alt Hacker NewsGenuinely opening up is a mistake. The incentives for these clearly mean that they actually select for candidates who are capable of glibly blagging their way through an extended conversation without saying anything inconsistent, weird, compromising or of substance.
This isn’t usually a required engineering skill. I’m guessing the interview was designed for salespeople and/or middle management.
Yeah, definitely just tell them what they want to hear on the personal question front ("tell me about a time..."). There's zero benefit to being truthful and zero downside to blagging it.