alt Hacker NewsSome good points. Just a heads-up about something interesting I heard/read in training...
"Innocuous" icebreaker questions about hobbies, the weekend, or whatever, can be surprisingly problematic.
The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of.
For me, this was best illustrated by one of the https://www.linkedin.com/in/lornaerickson/ funny video skits, in which the interviewer character was using "innocuous icebreaker" chat aggressively to try to extract information all over the no-no list of things you aren't supposed to ask.
(Then the skit was funny again, after the fact, when I was in an interview with some barely-out-of-school founder, who was intentionally doing one of the things from the skit...)
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Good points. My hypothetical had the implicit assumption that the interviewer was acting in good faith when asking the weekend question. But that doesn't mean that interviewers necessarily are, of course.
Why would you want to work somewhere that you can't talk about your life, the things that bring you joy, your hobbies? Sounds miserable.
> The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of.
I had a bizarre interview (at an extremely well-known company with an eccentric, controversial founder) where the recruiter asked me directly questions that "BigTech interview training" explicitly taught me to never ask or even walk close to. I was actually shocked and stammered out an awkward "Uhh, I'm pretty sure it's fraught with risk to even ask those things" non-answer, but she seemed genuinely surprised I wouldn't go into personal family details during a professional job interview. So, it seems not everyone has gotten the memo...