He wants to be right. A job interview is not like an exam, it's like dating. An opportunity for two parties to decide if they can work together. Hiding who you really are to 'pass' is a bad foundation.
That's why I don't like the conclusion of the article. Anand didn't fail the interview because the criteria were wrong - the interviewer failed because they suck at being an engineering manager.
It’s nothing like dating. Employees need a paycheck. It’s an asymmetric relationship. This becomes very apparent during economic downturns!
There’s really no use searching for the perfect job when the market is flooded with candidates and you have young children and mortgage payments due, yet you have to act like every job you’re applying to is some gift you’ve been searching for your entire life!
> Employees need a paycheck. It’s an asymmetric relationship. This becomes very apparent during economic downturns!
While this is certainly true, there still are usually enough jobs that fit the broad parameters of "pays enough to eat and take care of my rent". If you have a choice of a good boss at lower pay, or an a-hole boss at higher pay, you should take the good boss every time.
We spend 1/3, or more, of our lives at work, and life is far too short to spend any of it taking orders from an unpleasant, incompetent, or abusive a-hole. Not only will this make your time at work miserable, it will also lead to poor sleep and spending far too much of your "free time" brooding about your job. In that type of situation, you're not giving them 8 hours per day, you're giving them 24 hours per day. Eventually that's gonna take a toll on your physical and/or mental health. Don't do it.
This is also important if one wants to grow in their career. It’s hard to grow in a position that is only asked to do what they’re told. As a result, they won’t progress to a higher-level position and will lose money in the long-term. In other words, short-term thinking loses out, even economically.
To be fair, not all of us can be socially competent mentally healthy people who enjoy life and regularly stop to smell the flowers. Some of us just suck, some of us are miserable, so we have to put on a fake persona in order to entertain the other person enough for them to actually give us a chance. In a way, dating is all about entertaining and being entertained.
You are implicitly assuming that there's some finite amount of work that could make every such person "dateable without deception". While it may or may not be true in individual case, as a general statement it sounds to me more like "well, it's _your_ fault because you didn't work on yourself enough, so you deserve to be lonely".
I've encountered this too, where I was interviewed by many of the team I would be working with, and was considered a good fit, except for by the one high-standing academic type, who didn't. In that situation, I knew I wasn't impressing that person I was just being myself. Maybe I was subconsciously testing they're openness because I remember I would use a certain word/expression and they would rephrase it and instead of mirroring their phrasing I would say it the way I thought of it. It wasn't so much about being right/wrong but maybe not rocking the boat or just 'be like them'.
That's why I don't like the conclusion of the article. Anand didn't fail the interview because the criteria were wrong - the interviewer failed because they suck at being an engineering manager.