[jimbokun]

"What exactly you want me to ask assuming I know salary and position?"

"Who are your most important customers?"

"What is your monthly recurring revenue?"

"What is your best selling product?"

"What's one thing you like about working here?"

"What's one thing you don't like about working here?"

This isn't very difficult. Just requires a slight interest in the industry you plan to work in.

[watwut]

None of them is useful for anything. They are just questions that you ask to fulfill the "must ask question" requirement. Generally, product is on company main page. Asking that one likely shows you did not seen it.

Moreover, they are unlikely to tell you monthly recurring revenue. That is just odd question. Our company would not definitely.

Hiring manager will not tell you what he does not like about working there - for the same reason why you are not truthful about why you left previous place. Seriously. I would not ask the like dislike question for similar reason - it strikes me as odd and possibly would mark me as someone with low social skills. But the risk there is not too high.

[wsy]

If you read the company's web site, and are a curious and interested person, then you should pretty quickly stumble upon things you would like to know which aren't written there. So if you come up empty, either you are not interested in that company at all, or your curiosity is so easily satisfied that a plain web site can answer all your questions. Both is not a great sign for a prospective employee.

Even suppose you apply to a straightforward company with an extremely detailed web site, so that all your questions have been answered already, then this is still a test if you can meet social expectations. You are indeed expected to have questions, and if you don't even follow this simple convention because you think you know everything already, then your social skills are probably underdeveloped.

Finally, even you already know much about the company (e.g., about the most important product), asking about things you know already and comparing this with what you are told in the application talk will give you additional valuable information. Are they excited about their product? Are they exaggerating? Are they bored when answering? Do they know the basic information on their own web site? If you don't use the opportunity to extract as much information as you can, it's simply not smart.

[watwut]

It just sounds like complete rationalization. That is not how humans work nor how companies work. That is not how interest in things work especially not in work or position.

Yes, it is test of whether you know that social thing. So, if the company is treating it as the test of that, then it is fine. Instead, the parent was almost offended over that "No interest at all, just looking to check another box on his list of credentials. At least fake it!".

> Are they excited about their product? Are they exaggerating? Are they bored when answering? Do they know the basic information on their own web site?

Christ, you are talking with hiring manager at that point. I would not mind him not knowing company web site. Most employees don't actually go there all that often. That person might not even work on that product. Unless we are talking about very small company, people do their small parts of the larger whole.

You are hiring tech person and while cooperation, ability to express oneself clearly and without pointless insults, ability to listen and such are important, ability to guess excitement from someone they don't know much less so. It is not sales position.

[itronitron]

I generally agree with your view, an experienced candidate will be able to figure out a lot of the work environment during the interviews before meeting with the hiring manager. Although I generally have a few softball questions that I ask as either filler or to see how much thought they have given to how their development teams work.

[Tomis02]

They don't ask anything because the answer changes nothing. If they get an offer, they'll 99% take it. If they get two competing offers (I'd say this is uncommon unless you're interviewing in a very large job market like SV) they'd most likely know which one they prefer based on their individual criteria (unlikely this would come down to a question asked in an interview).

Second, most people aren't lucky enough to interview for their dream job, they usually have to settle for something else. Consequently, they really have no significant interest in their future industry. Do you blame them?

You want them to fake interest? Sure, they can do that, but does it really help anyone? They applied because they might want to work there, for whatever reason. Why not let them be concerned with how interested they are?