But at the point of the interview, I don’t know you from Adam.
There are three levers of power in an organization - relationship, expert, and role - in that order. If you don’t know how to build relationships and prove expertise and come into an organization like a bull in a china shop, you aren’t going to be effective - you are going to be disruptive.
I want someone who questions the effectiveness of broken practices, but you do that after you get the job, you have shown that you have a better way and you have built the relationships to push your ideas through.
I self demoted (responsibilities not pay) from a dev lead at one company to an IC at my current company. I have to bite my tongue repeatedly about things that could be done better but aren’t worth the effort to fight for. But on the other hand, I have to use “soft power” to change things and convince people about the things that are important to the organization.
People have widely varying approaches to relationships. I think it's beyond doubt that almost everyone who fails an interview at your (or any) company goes on to be employable somewhere else. So, it is valid to say they didn't know how to build a relationship with you, but then, you didn't know how to build a relationship with them. There is no correct answer to "which person is to blame for that", because each of them had the option to decide they don't want a relationship and therefore neither one controlled the outcome.
"I want someone who questions the effectiveness of broken practices, but you do that after you get the job"
If the broken practice is part of the interview, and a person has enough experience with interviewing at different places to know it's not the way everybody else does things, then they may have no reason to put up with it.
A danger in general of a single universal ("one true") standard, no matter how much sense it makes, is that you risk the people who have experienced different ways of doing things rejecting you for your chauvinism, without informing you that's what they are doing.
Even when you come into a job as a manager, it’s almost universally bad to start criticizing processes and to make big changes before you understand the reasoning for a process and talk to people.
What ends up happening is that you offend the people you were hired to manage and they may follow the process changes grudgingly but they will “work to rule”, they won’t go the extra mile for you and they will not have your back when things hit the fan.
If I wouldn’t come in as a lead and immediately tell people the equivalent of “this is why you suck”, I’m definitely not going to do it during the interview.
In general this is true, there are always reasons for bad practices but what if the some teams in the company don't use a source control system, they just use folders on a network drive?
If I came in to manage such a team. I would absolutely say so in no uncertain terms.
I have actually been in a similar situation but I did have the backing of senior management, in fact that was the main reason they hired me. They wanted somebody with experience in the industry to drive best practices so that they could show investors in order to attract investment (they had had two investors pull out after some due diligence showed that from a technical POV the company was in dire straits)
Well, there's no reason to tell people "you suck" in an interview (as the interviewee), but that's more a matter of personal pride and style.
I can see being scrupulously polite and tactful as having the potential pitfall that you lose sight of whether you really want the job. Psychological inertia in individuals and organizations can have a devastating impact.
Firstly, I was just drawing attention to the fact that you can draw different conclusions from the same information.
Secondly, if all interviewees, say 5+ refuse to do the test on the basis of irrelevance, that would presumably change your opinion, would it not? It would certainly make me question the validity of my interviewing tests. Some people would probably blame a bad batch of interviewees.
Thirdly, some organisations need people to be disruptive as otherwise practices will never change.
Having said that, it really all comes down to how it's articulated. If candidate is polite and explains the reasons then that's fine. If candidate throws toys out of the pram then yes, I agree with you, not going to work.
There are three levers of power in an organization - relationship, expert, and role - in that order. If you don’t know how to build relationships and prove expertise and come into an organization like a bull in a china shop, you aren’t going to be effective - you are going to be disruptive.
I want someone who questions the effectiveness of broken practices, but you do that after you get the job, you have shown that you have a better way and you have built the relationships to push your ideas through.
I self demoted (responsibilities not pay) from a dev lead at one company to an IC at my current company. I have to bite my tongue repeatedly about things that could be done better but aren’t worth the effort to fight for. But on the other hand, I have to use “soft power” to change things and convince people about the things that are important to the organization.