This is a really relevant piece, if I'm interviewing you I'm going to wonder if you're not asking any questions about the company. I get that its hard to ask challenging questions in a situation where you want to get hired, but you will need to ask challenging questions when you don't want to get fired too, and if you can do that you are more valuable than someone who can't.
That bit about everyone focused on the stock price also really resonated. Back in the late 90's "everyone" was a millionaire, at least after all their stock vested be that in 1, 4, and sometimes 5 years. Way more people than I expected couldn't really handle that. The most common failure mode I saw was that suddenly the person would do no productive work at all, and instead start shopping airplane or yacht catalogs, or talking about where the best islands to buy were with their co-workers. I once pointed out to a person that if they did no more work, then the company's value would go to zero and knowing the best islands would be a useless fact to know. But I had grown up in Las Vegas (well spent my teen years there) and that was a town that taught people that money is fleeting in a very brutal and efficient way.
If you're the fifth person I've spoken to that day, any questions I have about the company have most likely already been asked and answered. Would it comfort you or worry you to find out I'm asking questions I already know the answer to just for the sake of appearance? Or is there something else at work here I'm not getting?
Actually, it would be very interesting to know whether different people gave different answers when asked the same questions (e.g., managers might give you the "official answer" but non-managers might give you a different perspective).
I've never interviewed anyone, but also, if they don't ask me any questions about the company then I'm gonna think they simply don't care and they applied for the role "just for a job".
- Is your job worth caring about? Let's be honest, not everyone is working on putting people on Mars or pushing the boundaries of machine learning, etc. A lot of programming jobs are just spitting out code for a paycheck.
When I was a tad younger, with less experience under my belt, and fewer choices in employers, I interviewed at many a job where I was expected to act like I'm deeply enthusiastic about jobs of little import to anyone and technically amounted to not much more than flailing my arms at a keyboard for 8 hours a day. That expectation is ridiculous.
The mudane, boring jobs need to be done. Hire people who are capable and willing.
This is a job, not a church.
- One thing I've experienced are the grueling full-day interview process that certain companies are a fan of (one such company rhymes with Blamazon). Literally 7-8 hours straight of interviewing, even your lunch hour is yet another interview. I don't think I've ever had intelligent questions by the end of those. The questions I did have were answered by interviewers before you, and at this point I've been thinking about manhole cover sizes, jelly bean estimations, families crossing bridges, and regurgitating CLRS algorithms solutions for so long I can't possibly come up with anything more.
Full-day cycles are grueling, and to expect candidates to be chipper and operating at 100% (or even 80%) is unrealistic.
What I do is write down ahead of time 10ish questions, then ask each one of 2-3 interviewers. That will usually lead to one or two follow up questions, and that's about enough. Yes, all-day interviews are grueling, but with preparation I view the question-asking phase as a break.
I think what happens is different companies (and dev teams, actually) have different personalities. A type A team/company will look for type A programmers. If you end up with a personality match, it doesn't guarantee you the job but it does probably help a ton.
Well, define "care" and "just for a job." My view is that it very rarely happens that a candidate has sufficient information to know whether the job he's applying for is one he can "care" about as more than just a method of obtaining a paycheck. In fact, I submit that such information isn't possible to obtain, outside fringe cases (e.g. knowing people on the inside already), without actually working at a place for a time.
That bit about everyone focused on the stock price also really resonated. Back in the late 90's "everyone" was a millionaire, at least after all their stock vested be that in 1, 4, and sometimes 5 years. Way more people than I expected couldn't really handle that. The most common failure mode I saw was that suddenly the person would do no productive work at all, and instead start shopping airplane or yacht catalogs, or talking about where the best islands to buy were with their co-workers. I once pointed out to a person that if they did no more work, then the company's value would go to zero and knowing the best islands would be a useless fact to know. But I had grown up in Las Vegas (well spent my teen years there) and that was a town that taught people that money is fleeting in a very brutal and efficient way.