[lolinder]

> Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants the idea to get into product, they should be funneling the idea through their manager or through a product or sales back-channel.

Isn't this exactly the kind of answer that the question is meant to tease out, so that the candidate can know ahead of time that the company is more interested in executives' status than in innovating?

I'm trying to figure out why you're framing this as a reason to not use the question instead of a great example of its utility.

[0xbadcafebee]

> Isn't this exactly the kind of answer that the question is meant to tease out, so that the candidate can know ahead of time that the company is more interested in executives' status than in innovating?

This is like asking if sharks like the taste of blood. Any answer other than the obvious is a shark looking for a meal.

Executives only exist because they are obsessed with status/power, the share price, the market cap, competition, winning. That is their purpose in life. If they cared more about innovation, they wouldn't be executives, they'd be engineers.

It's not impossible for an engineer to get an idea into a product. But they have to know how to swim with sharks.

[stavros]

This makes me sad for the companies you worked for. I'm at the director level at my company, and I make sure to both give credit to whomever does good work, and to enable them to do it. I do enough good work of my own that I don't need to steal credit to be successful.

[0xbadcafebee]

I mean more like C- and V-suite. Their priority is the company, and their own promotions. In order for both to excel, they need control, and to encourage the path they are trying to go down, and not side quests. This includes their reports and so on. There is a natural order to the hierarchical work of giving the upper-class what they want. As my last boss was very fond of reminding me: "this is not a democracy."