I was also part of this sort of interview once. They specifically asked personal questions - parents stuff, relationship, etc. Definitely not work related. It was indeed a very strange and exhausting experience. I could've definetly refused to answer some of the questions or drop out of the interview altogether, but not sure why I haven't.

So yeah, this type of interview exists so I highly doubt the interviewer interviewing OP was asking about work stuff...

And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.)

That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you like to hike? Oh, I did that, too. Might I suggest hiking there and there? I bet you'd like it. Anyway, moving on!" Common ground helps conversations flow.

But an employer asking about your personal relationships? Your needs, fears, and desires outside of any technical context? (My needs, fears, and desires from compiler toolchains are totally within scope.) Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory. They have no business of asking.

> This is interviewing 101 and unless this is your first ever interview I would find it odd, and stop you immediately and say “I meant, worst day at work”. They should’ve done that.

They don’t like it when I tell them about the day I performed CPR on a guy who jumped from the roof of the office building across the street.

The job is described as "founding engineer at a mental health startup".

Generally getting called in for a "founding engineer" interview is code for a company that doesn't have money for a full salary but hopes they'll find someone willing to work for some token equity grant. These jobs usually come with amateur founders who aren't good at hiring. They could have really been pushing for life experiences, thinking they were doing some breaking-the-mold interview technique.

I do agree that every candidate should know to deliver answers in the context of a work interview. Even when the interviewer starts asking personal questions, you bring it back to something related to the job every time. Everything that comes out of your mouth should have a focus of showing how you'll work well at this company because you've worked well in the past at other companies.

The interviewers may have been shocked when someone didn't know this and actually unloaded their personal life struggles without a filter. I bet every other candidate they talked to had been giving interview-appropriate answers so they didn't realize how broken their questions were.

Chalk it up to a learning experience. I am certain you didn't miss out on any great opportunity with these amateurs. You will probably never see them again. We all have embarrassing work experiences at some point, but this is a good one to learn from and then promptly try to forget.

Another pro tip for interviews: even if they explicitly ask for something like "the worst day of your life, including personal circumstances not at work", just answer about work anyways. You don't have to answer every question as posed. Pretend the worst day of your life was at work and was work related. There are a lot of interview questions asked as bait. If someone asks "What is your greatest weakness?", you better not respond with your actual greatest weakness.

> is scoped to "… at work"

It should be but nothing guarantees you from meeting an interviewer that somehow misunderstands their role and then you will be in a situation when you need to choose what to do next: try to be open or resist. Once during an interview (for a software engineer position) I was asked if I had a family and when I replied that I didn't, I was asked why. You might be able to cut it down in an appropriate way but in a situation of stress (which a job interview represents of course) you might not.

I was being interviewed by two owners of a small engineer firm. They asked, "tell us where you see yourself in 5 years". I rambled for ~30 seconds about marrying my girlfriend and other personal details. I still remember their faces; super awkward, and then they slowly clarified: "we meant professionally" hahaha. It ended up fine in the end, but I feel like there's probably some missing education on social culture of interviewing somewhere and you just have to have those experiences at some point to understand.

>It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.

you are stating your opinion as fact, and I don't think there is a basis beyond your opinion, you simply don't know.

I agree with you the interviewee could have handled the questions better to not be so revealing about himself, setting boundaries the interviewer was crossing, but it might have been precisely the intent of the mental health company interviewer to elicit responses like that to stay away from emotionally wounded people.

> Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity).

I think that "generally..." is a little harsh.

The person might just not have worked in a stereotypical corporate drone environment before.

Or they might normally have been able to handle the corporate drone interview theatre, but are overextended by the context (e.g., laid off in this job market, which can easily be more stressful and existential than most actual work situations), and a bad interview hazing just yanks on that.

There's going to be more and more overstressed people showing up to tech job interviews, and people on the other side of the table will need empathy and understanding, if they're going to make good assessments despite the context.

What about when they ask you to prepare something that is definitely worded as you should talk 5min about a random non-tech (so kinda explicitly non-work) topic (with some examples like poems and songs iirc) and then they are completely weirded out when you talk about a hobby?

But it was also part of the worst interview I have ever had and these misguided 5 minutes for a weird intro were on the low end of the wtf scale.

Absolutely not. I've been in an interview like this, and the interviewer specifically prompted me for for personal struggles, which I had to then fake having been way more affected over '"friends" asked me to take a photo so I'd be out of it' type incident than I actually was, just to satisfy them.

"... at work" expectation in an interview advertised as non-technical can be ableist screening anyways. Gonna poke that elephant since you're drapping it.

I think this is a very cultural thing. When I interview candidates at my current job, we are interested in hearing about their life outside of work, since we want to know how we can best collaborate

If they have to pick up their kids in the afternoon, then it's probably better that they work closer with the other parents than of they're late risers who prefer coming to the office at 10

From the way this is written, it's clear that the interview was not about "at work". If it was the interview would have stopped OP to say it after the first question, which obviously didn't happen.

Do you experience many "life challenges" at work?

> It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.

If the interviewer did in fact share their personal trauma story as the author says then it would seem to indicate that was what they were asking for.

I know of places where that kind of sharing was the norm.

I’m inclined to believe that you are being too charitable to the interviewers. This is an early stage mental health startup. They totally could have been asking very personal questions. I believe this used to be standard when interviewing psychoanalysts. They could have stopped the author at any time too. That would be the most natural thing. I’m inclined to believe that it was a clown show and they conducted borderline abusive interviews. Shame on them. But also, beware early stage startups. It’s a real roll of the dice and the dice are weighted against you.

"The follow-up, they described over email, would be a bit non traditional - a ~90 minute culture fit chat"

"I fail to recall the exact wording of the discussion topics, but they were, in fact, non-technical"

"This person gave the impression that it was a safe space to share"

I mean yes, the correct way would have been to politely decline to answer - but it very much reads as the intention of the interviewer was to get into all the personal stuff, to better evaluate - and sueing them possibly the right move.

Or at uni, at work-likes (volunteering, toastmasters etc.). It has to be in the pursuit of a commercial-like goal really. But yeah avoid friends, family, travel, pets...

If you're interviewing, you get that kind of mismatched response and don't jump in to clarify the scope of the question, I'm not sure that says much about the culture you're supposed to fit into.

You're so right, i prefer my colleagues perfectly mentally healthy, can't have these issues around!

.... why can we never find hires?

I think people (especially HR) need to realize we all pretend to be mentally sounds. These issues make us human, and if you are trying to filter by this, you'll end up with maskers as colleagues.

I'm prepared to give the author the benefit of the doubt here. We weren't there and maybe they really were asking what the hardest day of their life was. Your take is the author is completely incapable of basic communication, essentially.

> never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”

I think the mental health startup part and the wide scope of the questions (hardest day in life, not hardest day in career) made it clear that this meant what it said.

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