The following is my first attempt at blogging again after years of hiatus, so consider this as a live draft until I remove this line
As a contractor with close to 20 years of experience in the industry, I have quite the experience of being interviewed, and lately being the interviewer. I have been interviewed by all sorts of people, from the absolute mid-level techy to a non-technical CEO.
At this stage in my career, the interview is more like a dance between two people trying to determine if the position suits both parties.
The person chosen to interview me is a telltale sign of how it’s going to be, if they send me someone fairly new with only a handful of years under their belt that would make me reconsider the position.
Assuming the person has quite the experience and ideally a C-level executive, there are 3 questions that would turn me off from working with the said company.
1. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
This shouts: “I have absolutely no clue how to interview anyone, it is probably my first time doing it and I just googled some questions for 5 minutes before the interview”.I know, it is supposed to be the goto question of judging the candidate’s ambition, but it is so archaic and a waste of time. In the tech industry, the average tenure is around 3 years, it used to be asked back in the era when people stayed for decades in the same company, some even started and ended their careers in it. What do you want from me? bullshit you or give you the real answer: Somewhere else, or having a position above you, whichever pays more.
2. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Same as above, this is one of the most rehearsed answers in the interviewing process. Give your strengths that the interviewer wants to hear and what little weaknesses you share make them look like strengths. “Oh, I work way too much, I am a perfectionist, I am too honest, I never quit, I never surrender, etc”. It is as much bullshit as when an interviewer says “We are like a family here”.
3. Do you work well under pressure?
For me, that’s the biggest red flag as a Cloud infrastructure/DevOps/Site Reliability Engineer. Why was this question deemed important to ask during an interview? While being under pressure is normal in the position mentioned, constantly “putting out fires” and being exhausted is a sign of mismanagement, bad planning, inexperience, and an absolute work-life balance killer. The people who work there are either bailing out or too exhausted to even look for another job.
I’ve been there, and done that, and I am not doing it again. I have done the 60-hour weeks for months on end, I stopped seeing my friends, I stopped going to the gym, I stopped taking care of myself, and during the weekend I would be too tense to go out, sleep 14 hours, and still be tired.
I remember once being interviewed for a certain “database” company that I hadn’t heard of again in the industry, that everyone there is for the “mission”, everyone works non-stop, etc. As if it’s a thing to make me excited to work there. That was one of the biggest turns off for me… Relaxed, happy people, do way better work than insane schedules and chaos.
Basically, after all these years, I get to be picky and choosy, I really don’t want to waste my time in a place that makes me miserable and cuss first thing in the morning because I have to work there. And you shouldn’t either…
Cheers!
PS: still need to figure out formatting better.