[philwelch]

That wasn't even my point. My point was that it's good to be able to treat the work history question as a normal question rather than having to try and compete on my ability to spin the answer. That means you still have to have good answers for that question, and for the behavioral questions, but you can just answer them straightforwardly since there are better ways than personal salesmanship to distinguish between different candidates.

Around here, we hire technical people based on substance, not salesmanship. What the fuck do you do?

[lrobb]

It is a normal question... I never said it wasn't.

It's part of an interview process that includes an in depth review of your projects and roles, a technical screen, some design questions, et al.

"Wtf do I do"? I don't hire people that become belligerent over or flustered over simple meta level questions.

You might reconsider your negative bias towards "spin", btw... http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/the-one-thing-every...

[philwelch]

> It is a normal question... I never said it wasn't

> It's part of an interview process that includes an in depth review of your projects and roles, a technical screen, some design questions, et al.

It sounds like we agree there. The background question is essential. Behavioral questions are essential.

My problem is with the idea of agonizing over how you're going to spin your answers to these questions. It should just be a pretty straightforward conversation, and a fair share of the onus is on the interviewer for turning it into a conversation. If you're not willing to do that, that tells me that you, as a potential coworker or manager, are lazy and arrogant when dealing with colleagues or subordinates. Did you forget that the candidate is interviewing the company as well?

"What's your greatest weakness" is a lazy and arrogant question. It's also adversarial and belligerent. To the interviewer, the question is a zero at best because you'll never get a brutally honest answer to it. To the candidate, the question is a red flag. Asking the question is never a win, and neither is answering it.

Finally, while I've mostly accepted in my own life that a little bit of salesmanship and negotiation is needed to get by in the world, I simply don't think it's a good hiring criteria for engineers. Ten times out of ten, I want a colleague who is brilliant technically and a little naive rather than a colleague who is merely competent but a great bullshitter. I think it's much more important to select for "not an asshole" and "enough of a grownup to behave professionally" than salesmanship. Crucially, this is something I try to evaluate on both sides of the interviewing table, and I will think you're a bit of an asshole if you ask what my greatest weakness is.