Comment by whateveracct 3 days ago
lying during interviews about things with no actual objective truth is a really key skill
lying on the job too like this is an important political skill too. referencing past projects rhetorically and abusing the fact that your "professional opinion" is fluid is a powerful way to motivate people. You are allowed to over- or under-sell how good or bad an engineering decision/project/tool/process worked.
> a couple of white lies
Don't ever approach it this way. You never need to lie, and preparing for an interview with "lies" in your mind is going to backfire on you.
You can use the technique of "mental reservation". There is always something positive or complimentary that can be said about every bad situation, every horrible supervisor. It is simply a matter for you to examine it dispassionately, extract the good, and frame that nicely without introducing insults or the real negativity and pain that you felt in the moment.
If your supervisor overworked you and you were induced to come in for 70-hour weeks and you ultimately burned out with no vacation or weekends, you could say that the management "was quite dedicated to the company's goals and productivity". If you considered your coworkers to be slackers and they never seemed to work, "the company accommodated a wide range of talents, skills and abilities." If you never saw your supervisor and had nearly no guidance on projects or tasks, "the management believed in me and trusted me to do the right thing in nearly every respect."
These are not lies and you should not lie, because if you go counterfactual, that will be found out. If, on the other hand, they know you had a difficult time and you still found ways to compliment those bastards, then perhaps you will do the same favor for them one day.
If you think they're not lies, that's fine. However, what you describe are exactly the sort of "white lies" I'm talking about. At a previous company, half of my coworkers literally did negative work, creating a mountain of technical debt that a couple other people had to clean up. My complaints about this were ignored, repeatedly. I was told my complaints were invalid by someone who had roughly half my level of experience, but a fancier fake title for less pay. They were, indeed, very accommodating of people of all skills and abilities. ;)
> These are not lies and you should not lie, because if you go counterfactual, that will be found out.
You can go counterfactual with your "professional opinion," which is useful in debates with no clear answer when your opinion has sway. It's a great way to put your thumb on the scale, and unless you say wildly inconsistent things very visibly, you will not be found out.
> preparing for an interview with "lies" in your mind is going to backfire on you.
> the management "was quite dedicated to the company's goals and productivity".
I see no difference between these things. One is what you say instead of what you think, the other is what you say to mask what you think. shrug
If the management was not dedicated to the company’s goals and productivity, then you don’t say that. There is your difference.
Why is this needed. Nobody acts like this in college, where do people pick up on the eldritch horrors of Corporate behaviour policing?
As someone who did a lot of hiring in my last job, I would push back against the narrative here that it's about lying or behavior policing. Although there is plenty of truth that there's an unfair bias against negativity, I do think there's a very valid reason for hiring managers to care about whether or not an applicant can remain positive or at least objectively neutral in an interview, and be diplomatic about negative experiences.
Invariably, at any company, even if they are a fantastic workplace, you are going to disagree with your lead or coworkers at some point. You will be asked to do work you aren't excited about or don't see value in, and you will be asked to work with people you don't particularly like.
If you aren't able to maintain a fairly positive attitude for a one hour interview, it makes sense that a hiring manager might worry about how well you'll be able to be a team player when things get rough. I used to think it was bullshit, and I learned the hard way. I hired someone who was fairly unpleasant during his interview, because he was the most competent applicant, and it seemed wrong to me to look at anything other than job skills. He was an excellent programmer, but he sucked so much time and energy out from the rest of the team with complaints and arguments. Of course I don't think that's always going to be the case, sometimes people have gone through genuinely negative past work experiences or just have brusque personalities, but I was certainly wary after that of people who couldn't put on a positive attitude for an interview.
This was very much taught in some of the business school electives I took. Some of the projects are quite literally to give a realistic pitch for products or businesses that you never intend to actually build. It might be only be taken as subtextual in the most charitable view, but being able to bullshit like that is definitely taught.
This is part of maturing into the real world. Politics (for lack of a better word) is part of any group of people who spend a lot of time together. We try and try to distill politics out of the workplace as engineers, which, ironically, is precisely why interviews are so positive-biased that they feel slightly fake for some. We don't like those dirty unquantifiable "feelings". Popping up all the time.
This isn't from business schools, this is just basic understanding of politics and how status and other things work amongst groups of humans.
Ignoring this key aspect of humanity isn't virtuous
Totally. If you say something too negative in an interview, they might take notice. If you go with a couple of white lies to smooth over a bad job or project, nobody will think twice. Most of the time nobody is paying attention, so don't give them a reason to.