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by chiefalchemist
996 days ago
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"Tell me about a project you worked on..." That's not asking directly. It's vague. It's ambiguous. It's lazy. It's a cover for not having taken the time to prepare for the meeting (read: interview). On the other hand, "I see Project X on your CV. Sounds interesting. Tell me more about that...." Is a legit question. And no one expects every line of code to be looked at. That said, my CV has a section with links to repos. And yet I still get, "Can you send some links to code samples?" Engineers with an aversion to questions? How about engineers who are tired of showing up to interviews and the hiring person/peoples are unprepared? The questions are a tell, a signal. And too often it's a tell with a smell. The aversion is to that smell. |
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I beg to differ. I think the more ambiguous the question to start with, the wider the field of possible followups. Perhaps project Y is something that the candidate is more excited about than project X, and maybe had a bigger role in.
I believe that, in a friendly setting, one can pick up a lot of information about the candidate's ability to work with ambiguity, from the clarity with which they have organized their thoughts, the concision with which they have presented it, their humility about their contribution, about the things that excited them. Or lack thereof. The interviewer need not be familiar with the details of that project to pick up on this.