[Pirate-of-SV]

> 1. Why do you want to work for our company?

I don't feel comfortable asking this question. Many of the people I interview are "headhunted" into an interview by an talent acquisition team. Are they even looking for a new job?

[halfjoking]

> My honest answer to "why do you want to work here?"

I want to chill and pace myself here. I'm looking to do 30+ hours of work per week on my projects outside of this dayjob, so it's important for you not bother me too much during my 40 hours here.

My only goal is to build a company on the side. I've turned down better jobs just so I work in an environment and with coworkers that I fucking hate, so that I am extremely motivated to do whatever it takes to have my own business. Overall this job is just a paycheck - a necessary distraction to maintain a reasonable standard of living, and completely irrelevant to any of my goals in life. If contract work didn't cause too much stress/friction for me, I would be doing that for money. I hope you understand that I want to see you fail, this company fail, and any project I'm on to fail miserably. I will do the work you assign me according to spec, but please remember to leave me the fuck alone.

So... when can I start?

[astura]

It's a weird question because one of the reasons I'm interviewing is to decide if I wanna work at your company or not. It's like if the candidate asked the interviewer "why do you want to hire me?"

[groby_b]

fwiw, I've answered these in the past with "I'm not sure, I'm evaluating if I want to". I've had interesting conversations based on that. And, as far as I can tell, it didn't affect the outcome negatively.

For you as the interviewer, an answer like that is a great hook to ask "well, what does matter to you? What would convince you to work here?" It'll tell you a lot about fit or not :)