> If I start getting asked about my hobbies in an interview, I walk, and you should too.
Ok so, you're so scarred by bad interviews that an attempt at small talk makes you walk. Fine, your call. But I'll choose what I do when someone wants to talk about light material for a few minutes, thank you very much.
Oh give me a break, read my other comments below if you think I'm talking about "small talk". I recently had an interview with a 45 minute section for answering questions about my interests (with questions as trivial as what music I like, what all of my hobbies are, why I like my hobbies, etc.), and in my experience these type of questions are not uncommon and are often asked with a degree of interest that surpasses small talk. I'm the kind of person who talks w/ my barber and neighbors and I avoid writing code at home as much as possible. This idea that engineers have to prove they have interior lives that are harmonious w/ the goals of a company is sociopathic. If you're early in your career, let me give you some advice: employers are not your friend, and these kinds of questions are not innocuous.
EDIT: Nevermind, you're a founder of a company, so I dunno, it sounds like you're too deep in the kool aid or too disconnected from the position of a regular software engineer to understand why this is a problem
I'm sorry to read that you've had such a bad experience with employers, but frankly your experience sounds dysfunctional.
Additionally, your own personality raises caution, with a profile about reading, "Gonna stuff everyone on this website in a locker."
Consider the possibility that you've had bad experiences and have been shaped by them, but others have also not had these experiences and function differently in both the interview process and in day-to-day workplace life.
> Additionally, your own personality raises caution, with a profile about reading, "Gonna stuff everyone on this website in a locker."
It's a lightly prodding joke. Hacker news cultivates a particularly obnoxious set of reactionary libertarians and self-aggrieved nerds. I'm not the only software engineer to notice this and to find it fair fodder. I've never had complaints about my personality at work, and I think I work pretty well with most teams and am pretty easy going. Actually what scares me is people like you who think they have a good sense of other people based on brief encounters and their own unexamined biases.
> Consider the possibility that you've had bad experiences and have been shaped by them, but others have also not had these experiences and function differently in both the interview process and in day-to-day workplace life.
It's fairly obvious that different people are shaped by different experiences, but I've found that a lot of what I'm talking about has been frequent enough in my history of doing interviews that I'd be surprised if it was a unique experience. Certainly doesn't seem to be from the handful of likes this comment got. Of course that doesn't make it a universal experience.
Ok so, you're so scarred by bad interviews that an attempt at small talk makes you walk. Fine, your call. But I'll choose what I do when someone wants to talk about light material for a few minutes, thank you very much.