All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. 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.

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.

Unless they explicitly and unambiguously say “tell me about the day your mom and dog died in the same day when you found out you had cancer” they mean “tell me about your worst day _at work_.” And even if they ask about the time your dog died (they won’t), they are not asking you “tell me about the worst day you’ve had in your life”. They are asking “tell me about a time you experienced adversity and overcame it, exhibiting problem solving, resilience, and grit AT WORK. (Or - if you are operating in executive mode or you like to live dangerously - some non-work context that maps obviously and unambiguously to a work context).”

You failed the “knows how to interact with people in a professional setting” part of the interview. Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity). Or the “read between the lines” part.

Yeah, inartfully asked questions - but also totally flubbed the answers.

Sorry, chalk it up to you had a bad interview or day or whatever, and never, ever forget the entire thing is scoped to “…. at work”.

Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way... These kinds of questions are part and parcel of non-tech interview processes.

You can redirect with some subtlety "Well, my hardest ever day at work was..." to avoid talking about dead babies or whatever. Your interviewer doesn't get to look over your whole life history and determine whether your /truthfully/ chose the actual hardest ever day. So really it's a chance for you to say "Here's a [big] challenge I once faced, and here's how I survived/overcame it."

The screening and technical interviews on site were all fine and dandy. At the end of the onsite interviews I spoke with the director in charge of the team. I asked some general questions like, "What's the team's work-life balance like?"

He chuckled and said something like they work 60+ hour works. I looked at him and said flatly, "Yeah, I'm not doing that."

The HR person called me after the onsites and was completely puzzled. She said she never seen a candidate pass technicals and not get an offer. She suggested sending me to another team (I declined).

I'd had a fantastic initial interview, it seemed like a perfect fit and interesting tech. Overlapped a lot with some work I'd been doing recently. They made it sound like my experience was a great match and they were exited for me to move forward. I was the most excited I've ever been after a job interview.

The second interview a couple days later was a one-on-one with the CTO. After about five minutes of pretty friendly get-to-know-you chitchat he asks if I have any questions about the position. I ask about what my day to day would look like and he replies "I don't know, and that's the problem. I don't like to lead people on, I'll be honest I don't see a position for you here."

It was such a sudden slap in the face that my brain just completely shut off. I kind of just stammered out an "Oh... Um... Thank you for your time"

I didn't get to talk about my experience ... at all. Not a single mention of my twenty years of across multiple tech stacks my resume doesn't even begin to scratch. I've never been judged so quickly or so blindly.

Later that day, out of sheer frustration I email him back trying to explain that I'd felt like I didn't get a chance to talk about myself and all the ways I'd felt like I was a great fit based on the previous interview and how my experience applied.

I never heard anything back.

Half way through the interview, I had an epiphany. I really didn't want to work there. It was cultural, it just wasn't going to fit.

I didn't waste any more time. Half-way through a white-board challenge, I put down the marker and said, plainly, "okay, I've seen enough, I don't want to work here - thanks and let me not waste any more of your time", picked up my coat and left.

It wasn't a bad interview. It wasn't a terrible one. Nor was it because of the whiteboard question, or anything like that.

I just didn't like the guys. That's all it was. And I couldn't stand the idea of working for them - just the way the interview proceeded. I don't need to give details.

It was really the only time I ever got up mid-interview and left.

> hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.

I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.

Many, many of them are "Doctor, heal thyself" type folks. Definitely non-boring people. I am quite sure of this, for reasons that I won't go into, here.

Sorry it didn't work out, but you dodged a bullet. Take it from me.

Then fall down and appreciate that you did not end up in that situation. And tell everyone you know not to apply or work there.

Some interviewers just want to feel special.

- Tell me about a time you made a professional mistake. - Tell me about your biggest failure. - Tell me when you last shipped a bug. - Tell me when you took down production.

Never asked me about my accomplishments, or the positives. I'm prepared for being asked about making mistakes, and have a few examples ready to give depending on the job I'm interviewing for, but to get asked so many times in a row was just deflating.

I'm glad I didn't get that job.

The furthest I've gone in these jazz style culture interviews is asking people what they do outside of work for fun. This was for fully remote async positions. And it was important to know you had other stuff going on because the mental/personal health risk in failing at remote work is massive and life altering.

If, through wherever that discussion went, I wasn't 100% sure that you could stand on your own feet and wouldn't sink into the abyss, it was impossible to move forward. It was a tough line to walk sometimes because you don't want to pry personally. But that doesn't appear to be a universal opinion, it turns out.

> talking about failed relationships, family struggles, and interpersonal challenges in previous work environments.

I think that's an interpretation that wasn't necessary (though I agree they're terrible and risky interview questions). I'd stick to hard challenges is my professional life, hard problems I had to solve, etc. My personal life is none of their business.

And I think there's the possibility you may have been rejected for sharing too much. But I agree that kind of question does invite sharing too much.

I think regardless of whatever you face during an interview, true mastery is to let your humanity at the door and pull up a facade. If you cannot do it in that context, you dodged a bullet imho.. you wouldn't be able to recognize yourself a few years down the line working there with them daily.

"Cracked engineer" is throwing me, but maybe I've just never seen the word cracked used this way before. Should it be "crack", like "crack team"?

I see a lot of replies that accuse OP of oversharing, and that's bullshit. In any job interview, the expectation is that you answer questions to the best of your ability. If "I'm not comfortable answering that" is an acceptable answer, that is an exception to the norm and it should be made clear ahead of time.

I walk into a darkened cubicle farm, down to the only lit corner office for a 'lunch interview'.

Interviewer is sitting at their desk eating a hot pocket on a paper plate.

Didn't even offer me any.

First interview I walked out of.

Not the last.

If I learned anything from all my past mistakes in life, it's this.

You're going to find many red flags for any job, perhaps severe flags.

But you need a job.

Or you have to roll the dice because you have deep knowledge of the red flags for your current job.

Who finds 10/10 perfect jobs via an application process?

Note: I probably shouldn't be commenting since I don't need to apply for jobs and conditions here are likely different from yours.

What we were looking for

- people unwilling to admit they'd ever made a mistake -- red flag

- people who could reflect on the situation and say what they'd do differently in the future

- ideally, people who could use their mistake / failure / bad situation as an example of how they then took initiative to improve things by doing blah blah blah

People who were able to give an ideal response had clearly practised for this kind of question & knew how to play this part of the interview game.

Behaviours valued by one type of potential employer may not be valued by another. Small businesses & startups might value folks who take initiative and have a bias for action. In contrast, regulated megacorps might value folks who are great at consulting stakeholders and getting buy in before making changes, and steer clear of people they believe will go off and do stuff unilaterally.

One rule of thumb for handling these kinds of behavioural questions is "STAR" -- situation, task, action, result. Use the prompt for the question as a way to pick an example, then figure out how to frame an answer that shows you doing something to improve the situation. There's a fair chance that your interviewers are trying to mash your response into a STAR format in their own notes, even if they don't hint for you to respond in this way.

You could for example start talking about how you thought something was a colossal failure only to realize looking back that it was an incredible learning experience and how sometimes the only way to learn big lessons like that is by trying the experiment. And how it's only a failure if you stop. But you kept going so it wasn't really a failure.

Honestly we should probably take a page out of politicians' or media trained people's playbooks and not even answer the question as asked but relentlessly steer towards what you really want to talk about.

Because they're presumably just trying to call bullshit, since it can sound like such an easy probably oft-recomended 'hobby' to say you have, so it's 'oh yeah well what have you actually read recently then', not actually 'I now therefore expect you to have perfect recall over your read catalogue'.

"The industrial society and its future" - Theodor Kaczinski.

"The communist manifesto" - Karl Marx.

"Rules for Radicals" - Saul Alinsky

"Hitler's War" - David Irving

"The Souls of Black Folk" - W.E.B. Du Bois

"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" - Tom Pickety

"Las venas abiertas da America Latina" - Eduardo Galeano

"The question of Palestine" - Edward Said.

"Grapes of Wrath" - John Steinbeck.

"The conquest of Bread" - Kropotkin

"Problems of Leninism" - Josef Stalin

If adventurous, I'd cite another one I've read that should not be mentioned amongst educated XXI century folks, as they think reading a book means you agree with the author.

Not the last 10 books I've read, but books I've read along my life and that would maybe make the guy think twice before considering making me an offer.