The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering.
If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.
Even if I wanted to, these questions aren't allowed in the company I work for, along with feedback related to "team fit". This is dictated by execs, dictated by legal, because it has nothing to do with proving competence, and opens up for employment discrimination lawsuits since you're persuading them (you have to understand the power dynamic) to reveal potentially protected info. For example, if a man say "Oh, I go hiking with my boyfriend!", he could also say "They didn't hire me because I told them I was gay!"
As a person who does interviews, I have exactly zero interest in what people do for fun. I just want competent people that are nice to work with (in a productivity sense).
"Cracked engineer" is throwing me, but maybe I've just never seen the word cracked used this way before. Should it be "crack", like "crack team"?
"He's so good (plays aggressively) he must be on crack" sort of became "he's cracked", etc. Now that the people who were killing CoD lobbies are writing code full time or running companies, its seeped out.
Actually I think "it's cooked" came from this as well.
Funny enough, I've only ever heard 'crack team' used in a professional context.
If 'cooked' diffuses to corporate at the same rate then I'm very much looking forward to 'cooking the ops' during standup in 2035 :P
edit: Looking again, this may be overstated. Apex-era gaming culture likely helped popularize the usage, but considering older idioms like "crack shot," the actual etymological root is more likely there.
For interview questions like these, they can only tease about what they are really after - finding employees who "go the extra mile" or "stay late" or "don't give up in the face of adversity". They are looking for you to find evidence of these patterns to corroborate your story. If they drove you to the answer they were after, it wouldn't be a passing score in their interview summary write-up.
Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.
You're going to find many red flags for any job, perhaps severe flags.
But you need a job.
Or you have to roll the dice because you have deep knowledge of the red flags for your current job.
Who finds 10/10 perfect jobs via an application process?
Note: I probably shouldn't be commenting since I don't need to apply for jobs and conditions here are likely different from yours.
I've interviewed at dozens of companies, received and accepted or rejected at least 20 job offers in my life, and rarely encountered true red flags. This is very different than saying it's a perfect 10/10, all life is about tradeoffs. What GP is saying is that "there are things that are not worth any tradeoff, and you'll know them by ... ", which is good advice, esp for young people, who might be willing to make uncomfortable personal sacrifices to obtain a job.
We may be there someday, but we're not there yet.
And this was for a mental health startup!? Please name-and-shame them. Awful.
It was all disclosed up front, so no surprises. Not really that bad.
Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes.
You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."
> talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments.
I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business.
And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.
ChrisMarshallNY•40m ago
Many, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here.
Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.