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Ask HN: What is the worst interview question you've ever been asked?

10 points by mavsman ↗ HN
I've had quite a few that I thought were very dumb, especially given the context. I'm at a point where I'm starting to interview prospective employees so I'd like to avoid bad questions. The worst I can remember off the top of my head was "Do you have a sense of humor?" That was asked after a series of unfortunate events that made the interview an awful experience.

52 comments

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dreamweapon
No single worst one: just all the sordid "Fermi questions" designed, it seems, to make the interviewer feel smart -- so godawful smart, in fact, that he can read your soul like a blueprint based on how you answer a captive whiteboard session about sorting a quadrillion bowling balls using only tinker toys and yard of string; sieving primes using roman numerals; or whatever might strike his fancy at the moment.
general_failure
I feel you should ask the question the other way around. What is a good interview question given the scarcity of them.

In general, most questions that do not involve what you are going to work on or what you have already worked on is bad. What you want to judge is how smart a person is around the topics that he knows and has worked on. Not on things that you expect him to know. A smart person will learn whatever is needed for the job.

techdog
I was asked some riddle that was so ridiculous I can't even remember it now. It was like I was suddenly in a game show and had 5 minutes to complete a riddle. This was at the end of 4.5 hours of interviewing. The questions had been really good all day until then.

Major search company.

emcarey
Do you like eating salad for lunch? which was a leading question because after I said yes the person interviewing me said, oh good because we are more salad type people here.
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stevenjohns
"Do you brush before you floss, or do you floss before you brush?"

I was so stunned and self-conscious that I might have had something stuck in my teeth to the point where after the interview I spent about a good 2 minutes looking at my teeth in the bathroom mirror.

I still don't know why they asked such a question. What would they have asked the next person? "Do you fold or scrunch toilet paper" ?

jlengrand
Probably exactly why the guy asked. To destabilize you and see how you handle the rest of the interview.

At one of my ex-gf's interview, the guy asked if she was a virgin (which is exactly the same word as the zodiac virgo in french). She answered that of course not; she was in fact a Capricorn :).

This type of questions might or might not be relevant dependent on the position you apply for though. . .

dennisgorelik
That question would make me really curious about interviewer and I would ask him why he asked that.

I would also ask how he interprets the answers.

MalcolmDiggs
I hate the "What is your greatest weakness?" question. It's a great question for a politician, not so much for a software developer. My answer is usually "heroin"...just to see their response.
brudgers
"My honesty."

"I don't think that's really a weakness."

"Nobody cares what you think."

jnem
I have to remember that one!
danielweber
I thought no one asked this any more, but I got asked it a few weeks ago.
jgeorge
I've responded to that with "Cocaine. I hate the stuff but I love the way it smells."
tptacek
In addition to being asked whether she'd really be able to handle the demands of an IT job AND be an adequate mother, my wife Erin was (in a different interview) also asked to diagnose a welt on the naked ass of the owner of a hosting company.

I wish I could get my brain to dial in on all the stupid tech puzzle questions me and my friends used to devise for interviewers, but when I think "bad interview question" now, I have a hard time getting past the abuse my partner took in these farcical wastes of time.

yen223
"... my wife Erin was (in a different interview) also asked to diagnose a welt on the naked ass of the owner of a hosting company."

Holy hell. Is this not sexual harassment?

tptacek
Not to be too much of a jerk about it, but do you think that every time harassment happens, the sky opens up and the hand of God smites the perpetrator?

Something else might have smote him, but I was in a different city when this happened. I'll never forget who he is, though.

serf
>something else might have smote him

probably that un-diagnosed welt!

elptacek
"What will your children do all day long while you're at work?"

I'll never forget how it felt to hear that. It was similar to the time I got hit in the stomach with a softball. Or the time I landed on the sidewalk after falling down the stairs. The wind just kinda went out of me for a moment.

tptacek
You think about this and you realize this is how most gender discrimination goes down. No fireworks, no court cases, just quiet demoralization.
xpto123
I find asking a developer to write code on a whiteboard or word document to make not much sense. I was asked how many bytes are there in x amount of space, which i find as not much to do with competence in software development.

A follow up question is, whats the point in asking these questions, any idea on what the goal is? There has to be an intention behind it.

smeyer
Sorry, you don't see the intention behind asking people to write code on a whiteboard? Being able to lay out ideas, code, and architecture on a whiteboard is a useful skill in and of itself for communicating with coworkers, let alone using it as a way to get insight into how an interviewee codes.
kevinmchugh
If you want to see how someone codes, ask them for a sample of code that they wrote under realistic circumstances. On a white board in front of strangers who are only there to judge is not a realistic circumstance. A realistic circumstance involves the candidate's preferred development environment and tools.

It is not always possible for job seekers to share code they've written in the past, not everyone has time or interest in side projects, and none of our employers allow us to share the code we write for them, but it is always possible to ask people to add a feature to some library you maintain or write a small demo program.

xpto123
One good way would be to make the person come for a week and give them the chance to do a couple of simple initial coding tasks. Something self-contained that you would normally give to a newcomer in the team.
smeyer
>come for a week

Just who is willing to put up with a week long interview? If someone is searching for a job while they already have one, this is completely untenable.

xpto123
Yeah that's true. It would only work if you already left the previous job. Then I will switch that to a full day. You do a concrete and well-defined task that the team will review.

Not ideal but probably much more useful than the current interview formats commonly used.

xpto123
I don't, because its an unrealistic situation that has nothing to do with real work. Its selecting the candidate by its handwriting. Almost as bad is ask to code in ms word to someone used to use an IDE for years.
xpto123
Its not useful skill to code in a whiteboard, drawing diagrams maybe? Even that how often does it happen.
smeyer
In my office, whiteboards get used all the time in design discussions and code reviews. It's a very common occurrence.
xpto123
but mostly for diagrams, not to write code I suppose? Because in the interview they can ask you to do a 20 lines of code in a whiteboard (happened to me).
mohamedattahri
Whiteboards are for thinking collaboratively, not writing code.
johnm111888
"why are you interviewing for this position?" awful question in my opinion.
dagw
"Do you have children?"
rubiquity
To try and convey I really enjoy programming I briefly described a couple things I work on in my spare time. The interviewer countered with:

"We're looking for really committed team members. Is your side project going to interfere with your responsibilities here?"

I ran quickly after that. Oddly enough that wasn't even the worst thing they said during the interview.

JCJoverTCP
after hundreds of infosec interviews in the past ~5 years, i leave you with this gem: "describe a 'padding oracle' attack, what versions of Oracle does it affect?" this was not a trick question. i wish there was a topic: 'worst answers you've given to interview questions?' The sheer amount of interviews i have been on speaks to my epic failure here.
meowface
I feel like that would actually be a really good question to easily see if a candidate is a bullshit artist. That's hilarious (and sad) that in this case it's the other way around.
JCJoverTCP
i had to tiptoe around the douchey way it was presented, without appearing to do the superior dance at the same time, cuz for once, i wasnt the one getting smoked during an interview. i actually had relevant background knowledge on the attack, crafting my own version as an exercise during a prior interview with a guy at DirecTV who was in charge of testing all their appliances. THAT guy I really wanted to impress, instead of the monkeys at <blah>HatSec
meowface
There's only one <blah>HatSec I know of, and unfortunately my organization uses them. :(

Oh well, I'm sure they must not all be idiots.

JCJoverTCP
no they arent, i am just upset that i didnt make the cut, basically lashing out at my own failure.
victorhn
What are your religious beliefs?
squiguy7
"If you are in a room with 100 good ninjas and 1 evil ninja and the lights go off, how do you save all of the ninjas?"

This is my favorite because it made so much sense and clearly illustrated my problem solving skills. I said "Leave" as I got up and left.

partisan
Make them hold hands in a circle?

I am not a fan of these types of questions. I'm more of a slow burn problem solver, but I've been presented these types of questions at places and it made it clear that those places were not a good fit for me and vice versa.

csixty4
Any question that ends in "...at your last job". I've worked for companies and agencies in the past that actively resisted good coding practices (ex: prepared queries are "too slow") and been pigeonholed way too often. If it's on my resume, I know it, and I can probably point to code on Github or dig up something buried in my hard drive somewhere. But if that's not "real work", as I've been told in the past, then no -- I did nothing of the sort at my last job.
2D
What's your 5 year plan?
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