
What Startups Really Mean by “Why Should We Hire You?” - joeyespo
https://angel.co/blog/what-startups-really-mean-by-why-should-we-hire-you
======
zwkrt
As the interview was further and further analyzed by both The Company and the
proletariat, an arms race developed. The Company asked esoteric questions and
the proles studied. The proles learned to FizzBuzz and The Company developed
FooBaz. Whiteboards gave way to take home interviews which gave way to
probationary offers. Personal questions were supplanted by a form of
subtextual sparring in which small facial movements, pauses, and hand
movements spoke volumes.

By 2034 the majority of proles were on illegal performance-evaluation
enhancing drugs, necessitated by the fact that the average prole was also on
The Company's indefinite performance improvement probation. They occupied over
20% of their working hours proving their worth to The Company, which had hired
Prefects to wander the endless halls. The Prefects started administering the
Voight-Kampf employee aptitude tests on proles, but soon began testing each
other on their own effectiveness in administering the test.

Before The Fall, the end state of the system was that The Company existed only
to vet its own employees, all of whom were in charge of secretly monitoring
other groups of employees. They had their nominal tasks such as programming or
planning, but employee evaluation was based solely on the ability to evaluate
others in their nominal tasks.

~~~
throwawaywriter
Jane Adeline Jones was 27 and has already been evaluated as an adult by both
State and Federal governments. Not a probationary adult. Full adult. She was
even allowed to drive during the day.

As a Level 4 Artificial Learning engineer with Gamazo people always assumed
that she was a Perfect. She wasn’t. She was a hard working proletariat.

“That’s actually a funny way to put it” she thought to herself as the words
came out of her mouth. “Hard working proletariat”. Not perfect. Just hard
working. “Interesting concept” she thought and stuck a fork in a salad bowl.

The salad was a 13 out of 10. The restaurant could do better. The sauce was a
solid 15, the bread here was always over 100. But the lattice was soggy. Could
it evaluate to less the 100%? She, obviously, wasn’t certified to evaluate
that but Danny was. “Danny, what you think of the lattice?” she asked. Danny
looked up from his own bowl of salad and gave her a thoughtful stare. She put
her head down and kept munching.

It was a nice day. The sky was blue. The sun was warm. Warm but not too warm.
“17 at least”. Jane cleared her mind and laid back, as she waited for Danny to
answer. “Life was good with high probability of getting better” she thought.
She smiled. Closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, Danny has yet to answer. Instead there was a man
standing there right in front of her.

~~~
marzell
The style here reminds me of Ray Bradbury, based on the pacing and level of
detail.

~~~
yyx
"We" vibe for me

------
im_down_w_otp
There is an enormous amount of consideration and nuance being projected by
this article onto these questions and the context they're often asked in.

I've been in this industry a long time, I've been in startups and in big
enterprises, and I've been a hiring manager in both cases and an executive in
the former.

Very, very rarely would I say that my hiring manager or executive peers
(especially of the typically inexperienced startup variety) would be asking
questions like these with the awareness of intent and interpretation being
claimed here. Mostly these questions are being asked because, just like the
fairly pointless "whiteboarding" questions, they're just the questions
everybody thinks they're supposed to ask. That is of course until an
alternative model is presented and nurtured.

If you find a great hiring manager who is actually putting in a lot of
forethought, intent, and consideration into their hiring and interviewing
process, then do whatever you can to work with them. But, one of the ways
you'll be able to detect such a person is they won't likely be asking cookie-
cutter questions or giving you cookie-cutter quizes.

------
aristus
If you forgive the self-post:

 _" The theme is familiar to anyone who's tried to join a country club or
high-school clique. It's not supposed to make sense. You are expected to
conform to the rules of The Culture before you are allowed to demonstrate your
actual worth. What wearing a suit really indicates is —I am not making this
up— non-conformity, one of the gravest of sins. For extra excitement, the
rules are unwritten and ever-changing, and you will never be told how you
screwed up."_

[http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html](http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html)

~~~
im_down_w_otp
I've noticed this phenomenon seemingly distilled down to its purest form when
fundraising especially.

Once you accept it for what it is, the process doesn't become anymore sane or
reasonable, but it does at least become less disorienting and demoralizing.

------
victor_ronin
There are a lot of ways to translate these questions. As an example: "Tell Me
About A Time You Failed". It can mean "Can you stomach failing until we figure
things out?" or it can mean "Are you willing to be vulnerable by exposing your
failures?" or "What kind of problems you perceive as a failure?". I can
probably write another half a dozen of translations of such questions.

I don't think there should be a right/wrong translation. And based on that,
there are rarely terrible answers.

These questions are open-ended on purpose, so people will talk and say things
which are essential to them.

As an example: “I didn't get along with a coworker.” isn't a terrible answer.
It means that interpersonal relations for this person are important. “I
struggled to balance work and life.” isn't a terrible answer, but rather show
that he/she prefers an environment where the work doesn't occupy all the
time/energy.

The only answer which I wound consider bad is a dismissive answer (trying to
ignore/deflect the question).

~~~
kenhwang
I'd say there's very few terrible answers, since terrible answers are the ones
that dodge and deflect and most people don't do that. However it's still very
easy to for a good answer to reflect poorly on your candidacy.

"I was terminated due to repeated negligence causing millions of dollars of
damage" is a wonderful answer, it just torpedoes your chances of getting an
offer.

------
skrebbel
FWIW I run a startup and I think every single one of these questions is
terrible.

We can gauge your ambition and your resilience just fine in your first few
weeks (in which we've signed you on as a contractor-under-evaluation - if your
situation allows). And yes, we've had to learn how to do this the hard way
(having kept people on for longer than was good for anyone). But I think it's
nuts to think that you can test someone's ambition asking "where do you see
yourself in 5 years?".

I'm pretty convinced that that place deep down where people's natural drive
comes from is, especially for engineers and other creative roles, very
disconnected from conscious career planning. If you want to tap that natural
drive, you need to create an environment where it can flourish. I don't think
that asking "Why should we hire you?" when you mean "Do you understand what
problem we're solving?" contributes to such an environment. You want to be
open, clear, direct, and honest, not play guessing games.

~~~
kenhwang
We ask the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" question as part of our
standard interview. We don't put very much weight on it, but it adds color to
the candidates ambitions. Most engineers say they would try to stay as
engineers, some say maybe product/project/people management; these are all
fine answers.

Then we have the candidates that just blank or give a response like "I just
want to make money". Not dealbreakers, but not great answers.

But I've also gotten a surprising amount of really terrible answers, like "at
Google" and "ideally I finally paid off all my student debt so I can finally
be a comedian". These are the people we don't hire.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _But I 've also gotten a surprising amount of really terrible answers, like
> "at Google" and "ideally I finally paid off all my student debt so I can
> finally be a comedian". These are the people we don't hire._

I wonder why? Those are the most, if not the only, honest answers you got.

In current state of software industry, unless the candidate happens to believe
in your mission, anyone answering they'll want to still work for you is either
lying or naïve.

~~~
kenhwang
I don't have a reason to believe our candidates are lying when they say they
want to continue doing engineering work or move into management. None of that
implies they're set on working with us, and that's OK, they're interviewing
and know very little about us, so its understandable that they don't know
whether it'll work out with us. So by saying they want to continue working as
an engineer, we know that as long as they're working with us, we'll have an
engineer. With product/project/people managers, we know to maybe keep an open
head for a potential internal lateral movement from engineering.

When they say "at Google", that's at least as bad as saying "working for you";
they know nothing about what working at Google is like any more than they know
what working with us will be like. Plus, it implies "I don't want to work for
you"; would you hire anyone that says that?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough, wrt. working as an engineer, and not putting too much stock in
"working with us" part. Early sign that a person wants to stay on the engineer
track, or transition towards management, is useful.

> _When they say "at Google", that's at least as bad as saying "working for
> you"; they know nothing about what working at Google is like any more than
> they know what working with us will be like._

They do know enough. They know that Google is "hot". Pays well, gives a lot of
street cred, opens a lot of doors. Unless you're one of FAANG, they can assume
with high confidence that working for Google will be better than working for
you. What they may not be confident about is whether they'd pass an interview
there.

> _Plus, it implies "I don't want to work for you"; would you hire anyone that
> says that?_

IMO the very fact they showed up implies they do want to work for you _now_.
But maybe not in 5 years. For a typical programming job, I don't see a
problem. It's unlikely the person will stay with you for 5 years anyway, so
why not treat this simply as exchanging professional services for money?

~~~
kenhwang
> _They do know enough. They know that Google is "hot". Pays well, gives a lot
> of street cred, opens a lot of doors. Unless you're one of FAANG, they can
> assume with high confidence that working for Google will be better than
> working for you. What they may not be confident about is whether they'd pass
> an interview there._

All valid things to want, but very little of it benefits us. Being a better
engineer or manager benefits the company and would convince me to hire. Saying
you want to work elsewhere eventually, but not being able to say why doesn't
tell me why I should hire.

> _IMO the very fact they showed up implies they do want to work for you now.
> But maybe not in 5 years. For a typical programming job, I don 't see a
> problem. It's unlikely the person will stay with you for 5 years anyway, so
> why not treat this simply as exchanging professional services for money?_

Sure, but they've just raised the bar a lot higher for themselves since now
they have to convince us that they can hit the ground running and require
minimal onboarding and investment. Very very few candidates can do that, and
those that can have no problem getting a job at FAANG. Usually the ones that
meet that higher bar are extended an offer, but so far all have declined in
favor of a FAANG.

~~~
watwut
To me stories like this drive home the fact that there is no shortage of
programmers. When there is shortage of programmers, no one cares about games
like this and hire, because they want non-sociopath to work for them for next
year and are drowning in work that needs to be done.

I think that this means there is a lot of good programmers with reasonable
personalities around and companies are picky.

~~~
kenhwang
Depends on the market. I'm in Los Angeles where there's a ton of people
willing to work here, but not very many companies hiring. Bay Area I know is
the exact opposite.

------
btilly
I strongly disagree with their "translations".

Here are mine.

Tell Me About A Time You Failed _Theirs: Can you stomach failing until we
figure things out?_ Mine: When the shit hits the fan, do I have to worry that
you will engage in defensive CYA?

 __Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years? ___Theirs: Are you ambitious
enough for a startup?_ Mine: What are your long-term values? (For the record,
I think that this is a terrible question. But I answer the translation
honestly.)

 __Why Should We Hire You? ___Theirs: Do you really understand the problem we
're solving?_ Mine: What value do you think you bring?

------
scaryclam
Perhaps I have a vastly different idea of what these questions mean (though
reading other replies here, I don't think I do), but the "translations" to
these questions are just _horrible_.

 _" 1\. Tell Me About A Time You Failed

Translation: Can you stomach failing until we figure things out?"_

No. No it doesn't. It's far more likely that they're asking you if you can
identify that you've got something wrong in the past and have learned
something from it. Rambling on about things that _you_ didn't get wrong, but
someone else did and were out of your control will only serve to make the
interviewer wonder why you're avoiding the question.

 _" 2\. Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years?

Translation: Are you ambitious enough for a startup?"_

Again, no. This is a simple question to find out what sort of direction you
want your career to go in. It's a common question to help evaluate whether the
company and you are going to be a good match. If you want to be a CTO and they
want someone who's OK staying more hands-on, this is the sort of question to
help make sure you're not going to be unhappy later on.

 _" 3\. Why Should We Hire You?

Translation: Do you really understand the problem we're solving?"_

I'm really unsure how the author got to this conclusion. This is the same old
question that's been asked for donkeys years, and the underlying reason for it
(if any) is that they want you to sell yourself to them. Any halfway competent
interviewer is going to have some _much_ better questions for finding out if
you understand the problem they're solving than this would give them.

Now, of course, different hiring managers are going to disagree with what I've
just written there, and that's just fine! We're all going to have different
motives for interview questions, whichever side of the table you're on. Point
is, you can't "translate" common interview questions like the article attempts
to do as you have no idea what the interviewer is actually looking for. Be
honest, be friendly, and be yourself.

 _edit: formatting and duplication_

------
ken
"Make Your Questions As Good As Your Answers" sounds like exactly the opposite
of Spolsky:

> Some interviewees try to judge if the candidate asks “intelligent”
> questions. Personally, I don’t care what questions they ask; by this point
> I’ve already made my decision.

I maintain my belief that nobody in software has a clue how to do technical
interviews.

------
TeMPOraL
On an interview, I was once asked, "Why _shouldn 't_ we hire you?". This got
me totally confused, I was speechless for like 10 seconds. I don't remember
the answer, it wasn't really anything remarkable. Still, I got the job.

------
luord
I can't stand this type of "gotcha" questions like "tell me about a time you
failed". They're almost designed to make the interviewed misstep and, in so,
waste everyone's time.

"Why should we hire you?" Is a weird one, specially if it was the company who
contacted the interviewed. They should already know why they want to hire and
instead ask specific questions to corroborate.

In general, this article assumes that the company holds all the cards and the
applicants should be grateful (and waste plenty of time doing the "homework")
just because they were given an interview. This is very often not the case.

------
wrs
This is a surprisingly good article when it comes to describing the needs of a
startup, but it makes me wonder why it’s taken for granted that these
interview questions have to be asked in subtextual code...

------
avip
I always thought "why should we hire you" is the new "tell me about yourself".
Just an open, completely dumb question to estimate the ability of candidates
to generally speak.

------
bryanrasmussen
Ok I read it nothing that interesting until this 'What?' moment:

'Plastiq—a startup that allows users to pay their bills with credit cards'

Is that a thing in America or someplace you can't use credit cards to pay your
bills? I followed the link thinking that it would be something else but it
seems that really that's what it does.

~~~
wlesieutre
My gas[1] and electric[2] companies are both subsidiaries of Avangrid, their
websites and payment portals are practically identical, but one of them lets
me use a credit card and the other doesn't.

I always wondered if there was a regulatory reason for it, or maybe if it
dates back to arbitrarily different company policies when they were
independent of each other.

[1] [https://www.soconngas.com](https://www.soconngas.com)

[2] [https://www.uinet.com](https://www.uinet.com)

------
Pmop
I'm finishing my degree, haven't dealt with hiring yet but, god. Couldn't
everything be easier if one could just say he wants the job for the money and
wants to do a really good work for every cent? Modern society is getting
annoyingly over-complicated.

~~~
sidlls
One of the reasons software engineers in general are underpaid relative to
their value to a company is because collectively not only do we not understand
the social aspect of employment but we deride it as beneath us.

------
kthejoker2
Our interview question matrix has 3 columns:

* the question * Why we ask this question * What a good answer looks like, and often what a bad answer looks like; and occasionally follow up questions depending on their answer.

This is nice because then we can all internally debate about columns 2 and 3,
and any new question you want to ask has to come with a 2 and 3 yourself. We
actually learn a lot about our own values with this method.

------
qwerty456127
> Even with the most labyrinthian
> Leetcode[[https://angel.co/leetcode-1](https://angel.co/leetcode-1)]
> exercise, you don't have to guess at what the interviewer is “really”
> asking.

It's 404. Can somebody provide a working URL? Or is finding one is itself the
exercise and you are supposed to hack around the error someway?

------
tiredwired
Engineers need to ask a startup why the position is open. If you find out
there were 3+ engineers in that position in the last 2-3 years then run away.

------
jfarmer
Disclaimer: I work at Strive where we run management workshops, including ones
around evidence-based interviewing. If you're interested in learning more,
reach out to me at jesse@strive.co!

An evidence-based approach (aka the scientific method) + a little knowledge
about cognitive biases shows why questions like "Where Do You See Yourself In
Five Years?" are not great.

All the research into interviewing and cognitive biases says that asking
questions for "color" reduces interviewer's ability to predict outcomes while
simultaneously increasing their confidence that they've gleaned information
from the interview. There are experiments where interviewers are given some
diagnostic information (e.g., hard facts about background) and conduct closed-
form interviews (yes/no, this/that questions) with the interviewees responding
randomly. They'll still believe they've "learned more" about the candidate
than they did from the candidates who they had biographical information alone.

See the Dilution Effect ([https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-
psychology/social...](https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-
psychology/social...)) and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking).

Here's a fun paper:
[http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121130a/jdm121130a.html](http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121130a/jdm121130a.html)

A good interview process reduces an interviewer's exposure to non-diagnostic
information and directs their attention so they only evaluate diagnostic
information (and does so in a consistent way). This is the basis for the
"structured interview".

"But Jesse," you say, "'Where will you be in 5 years?' seems diagnostic to
me!"

Questions aren't diagnostic; responses are! So you have to think about the
nature of the responses and how those responses will be evaluated.

Here are some alternate questions. Consider the responses you might get to
these vs. the 5-year one. Are those responses more diagnostic? (Note: I just
thought of these off the top of my head and haven't fully evaluated them).

\- At your last job, what career goals did you have when you joined? Did you
achieve them? How?

\- Imagine you've been working here for 18 months. What would need to happen
between now and then for you to not feel disappointed you joined?

\- Think back to a manager who helped you define and achieve a professional
goal (big or small). What was that goal? How did they help you achieve it? Why
did that work?

As a first pass, these questions control for more and are likely to get
higher-signal responses that are easier to evaluate in a consistent,
interpretable way.

How can you tell the original 5-year question isn't great, though? Think like
a scientist.

Why 5 years? Why not 1? Why not 10? 2? 4? How might those numbers change the
answers you receive? Are you even testing to see how people's responses change
as a function of that number? Are you even coding the responses in a way that
would be able to detect how their responses change in response to that number?
Is the variance in the responses small enough that you can even come up with a
way to code them?

For example, if the interviewee is startup savvy and you ask the 5-year
question then they understand the vesting cliffs are at play. Suddenly you're
taking into account how savvy the interviewee is about the way vesting works.
Was that the intention? If not: more variance!

Is it clear what the question is trying to get at? Do all candidates
understand what it's trying to get at? Could candidate misinterpret the intent
of the question given the fact that they're in an interview? Could different
interviewers interpret the same response differently?

It's a "bad" question because it controls for very little and therefore
inherently produces non-diagnostic information (such is the nature of humans).
The level of variance in all the components of this question is exactly the
surface area on which cognitive biases become the determining factor.

And the nature of cognitive biases is that you become more confident when
they're operational, not less.

The upshot for startups is that implementing a structured process is easier
than doing so at a larger company. Half (or more) of the challenge of
implementing a structured process is the package + selling + training +
rolling out + reinforcement of the "new" approach. At a startup, you can get
everyone on the same page much more quickly and bake it into the culture from
the start (or close to it).

~~~
TomMckenny
I notice the goals when asking the rote questions posted by angel.co and
others in the thread, while very sensible, differ quite a bit.

And many interviewers are less capable and just ask these questions because
those are the questions you are supposed to ask. They make up a reason for
them after the fact. Like so much of hiring, it seems a fair example of a
cargo cult practice to which a few smarter interviewers have invented a
tolerable use.

For example, in a workplace that shall remain nameless, the question "Tell Me
About A Time You Failed" really was to naively see how badly the candidate
messed up in the past. And for "Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years" there
was one correct answer: "manager" even though there was no expected need.

------
badpun
> Why should we hire you?

Because you need a programmer and I am one?

Stupid questions get you stupid answers.

------
dickeytk
where is that leetcode link supposed to go to? I'm getting a 404. Link is
[https://angel.co/leetcode-1](https://angel.co/leetcode-1)

