[tomcam]

Hard to improve on Muzani’s answer but here is my take:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33003145

It’s a great chance to learn about a domain you may not know very well.

I only ever applied for jobs that would be exceptionally interesting to me, and that were a way to level up my skills.

Therefore in the case that you described, I would have come with a list of questions to ask about how they do things, because I would have those same questions if I met the person on a bus or something.

Back when you were a fetus I interviewed for a job at Microsoft which I knew they wouldn’t give me (spoiler: I actually did get the job). But I viewed that day of interviews as an incredible opportunity to satisfy the curiosity I had about a wide range of their internal practices and thought processes. I also got to see a demo of the very first version of IntelliSense.