://kevin.burke.dev/kevin/ask-questions-during-interviews/?hn
======
wccrawford
> Even asking "what did you have for lunch" is better than asking nothing; the
> interviewer might start talking about whether the company pays for lunch,
> whether it's any good.

No, it's not. I'm pretty sure anyone who asked that in an interview would be
bottom of the list, regardless of how I felt about their interview otherwise.
It's flippant and shows a lack of care about what's going on.

Iv'e never been upset with someone for not asking questions. Interviews are
tense and we _do_ try to answer the most common questions before they are
asked. If they have no questions, we extend and offer to email us later and
we'll answer any questions they come up with later.

Stupid question affect the interview. Lack of questions doesn't.

~~~
burlesona
Haha, wow. No sense of humor? As a hiring manager I’ve run somewhere north of
a hundred interviews, and honestly they get so boring and repetitive. I love
it when people have questions because it shows you something about them which
wasn’t on the script.

If someone’s question was “what did you have for lunch?” and they asked with a
smile, I would laugh out loud and then tell them about my lunch, and probably
write something like “likeable candidate, has good people skills,” in my
review.

~~~
megablast
> As a hiring manager I’ve run somewhere north of a hundred interviews, and
> honestly they get so boring and repetitive.

What an insane thing to say. As if on top of everything else, you also want us
to entertain you? Does anybody really believe someone would laugh at that?

~~~
DangitBobby
This response doesn't seem warranted. GP didn't say you're his monkey. He said
the job gets boring. Candidates with good people skills get hired more often
because they bring a little more joy to the workplace. And, all other things
being equal, that decision makes perfect sense.

------
tiew9Vii
When I’m in an interview I always end up turning the interview around and
interview the the interviewer.

Interviews are a two way street. They want to make sure you suite a role but
you also need to make sure the role is suitable for you, you are going to
enjoy it and get something from it. I go in with the mental view they need to
sell the job to me.

Doing consultancy I’ve been at many companies, some great some bad. I go
straight to the questions trying to dig up as many warts as possible to figure
out what I’m letting myself in for as I’ve seen how much different companies
can differ.

What are you working on this week?

What’s a typical day?

What’s the current tough problems you have?

Do you do much out of hours work?

Why do you use the tech stack / tools you do?

How do you manage work, do you do scrum/Kanban/x/y/z. How’s your backlog? What
are the upcoming releases, are they on schedule? Who manages features, who and
how is the product owner?

How’s the team?

What’s been your favourite part of your job so far?

How’s the business make money? How much funding do they have and what happens
when that runs out? How’s the current projections will my job be here in 12
months?

Why are you recruiting for this role? How is staff turnover?

Any bad things I should know?

Etc etc

~~~
sethammons
As a long time interviewer, I’ve heard most of these, but never all together.
I’d love to get all these questions, and my opinion of the candidate would go
up if these were asked. The worst is when the candidate has no questions for
me.

~~~
tpmx
It would be easy to overshoot and then be perceived as this arrogant know-it-
all. There are warts everywhere.

You should strike some balance between the impressing the employer and
attempting to dig up the warts.

Sure, if the employer has accepted that they are in over their heads, it's a
valid strategy to try to find all of the warts up front. Think about a home
owner vs a specialized contractor who performs a brutally honest and
(seemingly) credible analysis on the spot. How often does this scenario play
out in the extremely vague world of software?

(In this subthread we're talking about consultant interaction with a potential
employer, which is a bit different from a regular job interview, or from a
scholarship interview)

~~~
Buttons840
> You should strike some balance between the impressing the employer and
> attempting to dig up the warts.

Very true. I feel like a few comments have said the same thing, but it's worth
saying a few different ways.

I remember from "How To Win Friends and Influence People", the author
describes how he simply asked someone a lot of questions at a party, and let
them do all the talking. Later he heard that person thought he was an
excellent "conversationalist", even though all he did is ask questions.

Don't be too adversarial in you questions. Simply asking some friendly
questions that give the interviewer a chance to talk about their achievements
and interests will cause them to like you more.

------
clwk
This reads as an extended justification for how the author could possibly have
failed. He writes as though it _must_ be as simple as 'just should have asked
a question'. It's an odd conclusion which communicates its own set of
assumptions. It reminds me of people who claim, in all seriousness, that they
can always spot X intangible characteristic — without any justification for
how they determine their false positive/negative rate in that judgment. This
undoubtedly reflects my bias, but I find many (bordering or even definitely
including most) 'humble' blog posts to do this; and that is perhaps a further
riff on the kind of canned advice we see here. They tend to read, to me, like
answers to the interview questions, "Tell me about a time you failed," or,
"What is your greatest weakness?" In this case, all the author really reports
is that he did extremely poorly relative to his expectations — but he manages
to spin it into a maxim. If even someone as qualified as he could be unseated
by this tactical error, it surely bears memorializing as advice worth living
by.

~~~
kevinburke
OP here - please trust that I have given this a lot of thought, both through
hours and hours of examining the conversation and introspecting my answers,
and (months) later, in a long phone call with the director of the program, who
very generously walked me through why they made the decision they did.

I alluded to this in the post - this wasn’t the only thing I did wrong, not at
all, but it was by far the easiest to change and the clearest signal to the
interviewers that I was overconfident and incurious, and the other stuff would
just detract from the message that’s already there.

~~~
clwk
Thanks for the response. It's valuable that they gave you detailed feedback.
The post would be strengthened by enough specifics grounded in that actual
feedback to have preempted my response. In any case, I appreciate the
conversation.

My comment here should not be read as a personal judgment. It's more of a
literary critique of your article as instance of a genre—with an extra helping
of editorial critique of that genre.

------
mattlondon
The "what did you have for lunch" question strikes me as a _bad idea_.

If I am interviewing someone and that is their only question, it is an
immediate "weirdo-flag" if it gets to the stage where we are making our minds
up and aren't sure - I can imagine the feedback now: "asked a weird, pointless
and irrelevant question during an important situation" is a _negative_ thing
and could be a decider. Would this person do something equally odd and
inappropriate in an important client meeting for example?

If you've had a really fun, jovial and friendly conversation with the
interviewer then 100% sure go for it, but I find most interviews are a bit
from stilted and fraught and it does not feel that this sort of thing would be
appropriate.

My favourite sort of question for this when you have no other questions is
something like "What is a typically day like for you?" or "What is a day-in-
the-life of this role like?" It is useful for understanding if the role really
is what you think it is, and from there you can branch out to get a bit more
into the details ("ah - what SCM do you use?" "oh right - how are code reviews
done?" "interesting - how do you track work to be done?" "I see - is there
dedicated UX people?" etc etc)

Won't always work since the person interviewing you might not be in the
team/role you are applying for, but I think it shows interest in what you will
actually be doing if you got the role, re-inforces that you have relevant
experience (if you ask appropriate follow-up questions), and that you are
curious.

------
chris_j
Here's the thing: interviews are stressful and unnatural and they provoke
anxiety and a fight-or-flight response in a lot of people. That fight-or-
flight response shuts down parts of the brain that evolution considers
unnecessary in an emergency situation, including the pre-frontal cortex - the
part of the brain that you need to perform reasoning and to think of questions
that you might want to ask. A good interviewer will know this.

I've interviewed a lot of people who were obviously nervous and who didn't
have any questions to ask me at the end but whom we hired and who ended up
doing really well in the job.

That said, if you do want to have something to ask the interviewer and you're
worried that your mind will go blank, write down some questions ahead of time
in a notebook that you take to the interview and refer to it if necessary. An
added bonus is that you can ask about things that you actually care about,
rather than just asking asking the first thing that comes into your head.

------
BorisTheBrave
When I'm interviewing people, I usually don't consider the questions they ask
(or don't) as part of the evaluation, and if they are nervous, I tell them so.

If you evaluate their questions, then they might not ask what they actually
want to know, for fear they'll be judged for it. That helps no one.

~~~
gregmac
While I agree you need to be careful about mistaking someones nervousness for
lack of qualification for the job, that's going to be an issue throughout the
interview, not just when they ask questions, and you need to work to get them
comfortable throughout.

I find the questions from the interviewee to be among the most useful part of
the interview, for _both_ sides. As an interviewer, it's great insight into
the things they care about, what caught their attention during our discussion
and want to dig into some more, etc.

I'd also say it's exceedingly difficult to set aside their questions, even if
you truly mean that you try to. If someone asks something like "How closely
are the office supplies tracked, would anyone notice if stuff went missing?" I
doubt you can totally ignore that. Similarly, if someone has a mediocre
interview but asks a some absolutely great questions that lead to an amazing
discussion are you really going to say "well, I think they'd be a great fit,
but I did say I'd not consider their questions as part of evaluation, so guess
it's a No from me"?

The hardest one for me is where someone otherwise good asks something like
"When can I get my first raise and how much is it?" as their first question. I
mean, it's a valid question, but it's hard to ignore that it's the _first_
question.

As an interviewee, it's a great time to figure out what you're getting into.
This is a potential future co-worker you're talking to, so if they get upset
that you've asked a tough question or even respond with a hint of "psh, that's
a stupid question" that's a massive red flag about what taking this job would
be like.

------
codegeek
When I interview someone, I personally am interested in a "conversation" with
the candidate and not just where I ask questions, they provide an answer. So
by the time we are done, the candidate should already have asked a few things
since I run the interview as a conversation where they talk to me, ask
questions as part of the discussions we are having and of course, answer
specific questions that I ask.

At the end, I always ask: do you have any other questions for me. I don't care
if they ask me a question for the heck of it but I do care overall whether
they were engaged with me through the interview or not. This specially matters
as you interview more senior candidates than entry level or junior even though
I welcome anyone to ask me anything.

So I would say that go to an interview where you should not have to
necessarily ask questions at the end but it should ideally be more of a
conversation throughout. It also depends on how much information is revealed
by the interviewer upfront. I always talk about the company, the team
structure and the specific role before I start getting into details. That
gives them an opportunity to later on ask for more clarification etc.

~~~
A_No_Name_Mouse
This. An interview where I only get to answer feels like an interrogation.
However at the end I ALWAYS ask one more question: was there anything in this
interview that made you have second thoughts about hiring me? If so, it gives
me a chance to correct it and it gives me the feedback you never get in a
rejection letter. Also it shows them I'm open to feedback. If not, there is
little chance this person won't hire me.

------
chrisabrams
Since the comments have shifted focus to hiring/interviewing:

Make sure that your company's interview process leaves enough time at the end
of each interview to allow the candidate to ask questions. Don't assume the
candidate is OK with emailing questions later because you only left the
candidate 3 minutes to talk. The candidate pledged a day of their life to
interview as they are interested in your company. If they leave your company
at the end of the day without being able to ask all the questions they have,
there's a chance they will never bring them up later.

~~~
fogetti
> there's a chance they will never bring them up later

If by that you mean that they will look for another company instead, then I
agree. That's what I always do. I am not explaining anything, I just simply
ghost the companies who behave like that. I ALWAYS found a more caring company
by doing this.

------
audeyisaacs
My interviewee style is to ask questions during the interview. I feel like it
makes it more conversational and pleasant.

I ask so many questions/clarifications during an interview that even if I have
a big list going into it, by the time the interviewer asks if I have any
questions, I pause, and then most of the time I'll respond something like: "I
think we've covered everything I was curious about" and then do a quick recap
of my understanding to clarify and uncover any bad assumptions.

My interview to next stage/offer rate is quite high, so I think my interviewee
style is reasonably good.

~~~
nerdponx
This, plus recently I've had a lot of experiences where the interviewer asks
me just 1 or 2 simple questions, then invites me to ask them questions.

------
mattacular
It's always really obvious when someone asks a question just to hear themself
speak or to feel like they made a mark on the meeting or whatnot. To me it
comes off as mildly irritating and a waste of everyone's time. I personally
won't be taking this advice, sorry.

~~~
ralphstodomingo
YMMV I guess. But the article talks about asking questions _during a (hiring)
interview._ I don't see it the same as asking a question during a meeting.

~~~
mattacular
Don't waste the interviewers' time, especially.

------
teddyuk
I agree with this, I can pinpoint the one question I didn’t answer correctly
in one interview once. I was doing well and passed through everything until it
came to hr asking about a 5 month break and why I left a company without
another job. The hr lady prompted me with what to say “was it so you could do
some travelling?” And I replied that I just needed a break and took some time
off. She prompted that I must have done some studying, again I just said no
and that was it.

My answer didn’t fit the social norms so I was canned.

------
jrockway
I think if y'all are trying to apply this to tech interviews at big companies
you will be sadly disappointed. I did interviews for a company that has
interviewers write feedback for a hiring committee, and I never included
anything about the questions the candidate had. 100% of my feedback was about
the interview questions that I asked and the candidate's answers to them. The
people making the hiring decision has no way of knowing that you wore a suit,
or asked me what I had for lunch, or anything like that. The information is
simply not available to them. (We even tried to write feedback like "the
candidate did X" so that there was no "he" or "she" to bias things.)

------
ALittleLight
I've never cared when a candidate doesn't have questions questions for me.
I've done ~100-200 interviews at FAANG companies and never heard a single
complaint in the debriefing about "The candidate didn't have any questions for
me."

I feel like once you've done a few interviews you realize that "What's a
typical day like?" Isn't really a signal of a candidate's genuine interest,
it's the obvious reply to your "Any questions for me?" gambit.

Personally, I wouldn't even ask for questions from the candidate if I didn't
know some rare people do genuinely want to ask questions.

~~~
jmchuster
FAANG is a little bit different, because you're not really evaluating people
as much on "how much do they want to be here", because the answer is
essentially the same for most people. For smaller companies, this matters a
lot more, and a couple of key hires can really elevate or drag down the office
culture.

~~~
luckylion
> For smaller companies, this matters a lot more, and a couple of key hires
> can really elevate or drag down the office culture.

Is that really a thing between global tech company vs small company or rather
big vs small? In a 10 people company, everybody makes up 10% of the people, so
they have much more impact on everything than in a company of 10000.

~~~
jmchuster
I would say that culture matters a lot more in the hiring/interview process
when you expect each individual you're hiring to be a multiplicative force.
For smaller startups that are growing, this tends to be true. For larger
companies, they tend to grow more linearly, so an individual that only
contributes raw units of work is usually sufficient. So I don't think it's
purely the percentage of the company that each hire represents, but more so
what you expect out of each individual.

------
powersnail
While one should always prepare a question in such situation, the proposed
standby questions are definitely worse than not asking a question. "What did
you have for lunch" or "what did you do yesterday" are highly personal, and
irrelevant to the interview.

It is a worse way of saying "I don't have a real question for you".

Work environment, atmosphere, infrastructures... There are endless relevant
topics that an interviewee could ask about. Anything would be better than
"what did you do yesterday".

~~~
kevinburke
For what it's worth I (OP) have been asking this question for a decade now and
have gotten a good response, as well as fodder for follow ups. At least when I
look back at the (few) times I have been rejected there were obvious other
reasons that were _not_ this.

When you ask people what they value they talk in generalities like "good team
communication is important to us," when you ask what they did yesterday you
learn that feature development has stalled because everything is being
rewritten in Clojure, or whatever, then you can follow up and ask about that.

------
pedalpete
While the "what did you have for lunch" question may do a bit to surprise the
interviewer, there is probably a more valuable go-to question that can be
fairly generic in any sort of interview type experience.

"If you were me, what would you improve on (work on, learn next, etc etc)?"

This is beneficial both for the interviewer and you as an interviewee. It lets
the interviewer consider you specifically in the context of "are you missing
something", and gives them a good opportunity of letting you know where they
see your holes/flaws. It also let's them know that you are willing to learn,
and trying to understand how to grow and change.

The interviewer will be asking themselves these sorts of questions after the
interview anyway, so why not try to get their feedback right then and there,
with a potential opportunity for you to correct them, if they think you are
missing something that you actually have.

~~~
kevinburke
I provide a more valuable, generic go-to question in the sentence after the
one you quoted

------
overgard
This also helps in projecting an image that you have options and you're not
desperate. And even if you are desperate, it's good to ask questions so you
don't land in a bad situation. I think about some jobs I quit, and in
retrospect I could have saved everyone some time if I had thought of certain
things that were important to me and asked questions ahead of time.

------
weinzierl
> Finally, "person fails interview because interviewer expects to see cultural
> signal and interviewee does not broadcast cultural signal" is a common
> failure mode. Think about someone who wears a suit to a tech interview.

Honest curious question: Is it really considered that much of a faux-pas to
wear a suit to a tech interview nowadays?

~~~
EliRivers
As with all such things, it depends on the company and the person doing the
interview. There certainly used to be a very strong idea of "cultural fit",
coupled with appearance cargo-culting, that made guessing what to wear at some
places a minefield. On the one hand, if a company is putting their hiring
decisions in the hands of insecure stereotype-wannabees who idolise a fantasy
vision of the valley, do you want to work there anyway? On the other hand, we
all need to pay the rent and sometimes if you can get past the "cultural fit"
gatekeepers the rest of the company is pretty solid.

On a personal note, I always wear a suit to inteviews. I don't have many
suits, but they're bespoke and tailored to fit. When I put one on, it's like a
mode switch; lookin' sharp, feelin' sharp. Sometimes it's even a talking point
when an interview notices (although, to be fair, at least once one interviewer
appeared to have slept in his clothes and looked a complete mess, and me
lookin' sharp just emphasised it). I do live and work principally in the UK,
though, where wearing a shirt with buttons is not seen as dressy.

~~~
violetgarden
I also dress up for interviews even if the place is casual, and I even usually
dress nicely for the first day of work. You’re normally introduced to 100
people on your first day, and I like to make a good impression. I’ve never had
a problem with negative feedback from this. I think you can tell someone’s
cultural fit better by a conversation than their clothing.

------
gpsx
This advice might apply to written applications too. In college I was applying
for a scholarship, in its first year, in which they picked one recipient from
each state. It was a long application. The very last page was the question,
"Is there any other information about you or your family you would like to
share?". I thought this was an odd question. Maybe they wanted some
information about special hardships or something. I instead wrote a table that
had the height and weight of every member of my family.

I told my parents about the application and my mother was so mad at me. She
told me I threw away my chance at the scholarship. It turns out however that I
got the scholarship. Not only that, some of the recipients were invited to the
capitol building in DC if they lived relatively close. A senator came up to me
at the luncheon and told me she loved my answer. It also turned out that they
gave some extra scholarships beyond one per state. It turns out my state got
one of those extra scholarships. I suspect maybe I got the scholarship only
because of my smart ass answer at the end.

------
theonething
> they asked "do you have any questions for us?" By this point I'd done so
> much preparation that I couldn't think of anything, and said "No."

I'd argue his preparation was inadequate. Part of my interview preparation
process is to come up with a list of questions to ask based on the research
I've done about the company and position.

~~~
kevinburke
OP here - this kinda feels like telling someone who missed a game winning shot
that they should have made the shot. Had I included this in my preparation and
gotten the scholarship I would not have written the blog post about how
failure to prepare in one key way led to me not getting a scholarship.

In any case I've updated the wording to make my intent more clear.

~~~
theonething
Not exactly. I think a more apt analogy is a person who missed the game
winning three point shot who only practiced inside shots. You'd want to tell
the person they should probably round out their practice routine with outside
shots as well.

------
asfarley
I was going through the new-student induction at UTIAS and one researcher
asked if we had any questions. Everyone else was silent, and I got the feeling
the guy was feeling bad about it so I asked a question about his research.

I fumbled the question, he made me look like an idiot.

One anecdote isn’t everything, but “just force a question” is not a foolproof
strategy.

~~~
mcny
I have a similar story. It was first day in a machine learning class in a
computer science majors (not real ml, baby ml class) and the professor made a
point to tell us to ask questions and how there are no stupid questions Bla
bla. Just about fifteen minutes later, he was deriving an expression or
something but my calculus was rusty so I asked him to elaborate how he went
from one step to the next. I vividly remember him saying that is the most
stupid question he had ever heard. I don’t think any student asked him any
subject matter question all semester (only administrative questions like
what’s on the test, project grading, and so on).

------
lsb
"What did you do yesterday", from the article, is a great open-ended question
that tells you a lot about someone.

I've always enjoyed a diff-question, like, what do you wish people knew about
xyz, or what surprised you about xyz. Those answers are usually very
information dense

------
forty
I interviewed a lot of candidates (technical interviews for software
engineers) and in my experience great candidates ask great questions. Don't
ask any question, ask interesting questions. There are 2 reasons why this is
important:

\- Asking good questions is part of the job IMO, I'm not sure why we wouldn't
test it, so it absolutely makes sense to ask candidates to ask questions.

\- Even if you really prepared well and know everything there is to know about
the team and the company you are applying, there has to be something an
insider can tell you that would be interesting for you if you really want to
join this company/ this team. So it clearly shows lake of interest /
motivation if you ask no question

~~~
mierz00
What have been some questions that stood out for you?

------
jldugger
> Fast forward a week and I got an email that I was not going to be offered a
> scholarship. Only two other students out of 25 were rejected. I was
> dumbfounded.

High stakes selection often comes down to random chance. It's entirely
possible the author could have asked the perfect question and still missed
out, because from the selection committee's perspective all candidates appear
equally strong. It's a good position to be in as a hiring manager, but as a
candidate it can be difficult to refrain from overfitting the situation.

Probably the best advice, in any situation, is to seek out more options. Apply
to more jobs, more scholarships, and more fellowships. Write down more ideas,
todo items and bugs.

------
bryanrasmussen
Right, asking the question is another stress issue with interviews, during the
interview you are essentially hunting around for questions to ask this
representative of a company that is pretty much like every other company in
the tech space for all they like to pretend that they are not. Because at the
end of the interview they are going to ask if you have any questions for them,
and despite everything being pretty clear cut and boring you should try to
find some question that makes you sound insightful and makes an impression but
at the same time is not aggressive.

------
kyberias
The author ASSUMES that not asking questions was the reason he got rejected.
That may not be true and it is likely the rejection had much more profound
reasons. Yet he proceeds to write a blog post about that.

------
mrfusion
“ While apes can learn sign language and communicate using it, they have never
attempted to learn new knowledge by asking humans or other apes. They don't
seem to realize that other entities can know things they don't. It's a concept
that separates mankind from apes”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_cognition#Asking_que...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_cognition#Asking_questions_and_giving_negative_answers)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
This is something you see in reverse with toddlers, they think you know
everything they do (or at least that's been my experience with my own kids) so
if they saw something cool then they assume that you saw it too. My kids have
gone through stages of assuming they now know everyhing, too. Fun.

------
kondro
Maybe it's the wrong approach, but I treat an entire interview as back-and-
forth conversation… especially for a specific position.

Questions demonstrate curiosity in the role you're being hired for and give
you an opportunity to demonstrate knowledge about and empathy for your
ultimate end-users… not to mention allowing you to get a feel for the culture
of the team and company you're about to spend a large amount of your time
working at.

~~~
t-shaped
I've always appreciated people who interview like this and on the rare chance
that I'm interviewing someone, I focus on maintaining a conversation too.

Really draws the line between a conglomerate firm and a company that actually
cares at a personal (sort of) level.

------
stuart78
In my opinion you learn a ton about candidate in this stage. Firs and
foremost, are the curious. Generic questions are fine, but specific questions
that respond to the discussion show you’ve both been paying attention and are
actually thinking about the job.

It may be a personal pet peeve, but I sometimes get ‘I asked all my questions
in the other interviews’. So what, ask them again! The question will be the
same, the answer will be different.

~~~
woutr_be
I feel the need to disagree with you here, it's absolutely possible a
candidate just doesn't have any questions, maybe they've done their research
up front, or all their questions were asked during the interview, I wouldn't
necessary correlate that with curiosity. I've been in interviews where I had
some questions up front, but they all got answered during the interview
itself, either through natural conversation, or because the person
interviewing touched on those topics.

> The question will be the same, the answer will be different.

Personally, especially when I know I'm having different interviews with
different people, I ask the same question twice, just to evaluate their
answers. If the answer to a question (e.g. Do engineers have a lot of input
regarding technical decisions) is different between one of the engineers and
the dev lead / CTO, then you know there's something wrong.

Especially at bigger companies, where I know the final interview will be with
HR, it's interesting to ask questions regarding company policies or culture.
You usually get very different answers.

------
mtm7
If I’m going into an interview, I’ll usually prepare some questions in
advance.

But I’m terrible at coming up with questions during dynamic meetings. I find
that I need time to reflect on topics before I can form a clear idea of what I
need to ask.

This has backfired several times, usually in meetings with sharp
businesspeople (who are _so_ good at asking pointed questions!). Does anyone
have tips on how to get better at this?

~~~
jmchuster
You already gave the answer yourself. You need to reflect on the topic
beforehand. Something that is truly brand-new, you probably got some
notification ahead of time that would have allowed you to do thinking prep.
Things that are much more relevant to what you're working on or your business
might be much more ad-hoc, so then that means you need to be always trying to
think deeply about the work that you do and understand and evaluating all the
potentials that are available.

------
lixtra
> But if your goal is to cast a wide net [...], maybe make a list of every
> reason you've used to reject a nontraditional candidate in the past and then
> email that to the candidate in advance of the interview

Such a list would be a huge legal burden and no sane corporation would send
it.

------
axegon_
This is life 101 advice for everyone, I think. I've turned down plenty of
people on interviews because of this. The tests I create always contain one or
two questions I doubt anyone would ever answer. And that's the reason I always
put them there - give them a simple opportunity to ask a question. When I ask
someone if they have questions and they reply with "no", then it's clear they
are not suitable for a position where they would have to ask a lot of
questions. I've had experience with several such developers, who never asked
questions. What I've learned is that those can only create a universe of anti
patterns and code which is just as hard to maintain as cracking rsa 4096
without a key.

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SergeAx
I can't agree with author's point. I'm doing lots of job interviews as
employer and also taking some interviews as an employee once a year to
remember how it feels on the other side. It is plain difficult to switch
context from answering someone's hard and potentially life-changing questions
to asking my own. When candidate hears "do you have any questions?” their
first reaction is "Wow, I've made it, it's over!". So I'm giving my candidates
extra minutes to relax and remember what is it that they want to know about
company and working conditions.

Good tactic is to have a prepared list with you, but it is a knowledge
acquired with tens of interviews, not something any high-schooler doing every
day.

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codegladiator
> what did you have for lunch? > what did you do yesterday?

please don't ask made up questions. or else we complete the whole cycle. ask
when you really want to know something. else it's just stupid.

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PersonalOps
A personal favorite response of mine if I don't have any questions left is
"no, I think I injected most questions I had as we went along. I was going to
ask <thing>, but I think we covered that well already."

This is helpful if you're like me and turn interviews into discussions instead
of Q&A sessions. It shows you've considered you might not have the full
context just from prior correspondence, while resurfacing a discussion topic
for them to expand on if they wish.

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encoderer
Yes. File this alongside “if somebody offers you a breath mint, take it”

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axus
Is this an example of "cultural bias"? That would mean the behavior doesn't
predict job performance, but is used to filter out candidates from different
cultures.

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supernova87a
This essay leaves me confused and unable to follow the train of logic from an
already unclear correlation/observation to lesson learned (?).

How did it leap from, ask a question if you have the opportunity because I
think I was denied a scholarship because I didn't, to "show your commitment to
diversity and non-traditional backgrounds, by emailing a list of every
cultural-related reason you've used to reject people"?

------
Dumblydorr
It's quite simple: any conversation is a two-way street. Teacher and pupil,
interviewer and job seeker, parent and child -- every conversational partner
should be curious and thoughtful about the other person.

Just extrapolate the above advice to a first date. Should you ask your date
questions? Obviously you should! So why not your interviewer?

Tennis isn't exciting when one player plays against a wall, conversation is a
collaboration.

------
jordanpg
I always go into interviews with a prepared list of thoughtful and insightful
questions to ask for this moment. Not because I care about the answers but
because it’s part of the script.

In real life, if I have questions I’ll ask them and if I don’t I won’t. Making
the fact of asking of questions relevant for important decisions is a
preposterous charade, one that I am used to playing along with by now.

------
angmarsbane
As my parting question I like to ask if there’s any reason they wouldn’t
recommend me for the job.

I’ve found this question tends to stun the interviewer, puts them back on
their heels to think a bit.

Then, they either tell me about any lingering concern (giving me a chance to
address it while still in the room) OR they tell me that the interview went
well / what they appreciated from the discussion.

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jl2718
Painful. I think I’m at the end of my tolerance for spending my life
predicting and managing other people’s emotions.

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sumpygump
It's also helpful as an interviewer to ask "What questions do you have?"

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tomaszs
It is good advice but should not be exagerrated. On one interview i was the
one asking most of the questions. And i didn't give myself a job :)

------
hkai
"If a developer like me were to leave your company right now, what's the
reason they would quit?"

------
lazylizard
Often my response is...i don't know enough to ask yet

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everyone
If u have questions, ask them. If you dont have questions, you cannot ask them
by definition.

People reading anymore into this are not the kind of people you want to have
to work with.

~~~
everyone
Additional: Asking a question just for the sake of it, or for the sake of
appearances, is what some idiot does at the end of a meeting, making it go on
for another half an hour and wasting _everyone_ presents time.

~~~
jl2718
Somebody didn’t bring a present for everybody so nobody asked a question to
waste everybody presents time before anybody left.

Who’s on first.

