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Sept. 29, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:29:59
1471 Preparing for a Job Interview

A listener and I engage in a mock interview to improve his chances of getting hired.

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All right. Well, thanks. This is a call with Greg.
You have a job interview Thursday, is that right?
That is correct.
Excellent. And it's Chippendales.
Did I read that right? So you wanted a little bump and grind.
And obviously, we were hoping to do the visual.
But unfortunately, Uvu simply refused to transmit that amount of middle-aged pasty white muffin top body fat moving around.
And I think we actually crashed over the website, not just the program.
Well, I'd just start out as...
Sorry, go ahead. I'd be starting out partnering on the one-piece bathing suit, that whole thing.
Right, right, right.
All right. So, yeah, because when you're over 40, you don't get much luck at Chippendales, but you can get a good job at Hooters if you're a man.
Anyway, we'll get back to Mambu forever.
So... So what's the job in general?
Okay, so the job itself is for an automation engineer, basically in an application development environment.
I come from an automation background, but in an operations environment, but I think Just from the description that they posted that I would be a pretty good fit for this job.
And I wanted to just sort of have you sort of role play them, if you could, and interview me so that I could kind of prepare myself for it and hopefully in the exchange things will come up that I hadn't thought of or that would be good to have in mind for when I actually go in and interview on Thursday.
Right, and it's a job in New York, so mostly what I'll be doing is just hurling vicious epithets at you because I think that's what goes down in New York.
What the hell are you doing here?
No, fuck you!
Anyway, we'll get down to that.
One of the reasons why I'm excited about this job, besides it being pretty much up my alley in terms of my technical skill set, is precisely the fact that it's in New York.
I'm eager to get out of North Carolina and move into a market where opportunities are better not just for Technical jobs, but also for my career change eventually, and also where the market is better for friends as well.
So when this opportunity came up, those were sort of the things that at the top of my mind when I decided to go for it.
All right. And are there any Are there any particular hiccups?
I mean, obviously, I can't role play anything particular, but is there any particular hiccups or questions that you would like me to ask so that you can practice the answer for?
That's a good question.
Well, you say you come from an automation background.
And so...
So they may say, well, but where's your formal this, that, and the other, right?
Right, right.
Yeah, and just to give you a little bit of background, the software that the company writes and sells is basically student assessment software that's designed to eliminate paperwork and also to help to facilitate Decision-making around student placement into different programs,
around administrative decisions around the classes, the way they're structured, what offerings the schools have, and that sort of thing, and also for justifying Federal funding for the school.
The data that comes out of the software package is used to make the case for financing these programs through federal funding as well.
So that was one of the things that was kind of an ambivalent point for me.
Sure, because if you don't take the job, the government falls.
And if you do take the job, the government continues.
So... I can understand that would be...
Right, right.
Just clench your fists and grit your teeth throughout the whole interview.
Keep whispering through your hissing lips, you know, please don't ask about the NAP. Please don't ask about the NAP. And the last joke that I'll make before we start is it's student assessment services, right?
That's one of the things they do, right?
Student assessment services.
No, they don't do those services themselves, no.
But it's one of the things that they're tracking, right?
The software tracks? Yes, that's correct.
Right, so student assessment services, what you need to do is show up in full military regalia with an outrageous British accent and say, I say what?
I thought I was joining the SAS! Okay.
You know, like a full-on, like one of those Monty Berets with a, you know, get a monocle.
It's outrageous. British accent.
At least that's what I would do, which is one of the reasons why I now work from home.
Excuse me. I'm here to say that I rule this joke out of order.
Right. And you want to come in through the window without opening it.
I say what? Like a cat!
Right. We're all set.
So is there anything else you wanted to talk about or you feel pretty much prepared with expert advice from an idiot?
How's that? So, they're a relatively small company, just a couple hundred employees.
They're based primarily out of Brooklyn.
And what the automation engineer, as they envision it, would be is somebody who would design a custom solution for them to more or less replace the repetitive tasks that their Testers are currently engaged in,
as well as help kind of grease the wheels of the development lifecycle itself.
Right. That's kind of what they're looking for.
Okay, one more joke and then we'll stop.
I promise. I've just been home all day.
So, you remember the dance from the 80s, the robot?
So, what I would do, again, come in in a silver suit.
Of some kind. And it can be tinfoil.
You know, whatever is handy around the house that could be useful for what it is you're trying to do.
And, you know, it's coming, you know, and then do the robot sit down.
And when they appear confused, you say, I'm here for the automated engineer position.
Something like that. Again, I'm just giving you stuff to play around with, because apparently your destiny, if you take my advice, is to live in a box.
And we might as well get there sooner rather than later.
That's really what I'm trying to get to.
Or should I do?
I'm sorry, I checked myself this morning.
Apparently, I'm still a little buggy.
Alright, so let's get down to it.
And just for those who may be listening to this completely horrified at what's going on, I myself, just for those who don't know and may listen to this in the future, I'm not exactly a hiring expert.
I think I've made that clear. I guess I've interviewed, I don't know, let's see, maybe 500 or 600 people in my life.
I've probably hired about 100 or 150.
So I've had some experience in interviewing particularly or almost exclusively in technical positions.
So I certainly have interviewed some sales positions as well.
And so I have some experience and it may be of some use if we sort of step through.
Now, of course, everybody has their own interview style, but I think the things that I'll touch on will be things that will be touched on by, I think, a reasonably competent interviewer.
The challenge when you're interviewing someone is that, you know, it's like a big long episode of Lie to Me, right?
I mean, you know that the person is going to be giving you a particular slant On things.
And since they want the job that they're going to put their best foot forward, and you know that, and you accept that, and that's perfectly fine.
In fact, if they didn't, it would be kind of weird.
But you need to get the facts.
You need to sort of stare through the spotlight and get to what's behind the light that you can't really see.
And there are lots of ways of doing that.
Everybody has their own approach.
And so I'll just run through a few of the things that I would do If I were interviewing you for this position, and we'll see if anything useful were to come out of it.
Now, the way that I was thinking of doing it, and you can tell me if this is okay with you, I don't want to do the whole interview and then go back and say, here's what I got, but we'll sort of do it stage by stage, if that's all right?
Sure, sure, sure. All right.
I'm okay with that. Rather than run through the whole thing.
Yeah, then it's just too hard to remember.
It's a little disjointed, but I think we should go through...
Sort of bit by bit.
Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
And the thing that I would really suggest, you know, the one thing that I found can be a problem with IT people is that they either answer too little, you know, like they stare at the floor and mumble, or you get these long, windy lectures.
Now, strange though it may be for me to criticize long, windy lectures, this is an interview and not a podcast series of infinity, so it's a little different from my modus operandi, so...
So that would be my suggestion.
So is there anything else you want to say?
Should we get started? I think I'm ready.
All right. So the first thing that I'll tell you why I'm asking these questions, just because I don't want to sort of set these traps and then go back and correct you or whatever.
I'll tell you why I'm asking you the questions, and then you can just answer as you see fit, and we'll see.
So the first thing that I want to do is I want to find out if the potential employee or the applicant Is scattershotting, right?
Which is, you know, I send out 500 resumes, I'll go on, you know, 20 interviews, and I'll hopefully get a job, right?
In a sense, they don't care where they get a job, they just want to eat.
And that's not a very high self-esteem place to be coming from.
And it's not somebody who has a lot of energy.
Is this a, sorry, I forgot to ask, is this a relatively entrepreneurial style place?
Or is it something different? It's entrepreneurial.
However, their only market is public schools.
Right. That's okay. They're still facing competition for that public dollar.
Okay. No, that's good because I didn't want to hire scattershot people because scattershot people don't tend to be very entrepreneurial, right?
Because they don't sit there and say, well, I really want to work in this industry.
I really like this job and so on, blah, blah, blah, right?
So the first thing that I would do is, you know, thank the person for...
For coming in and a little bit of maybe small talk or whatever.
And then I would say, so can you tell me a little bit about what drew you to this position in particular?
That's a good question.
Well, this particular position, I guess, I'm attracted to it for three reasons.
Number one, Well, number one really is that the position itself is a pretty good dovetail for what it is that I've been doing in IT for the last 10 years already anyway.
And number two is some personal goals of my own.
One of them is to move to New York.
And so finding a job in New York is...
It's essential to that.
The third is, I forgot.
Now, this is a good thing, right?
I generally would not, I mean, I myself would not say for three reasons, because then I have to think of three.
And if what happens, if you choke, then it's like, right?
So just say a number of reasons.
And that way you can gracefully exit if you can't remember the third one.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Just, you know, a few reasons.
But if you say, you know, it's pi number of reasons, then of course, you know, it's tough to...
So that's just a little tip, right?
Try not to give yourself specific things that you didn't have to follow.
Because I was like, wow, three, that's pretty organized.
That's good, right? I had two lined up, and then I was trying to follow your lead by making up some reason for why this company.
Right, right. And that's where I was getting to.
And the reason that I asked that question is because I'm...
I'm curious as to whether or not somebody is going to say, I like this field or I like your company.
Because if they like the field, another thing that I know is that they're putting out their resume to a bunch of different companies in the field.
And I'm also curious as to whether they've taken the time to look at the website, learn a little bit about the company and so on.
Well, I did like the fact that they were a private company and they were basically an entrepreneurial venture.
But I didn't like the fact that their only market was the public school system.
But when you're selling to educators, that's pretty much who you're selling to, right?
Right. So I would talk, and again, you don't have to give any details, but I would make some notes.
I mean, this is, again, I've interviewed for a bunch of places too, right?
So look at the website and find stuff that you like.
If they've been around for a long time, say, well, you seem like a stable business in a tough market.
I'm impressed by anyone who's hiring at a recession, so you're obviously very smart at what you do.
Or if they've only been around for a while, just say, well, it looks like a ground full of opportunity.
You know, whatever it is. Whatever it is you can find out about the company.
You know, if they have a sort of...
Most companies have some sort of, you know, things we've done recently kind of thing.
Or, you know, I don't know if they're a public company, they would have quarterly reports or whatever.
But just read them.
I know it's not the most exciting thing in the world, but if they've just made a big sale to such and such, just say, well, you know, that's impressive.
You know, that sounds like a challenge.
If they have a wide product line, say...
It's interesting that you have a wide product line, which keeps things more interesting, I think, on the technical side.
Compared to other forms of technology in the public school system, this is pretty forward-thinking.
Right, except I wouldn't say compared to the other junk heaps around.
This car is not too bad, right?
That's not a very flattering thing to say to someone.
You have a natural, I mean, just as a personality, in my opinion, you have a sort of, you're very cautious and you like to balance things, but that's, I think a job interview is not the place for that.
Not like a first, it's like a first date.
A first date is not where you say, I get this weird scar on the inside of my leg, you know, what do you think?
You know, they'll find that out after a year of marriage or whatever, right?
But, you know, this is their best foot forward thing.
So don't hedge. Don't, you know, just be sunny.
And I know you've got that sun lamp in you and I know it burns when you turn it on.
You know, do your best.
You know, look at the website and find out stuff that you like.
Obviously, if there's nothing you like, then that's a challenge, right?
Well, the reason I brought that up, what I was trying to say was that I think it's pretty cool that the way that they're going about this, you know, the model they're trying to sell people is...
Handheld devices, right?
Right. Where the teacher is right there with the student and assessing the student as she's sitting there with him, right?
So it's kind of a one-on-one relationship that's kind of required in order for this package to work.
Right. So you can talk about, I mean, that does sound cool.
So I would talk about your enthusiasm around that kind of stuff and so on.
I think it's important to talk about how the job interview serves your needs, right?
And you did that, because two out of three ain't bad.
But I think it's also important to talk about your interest in the company, if that makes sense.
Yeah, and to take a silly analogy, right?
It's like you go on a date with some woman who's 35 and you say, well, what was it that interested you in dating?
And she goes on along how she hasn't had a date in a long time and she really wants to get married and this and it's all about her needs.
And it's nothing about, you know, I like the cut of your jib, Sailor, right?
It's all about her needs rather than things that she finds attractive about you, if that makes any sense.
Right, right. No, that makes sense.
And in this context then, trying to find a way to phrase, you know, I've spent a lot of time in large, like extremely large corporate environments.
But I remember when the company I first started with was small, like 500 people.
And it was a very different kind of company back then.
And one of the things that attracted me to this particular position was the fact that this company is right around that size again.
Just past the point where they're basically passing the hat around in order to pay employees.
Right, right. But not quite so big that they don't care about their customers anymore.
Now, I think that's good.
And strangely enough, that actually is about your needs.
And the reason that I would say that is, as a business owner, I would not like to be told by an interviewee that my company is just past the point of desperation.
That may not come across quite as nicely as you think, you know?
Well, it seems that you stopped eating your young, and I think that's really, really good.
From the outside looking in, I think that's much more legal.
People wear shoes.
Yeah, yeah, you know, hey, it's Pants Friday.
Lovely. No, but, you know, like you say, I remember when the company was small.
No one who's an entrepreneur likes to be told that their company is small.
Smaller, sure, right?
Smaller than, you know, the monster companies.
And so on, right? And the other thing, I know this is totally nitpicky, right?
But this is important to just think about as a whole, is that if you talk about your experience with large companies, then what comes across is, I don't have much experience with small companies.
Yeah, right.
So it's okay to say, you know, well, I've worked at a large company and there was this benefit and this challenge.
I've also worked at smaller companies.
Don't say small. Smaller companies.
And I prefer it because of X, Y, and Z. So you always just want to remind them that you've worked at their environment before.
I've certainly, as a hiring guy, I've been a little leery of, you know, when we're in a complete breakneck entrepreneurial environment, you know, some guy who's like, well, I worked for three years at IBM and then two years at Unisys and this and that.
And I just see these big, comfortable cubicles with long, loosey deadlines and stuff like that.
I think that it might be like catapulting a piece of Jell-O into a wall to put that person into an entrepreneurial environment.
Again, I don't want to be overly picky, but these are just things to consider.
You always want to remind the person that you have some experience in the environment that you're looking to get into.
Right, right. No, quite right.
I'm kind of mindful of that as well in myself, which is one of the reasons why I'm not sort of putting my resume out to, you know, entrepreneurs, right?
Because I don't know that I could handle that stress, but...
Oh, I think you could.
I think you could. I think you could.
But I mean, it's neither here nor there.
But I would say that I think you'd find it actually a lot less stressful.
Because it's not like when you do the entrepreneurial thing...
Yeah, you have some more stress, but you have more control, right?
The worst stress is you have responsibility without authority, blah, blah, blah, right?
So anyway, we don't have to talk about that right now, but that would be my sort of approach to it, just to continually come back to, I have experience in, you know, I'm interested in your company, in your market, I have some knowledge and experience in your environment and so on, you know, and again, while talking about your needs and so on, but That was sort of my suggestion.
So that's what I'm asking when I'm asking the first question, sort of the why are you here question.
Well, of course, I want the job to serve the person's needs, because if it doesn't, they're not going to stay.
But I also want it not just to be about their needs, right?
Because that always struck me as a hiring guy, as slightly entitled, you know, well, here's how you can serve my needs.
Here's how this job serves my needs.
And it's like, okay, not quite as 360 is, right?
Part of it should be recognizing the value that I can offer to them as well, right?
Sure, sure, yeah. I mean, you know, I was always the most impressed with people who came in and said, you know, I've read this about your website, I've read that about your customers, and I've read your this, that, and the other.
And, you know, I'm really excited and I think I'm a really good fit because of X, Y, and Z. Right?
So, you know, constantly...
A lot of people walk into an interview like it's a generic thing.
You know, well, I've had 10 of these before.
This will just be another one. But if it's generic, you're much less likely to get hired, right?
If you're specific, if you've, you know, if you've taken the time, I mean, this could be a job which, you know, you uproot your life for, you travel across the country, you go live in New York of all places.
And so there's, you know, you get gunshot wounds and all of this just to get this job.
And so the question...
Have you spent an hour looking over the website and thinking about how your skills match?
You don't just want to sort of knock on doors when you go for job interviews.
You want to go and get a key, right?
And you want to jiggle that key around and see what fits and then just open the door.
That's sort of my suggestion. So that's what I was always asking for with the first question.
Sorry, you had something you wanted to say? No, I was just going to say, I did spend a little bit of time on their website.
Well, spend more, right?
Spend more because it's a big deal.
It's a big deal. When I went through your garbage last night, sir.
Not stalky, but I think you really want to be prepared and know how you're going to fit into some interest.
This was my case.
Whenever I would do a sales presentation, I'm crazy around preparation.
I could spend a week preparing for a debate.
When you go around for a job interview or when I would go for a sales presentation, I would spend like at least half a day reading up on the company I was going to go and present to and then try and tailor the presentation to meet some of the stuff that I sort of knew was going on in their company and so on.
I mean, if we were selling an environmental system and I, you know, went to the company website and because they had to, because if they were a public company, most of the companies we sold to were very big, They'd say, we just got hit with this environmental fine.
That's a pretty good thing to work into the presentation, right?
And so that kind of stuff can be very helpful.
Right, right. All right, so that's what I would try and get to with the first.
Is this helpful? Is this useful?
I want to make sure that we're doing stuff that's helpful and useful to you.
Is this approach working?
Yeah, so far it is actually working.
It's hard to stay sort of focused.
Mentally kind of in the same space as the role play when we break out.
Oh, totally. But you can listen to this again right before the interview and go with that.
So I totally understand that.
And I knew that that was a risk of doing it this way.
But I still think it's better than going to the end of the interview.
Because as you think of these things, your next answers may change a little.
So you didn't want to do the whole interview and then come back and look at it in more detail.
So I know it's tricky. So the next question that I would often ask is...
You know, if you take, and I would ask this of people who weren't, you know, just out of school or whatever, I'd say.
So if you take this job, right, if we offer this job and you take this job, where do you see it fitting into your career as a whole?
whole?
That's an interesting question.
I would say that this particular role fits into my career as a whole as a, I guess, a variation on a theme.
One of the things that I've always sort of enjoyed about IT is problem solving and finding ways to Increase the value of the IT infrastructure to the company that uses it.
I've done that for a while in an operations capacity where I spent a lot of time designing automation solutions for The operations staff and for the management team around the operations staff,
also designing reporting solutions and automated recovery solutions and monitoring solutions as well.
I got to the point where I did everything I could in that space, Now, I'd like to take that skill set and move it into the front lines where the application development is going on,
where I'm not necessarily an application developer, but I can take my automation skills and bring it into that environment and help to make the design and delivery of the product itself More streamlined to help improve the...
Right. You're getting lost, right?
The experience of the developers.
You're getting lost here, right?
What do you mean? Well, I don't know what you're saying.
I don't know what you're saying very much.
And maybe I'm missing something if other people who are listening can sort of say what it is that they think Greg's saying.
Maybe I'm sort of missing something, but I... That was a long sentence.
And I think it was...
I just sort of want to ask if other people knew what he was saying or not.
I found it hard to follow.
Was I just mumbling?
No, no, no, no, no.
It wasn't that bad.
I would have stopped earlier.
But what you're doing is you're slipping into business speak.
You know, move my skill set proactively into the front line of customer service paradigms for the algorithm of improving the efficiency of, you know, this kind of nonsense, right?
Yeah, that's true.
Right, so don't do that, right?
Because anyone who hires you who's into that kind of jargony shit is going to drive you completely insane and you don't want to be there.
I could rather live under a bridge than work for somebody who used, you know, moving a customer service paradigm into the 21st century of optimized, you know, blah, blah.
Like, just shut up, right?
Not you, right? So I would really just...
First of all, you know, this comes back to Honesty and RTR and blah, blah, blah, right?
So if you don't know the answer to a question, like if you've never thought, how does this fit into my career as a whole, then say, I really don't know.
I haven't thought of that. But I will think about it and try and give you an answer, but that's a very, I don't know, right?
I think that's, I was always looking for people like that.
And the reason I was looking for people like that is that they're not likely to get snowed under by people who are just moving too quickly.
You know, that they're going to be the ones who hold up their hand and say, no, no, no, wait, I don't understand.
I didn't quite understand what you meant by that.
Snowed under, moving too quickly.
Sorry, now I'm the one who's moving into metaphor speak.
I'm looking for people who are honest.
At least that's what I was looking for.
And again, I'm not saying you're being dishonest at all, right?
But I was always looking for people who would be really, really honest.
Because I would then be able to trust that if they didn't understand something in the job, they wouldn't fake it.
Right. Wouldn't just try to make something up to avoid the anxiety, right?
Right, right. Or just say, yeah, yeah, I got it.
Then go off and do something that would be wrong.
Like, I need people who can say, I don't know what the hell you're saying.
I don't understand this at all, right?
Who have that confidence, right?
To know that they can not understand something without thinking of themselves as an idiot.
That's a good point. Right, so if you get a question, and I mean, the questions that I ask are non-standard, right?
And I think they're helpful and useful to go through, even if you don't get asked the questions.
But I would throw curveballs at people just to see if they would say, I don't know the answer to that, but here's what I think.
Right. Whereas if I get someone who's like, well, you know, and just come up with something, then I know that they're a little more risky to hire because they won't hit the brakes if they don't understand something.
Yeah, that's an excellent point.
And I think also...
I think part of the reason that I did that was because there was a bit of a judgment going on there.
On your side or on my side?
On my side, prior to even answering.
In the past, when I've gotten questions like that, I would assume...
The hiring manager's just trying to be clever.
And so I would then answer in whatever way I thought that he wanted me to answer.
Right. If that makes any sense.
Sure, sure. And that may get you the job that you don't like, right?
Right. With the hiring manager that you don't like.
In a company culture that you don't like.
Right. Because if you don't have a company culture that says, if you don't understand something, for heaven's sakes, don't plow on, you know where all that shit lands is on IT, right?
I thought I knew what the client wanted.
Just work the weekend, right?
Yeah, that's quite right.
So, yeah, so let's try that question again, if you don't mind.
This is the old thing, right?
Don't use words while you're trying to think of the answer.
Okay. And one of the first people I hired at my company was a guy who I asked one of my curveball questions and he sat there and he said, and I'm not suggesting you should or shouldn't do this, it's just something that I remember.
He sat there and he's like, I don't know.
Think. And for like 30 seconds or whatever, he was just sitting there thinking and then he said, I think, right?
And then he sort of went on, right?
And I thought, well, that's interesting because he's not using words While he's thinking.
To fill the space in.
Right. Because, you know, when people go into this sort of paradigm speak, it's because they don't have the answer.
They're searching around or they're doing some sort of parallel processing and they're on kind of verbal diarrhea mode.
And again, I'm not saying that's exactly what you were doing, but this is like further and further.
It's not further than what you were doing, but they're parallel processing, right?
Yeah, keeping the Huns at bay while they feverishly hammer out new swords, right?
Right, right, right. Or, you know, whatever.
There's some sort of parallel processing that amounts a little bit on automation.
So it's okay to take the time to think.
Because you don't want to be in a company which won't give you the time to think, right?
That's an excellent point, too.
Yeah, that's...
So the...
Sort of the undercurrent I'm getting from this is that the interview is sort of like a miniature day on the job.
Well, I think it should be.
And I think it should also be, if I am who I am, do you want me, right?
This is a fundamental thing, right?
You don't want to be like water poured into a jar to conform to the environment in the hopes of getting some goodies.
That's all childhood stuff, right?
So you want to be like, if I don't know the answer, I'd like to be honest because honesty is a value for me.
I'd like to be honest about not knowing the answer, and does that make my interviewer really uncomfortable, or does it perk up his interest, right?
Right, right. If pausing to take the time to think about and give a precise or relevant answer, and you may pause for 30 seconds and say, you know, I don't have a good answer for that.
I will think about it, and if you're interested, and if I have another interview, I promise you I will come back with something.
But I can't think of that, how this fits into my career right now.
I certainly think it's a great question.
I just can't give you an answer to that right now.
But if we have another interview, I promise I will give you an answer as I have time to reflect on it.
Right. Right. That makes sense.
Because otherwise, we're sort of like the classroom, you know, show your work on the board and you don't have that.
Well, you know, I really didn't have time to think about that, but let me get back to you tomorrow, teach.
Right? We don't have that luxury in school, but we do, I think, as adults.
Right. You have to have the answer now or...
Yeah, or the class is going to laugh at you and whatever, right?
All right, so let's try that again.
How do you see this job, if you take this job, how do you see this fitting into your career as a whole?
Fitting into my career as a whole.
I hadn't actually looked at it in that large scope.
I more or less saw this as a way to add variety to what I'm already familiar with, if that makes any sense.
Sure, that's a fair answer.
All right. Sorry, go ahead.
It's a very similar skill set, but it's a very different kind of environment.
I thought it would be interesting to try and see what it would be like.
Now, and I appreciate that answer.
You would be leaving a job, I assume, if I look at your resume correctly, you'd be leaving a job to come To come and work here?
That's correct, yes.
And if I call for a reference, and obviously if we go forward I will, what do you think would be the response that I would get from people that I would call for a reference to your current position?
Like what do you think they would like or what do you think that they might not like as much just out of curiosity?
Well, I mean, I don't know specifically what they would say, but...
I know that references that I've gotten in the past have been fairly positive.
People like my work ethic.
People are generally impressed with my problem-solving skills, with the rapidity with which I can pick up new skills.
I've gotten comments like that in references before.
And so I would expect that you would see very similar sorts of things if you were to Check yourself.
All right. And do you think that there would be any comments that might not be quite so flattering?
And I'm sure that what you're saying is true.
I'm just curious if you think there might be any comments that might not be quite as effusive.
Sure. That's a good question.
And I'll tell you why I'm asking this is that I'm always curious the degree to which I always wanted to know the degree to which employees have empathy, which doesn't mean, you know, the hug or whatever, but that they have some understanding of how others perceive them.
Right. Right.
Because, sorry, and the reason that people say, what are your strengths and weaknesses, right?
They ask that question. But people can just make up whatever they want, right?
But what I do want to know is the degree to which their strengths and weaknesses conversations are going to match what their references will say.
In other words, it asks them to be a little bit more true, because if they say, I have no weaknesses, then you call up and the guy was like, oh man, you know, he kept attempting to make love to the donut tray in conference calls or whatever, right?
I mean, whatever it is that they would come up with, that would be important, right?
Or the other lame answer, which is, I try too hard.
I'm a perfectionist.
I work too hard. I have to, you know, I have to pry myself away from my desk because it is, you know, I get turned on by pine salt or something, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I just, to me, that's a useless question to ask.
But to ask them the degree to which the questions are going to match what their references will say, I think gives them a chance for a lot more honesty.
Well, I think you would probably get two responses primarily.
He still owes me money.
Sorry. Where is that deadbeat?
Sorry. Well, the first is that I can be too analytical occasionally.
I'm sorry, are they going to be calling me for a reference?
Because that's exactly what I would say.
No, I'm just kidding. Well, what I mean by that is that...
What I mean by that is that there are times when I can pick a problem into pieces that are so small that no possible decision could ever be reached.
And that's something that I've certainly been working on personally.
The second is that once I I sort of commit myself to a particular answer that I have a hard time sort of letting go of that.
That I'll stick to my cause far beyond the utility.
I wouldn't necessarily say far beyond the utility.
Just as a point, you know, like, I'm like a bull terrier with his jaw frozen in a grip of death on a mailman's dead body.
You know, something like that.
Right. Well, there's certainly utility in being fiercely committed to a point of view, especially when you have, you know, a management team that's really...
Ambivalent about a particular course of action.
But there's also a point where if you keep arguing with them, you're being counterproductive, right?
Right, right. You know, like sometimes you win, sometimes other people win, blah, blah, blah, right?
Okay. Right. No, I think that's good.
I think that's good. And then I switch tacks again because, again, I'm not trying to play with people's heads or anything.
I know that there is this temptation to not...
To put your vessel forward.
So then what I will say is, I'm sure that you have a number of questions for me.
And I don't want to be the only person peppering you with questions in this conversation and interaction.
So what would you like to ask me, if anything?
Actually, I do have a list of questions.
The first is...
I don't have them written down yet, but I want to ask how...
What I really want to ask is what it's like for the development team.
Like, how? I'm trying to think of a good question to ask the guy that sort of It's indicative of the relationship that he has with his development team.
Okay, but what is it that you're really trying to ask?
Right, I mean, what is it that you really want to know?
Right. It's kind of generic,
but... I mean, I want to know if...
What I really want to know is if these guys can stand working for him or not.
And if they can't, why are they still there?
That sort of thing. Right.
I'm not sure how to ask that.
Well, you can't, right?
I don't think you can anyway.
But that doesn't mean there's not ways of finding out.
Right. Because basically you're asking the guy, are you a total douchebag or not?
Right. Which is why, you know, now...
Because you need to know what the question is you're going to ask, right?
And that doesn't mean you ask it.
You know, certainly not in that way.
But you still, you do have to know what...
What is fundamentally, what your question is, right?
Right, right.
So, would a fair one be something along the lines of, like, what's your biggest frustration with your development team?
Or would that be too negative?
I wouldn't necessarily go with that.
Your question is a little bit more generic, if I may be so bold.
Because your question is a little bit more like how do things work in development, right?
There is this traditional thing in IT, not in every company, where promises are made and salesmen get their bonuses and CEOs get their bottom line, and then an enormous mudslide of satanic and vampiric poo-poo slides down towards the development team and swallows them alive, right? Right, and the operations teams as well.
Yes, yes. So I personally would not ask that question of this fellow because you're not going to be hired with only one interview, right?
That's true. So what I would do is say, well, the first thing I would like to know is who else I'm going to have a chance to talk with before I... If you're like me, if it moves forward, who else am I going to get a chance to chat with before...
We make a decision about whether it's a good fit for both of us.
That's a great question.
And if he says, you know, well, I really want you to speak to the head developer, that's a good sign, right?
If he's like, we don't ever let anyone speak to the head developer, then that's not a good sign.
Right, right. No, that's a great question.
Yeah. Yeah, because you want to ask this guy.
The reason you're having trouble asking the question is because you can't really get an honest answer, right?
Well, you don't know if the answer is honest, because he may just be really glib, right?
He may just be a really good talker who's full of crap.
Like, he may say, oh, the development team love me, and then if you take the job, you find that there's voodoo dolls of this guy or whatever, right?
Right. Well, and to be honest, that was actually going to be sort of my first question, was can I meet these people, right?
But I hesitated because I was afraid that, you know, like...
Can you ask a question like that right out of the box?
No, no. You don't say, can I talk to the developers?
You say, I'd like to know who I'm going to chat with before we make any sort of final decisions.
And that's an open-ended question, right?
Nobody can really get offended about that, right?
Right, right. That would be my suggestion, anyway.
Because, you see, you're not asking the questions because you want to get an answer.
You're asking the questions because you want to see the look in the guy's face when you ask the questions.
That's all you're asking for, right?
I mean, when I was a manager...
Oh, that's interesting. Did I really give a shit about where this junior programming job fit on someone's career arc?
Of course not. Anybody who knows, looks at your resume, say, this guy has no career arc whatsoever, right?
He's like, ooh, look, there's a shiny job over here.
I think I'll go here for a while, right?
I mean, and this is no disrespect, because you're looking to get into other things, right?
So anybody who's going to look at your job, at your resume, is going to get that you don't have a career arc, right?
No, that's quite right. And that's fair to say.
I don't think that's disrespectful, unless you think it is.
I mean, but it is fair description, right?
Yeah, yeah, I think that's quite right.
I mean, you sat down and said, in IT, where do I want to be in five years?
And who do I need to attach myself to as a mentor?
And what business courses do I need to take?
I mean, you're interested in other things, right?
No, exactly right.
And if I have a career arc, it was basically just running from one complicated problem to another just to keep myself sort of mentally engaged.
Right. That's not a career arc.
That's putting out fires.
It's like asking a guy who's fighting a fire, what's your career arc for fighting the fire?
It's like, this pot that's burning, I'd like it to not be burning.
This leg that's burning, I'd like to put that out too, right?
I would spend two years in one area until I got to a point where I felt like I knew just about everything I wanted to know.
And then I would get bored and I would ask for another position.
Right, right.
So I know that I'm not asking, most of the people I'd be asking, they don't have big career arcs.
But what I do want to know is, can they be honest about that and say, career arc, have you looked at my resume?
Can I drink whatever's in your coffee cup?
Because I'm pretty sure it's not coffee.
Well, and actually, looking at this in a grander sort of way, from a larger perspective, that's...
In a sense, that's exactly what this job is, too.
It's just adding one more layer of complexity to the problem-solving.
Right. So, you know, another answer would be, I don't really have a career arc.
I don't think of what I do in terms of a career.
I think that I get really involved and absorbed by challenging problems, and I like to do that for a living.
I wouldn't say that I have a particular career arc, given that I'm over 40, And I'm applying for this job, right?
This is not a step down from running the hospital wing, right?
And this is, again, there's no problem with that.
I hope you don't think that there's anything negative in what I'm saying about this, but those are the facts, right?
In the past, I would have taken it that way, but I don't now.
I don't.
I mean, I had no career arc.
I mean, I'm not sort of coming from any, oh, well, I plotted my whole career out.
It's like I fell into software the way some people fall down a manhole, right?
I mean, it's not, you know, I planned nothing.
I mean, what, FDR was some big life plan?
Come on. Anyway, the least career-oriented person.
And that's not good or bad.
It's just, you know, I think it fundamentally comes out of coming from a chaotic history or whatever.
So the reason you ask him, who else will I talk to, is you want to see the look in his eyes.
When you ask him that question, right?
And if he's like, hey, you talk to this person, and this person may have a whole process, you'll go up and down the org chart, and everyone blah, blah, blah, right?
But if there's a flash of anxiety across his face, right, or you sort of sense some anxiety in the room, then that's important information to know, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.
So, yeah, so...
Sorry, go on.
Well, I'm just sort of piecing together why that's important information.
Well, if he's anxious, if you ask, you know, who am I going to talk to and he's anxious, then it means any number of things.
And you can sort of suss that out in the moment.
It either means that he doesn't have an answer to that question because no one's ever asked him before.
And that's not a problem.
Not having an answer to a question is perfectly fine.
But can he be honest about not having an answer to a question?
Because if you have a manager who can't be honest about not having an answer to a question, then you have a manager who's gonna bullshit you, right?
Yep, that's exactly right.
And you don't want that, right? Yeah, I've had plenty of that.
Now, or he's afraid that you're gonna talk to the developers and they're going to, you know, be anxious and Frustrated and angry at this guy of something's going to come across, right?
Right, right, right.
Plus, you know, that's an uncontrolled environment, right?
Like when I'm sitting there in his office, in the interview, he can control the circumstances, right?
But if the possibility floats out into the air that...
I might want to actually walk around the company, then that's dangerous, right?
Because I might see something that I don't like or that he can't control or whatever, right?
Right. And if he's the kind of manager who wants to control people's perceptions and this and that, you also don't want, right?
Again, you want to ask non-standard questions of people so that you can see whether they can be honest about their thinking processes and their experience in the moment.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So, you know, I'd ask him a couple of questions, and there is a dance involved in an interview, because everybody knows that it's a situation where employees can misrepresent and managers can misrepresent, right?
And we all know this from dating, right?
I mean, it's the same thing that goes on to some degree with dating, but it's much more specific, I think, so.
So I'd just come up with some questions that are important to you and just see how he responds.
It doesn't matter fundamentally what the content of the questions are.
You just want to see whether somebody can be honest about their experience in the moment.
Do they have that basic just commitment to being honest about what's happening?
Well, one of the questions I had for him in the phone screen was about the life cycle itself.
And hearkening back to what you were saying about the The mudslide.
And I found out that they're using some new technique called agile development where they actually build and test pieces at a time.
Oh, I've done that, yeah.
That is fantastic.
That is fantastic. You build components, you get customer sign-off on each component before you assemble them.
Or you build the user interface with no functionality under the hood and you get the customer to sign off on the user interface.
And so you just don't get later, well, there's supposed to be a button here or this dropdown is supposed to be different or whatever, right?
So I did that for the last part of my career and found it just fantastic because it put the power back into the hands of the developers because the customer had signed something before everything was done.
I really like the way he described it too because it seemed like a lot more of a collaborative process than...
You know, where the eggheads all go into a room and, you know, you wait until the smoke comes out and then...
Right.
It's empiricism is what it is.
I mean, and it's really, really great.
Right. Right.
So, yeah, ask him questions about that and also say, you know, the other thing that I would say is that if somebody says, I've changed course, right?
So, if he says, well, we just started doing this agile development stuff, right?
My question would be, why?
You know, what went wrong that you made this course correction?
That's a great question.
I didn't even think of that.
Because you want to know how they address and solve problems, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Why are they abandoning the old method and going with Agile?
What changed?
Right. I mean, I was just watching 60 Minutes the other day and, you know, this guy, some new dipshit is in charge of things in Afghanistan.
And he's like, well, we need to reverse what we've been doing for the past eight years.
And it's like, what?
You know, people are dead.
Bombs blown up. Villages have been destroyed.
And we're just changing course.
How? Why? How do you know?
How do you know the new course is going to work?
What is your methodology in place to know that the old course didn't work?
Why did it take eight years?
And how the hell is the new course supposed to work?
And what methodologies are in place?
Or is it just a bunch of rhetoric?
Now, of course, it's the army, so you know it's just a bunch of rhetoric.
But it is really, really important, I think, to say, what went wrong that you changed course?
Because people don't fix what isn't broke, right?
And how long did it go on for before you changed course?
And they say, oh my god, it went on for 12 years, and then we finally changed course.
It's like, is that indicative of the general pace of change in the company, or is that something that you're also looking to change?
Just those kinds of things, right?
And also, where did it come from?
Where did the impetus to change come from?
Did it come from the developers committing harikari in their cubicles, or did it come from the customers, or did it come from management?
Where did it come from, and how does that work?
Because then you're asking, basically, to what degree do the frontline people have input into the environment they work in?
Right, and if it did come from management, is it a directive, or was it...
Collaborative, yeah.
Yeah, what sort of process took place there if it did come from management?
Because I've been in environments where You know, the word change becomes a kind of holy grail.
No, no, no. I've got to stop you right there.
This you must not do.
And a lot of this has been loosey-goosey, but I'm telling you, to anybody who listens, this you must not do.
There's an old joke about going out with some girl who spends the entire dinner complaining about her ex-boyfriend.
Now, I think it's great to say, you know, how did the change occur and so on.
I think, and all IT people have this, we have bitterness over things past, right?
We have a Proustian remembrance of things past that could fill even more books than Proustian remembrance of things past, right?
Because we've all been shafted with exquisitely untender mercies by a wide variety of people.
And I'm telling you, you just have to leave that stuff behind.
You have to walk in there Like an innocent lamb dancing on the light of pure sunshiny optimism.
Right? I never got burnt.
I never got hurt. You know, they say, like, laugh like you've never been hurt.
Dance like you've never fallen or whatever, right?
And, you know, because you will be tempted to say, because we all do this, right?
But we will be tempted to like, yeah, because like three companies ago, right?
This kind of stuff happened, right?
And I just...
I'm just telling you, that's just not a good...
It's not their fault. And you can't bring that into the room with them because it's not their issue, right?
Right. No, quite right.
I'll leave the Chad Vader mask in the car.
I'm telling you, that's really important.
And we all go down that road in interviews and we all look back and say, why was I strangling this man who'd never actually hurt me?
So I just think it's important to not do that.
Right, right. Sure, sure.
Duly noted. That's my only strong piece of advice there.
Okay, so I'll toss out just one or two more questions.
I mean, I'm not trying to give you templates or anything, but these are just ways in which I think interviews are useful to approach interviews in this kind of way, if that makes any sense.
So, let me just cast my mind back.
Another good set of questions.
Oh, yeah, I mean, what sort of pace do you like to work in?
And everybody has a different kind of pace, and there's no right or wrong answer, and even within the same company, there can be different paces.
But some people are like more adrenaline junkies, and some people are more like slow and steady wins the race.
What's your experience with these kinds of things, and what sort of pace do you like to work in?
That's a complicated question.
I've actually done a little bit of both.
I would have to say that my preference is...
oh that's a good question maybe I don't have a preference um Well, no. See, what I sense you may be doing is looking for the right answer.
No, I'm just thinking back on my experience stuff and I don't really...
I don't care.
You don't care. Okay, but that's good to...
That's your honest answer, right?
Which is that I've worked in both and I'm equally comfortable with both.
I wouldn't say that I have a preference for either.
Yeah, because there have been times when Um, the, the, the time pressure and the, um, like the company I worked for, I mean, they were huge on availability.
So every little outage was like, you know, major disaster drill.
Um, and there were times when I loved that because I was like, like, I felt like I had three brains up there when I was doing that instead of one.
But there are other times when I was writing a big piece of automation code or something where I would just lock myself in my office and do nothing except carry out for three days straight.
And there were other times when I would work on something for an hour and then leave it for a couple days and then go back and work on it again.
It just kind of depended on what it was I was doing or what the requirements were or how I kind of felt about what it was that I was doing too.
Right, right. To get the best results, sometimes you have to be an adrenaline junkie and sometimes you have to be level-headed.
And that's a great answer because basically that's like saying, well, what gear do you want your bike in?
It's like, I want it in all 10 gears.
It depends whether I'm going up a hill or down a hill.
It depends whether the wind's at my back or in my friend or whatever.
So, yeah, I mean, flexibility, variety, I think that's a fantastic answer.
And I mean, not just a fantastic answer.
It's a true answer, but I think that's...
Hey, I answered one honestly.
No, that's entirely...
I think that, to me, is a perfect answer.
That was very succinct. You didn't use any jargon.
You gave some examples. And you talked about your previous company with outrage and bitterness.
Good. Good. I have no issues with that.
I think that was completely perfect.
And that, so do you sort of feel the difference between that answer and the other answers you were giving?
Yeah, yeah, I do.
I feel a lot more relaxed about it, too.
Right, right. And that was the purpose of this exercise, was to get you to see the difference between, you know, trying to come up with something versus just saying what you think.
Right. Right.
Yeah, I see that. And that's, I mean, that's really all I wanted to do.
Was there anything else that you wanted to ask about the interview process or, I mean, from my sort of somewhat limited experience?
Well, I did have a couple of questions for you.
Sure.
Just sort of around, I guess, more along the lines of the psychology of it. more along the lines of the psychology of it.
Like, how do I... Long term, obviously, this is not where I want to be, right?
So how do I sort of be honest about that, but not be honest about that, if that makes any sense, right?
Like, I don't want to walk in there and say, You know what, this is great, but in two years, you people don't look all that attractive anymore, right?
But at the same time, I don't want to be like, yeah, this is the best thing ever.
I never want to leave, right?
Well, it's a first date, right?
Right, so you don't talk about, you know, here's where I want to retire and I want 12 grandkids and blah, blah, blah, right?
It's a first date. So you just...
You don't know. And just to be honest, you don't know.
You might join this company and love it so much that you'll be there for the rest of your life.
You might. You don't know.
That's true. It might be just such a fun environment.
There may be so many interesting opportunities.
Blah-di-blah-di-blah, right?
Right. You might love it to death.
Right? So... This idea that we have to be honest and prepare people for our inevitable ending or whatever, it's just not true because you don't fundamentally know, right?
That's a very good point.
Six months from now, everything will be different.
Right, right. Three months.
Yeah, three months, you don't know.
You just don't know.
You might love it there. You're right.
So, I wouldn't worry about that.
You know, if they sort of say, where do you see yourself in five years kind of thing, you know, I think if you say, I have this, you know, if they say, well, where do you see yourself in five years, you know, when you have a resume like yours, which is, you know, has its strengths and weaknesses like all resumes do, I think for you to say, I've been following a really meticulous career path will make you look completely insane, right?
Right. Right?
So, you know, say, well, where do I see myself in five years?
It's like, well, I want to be employed.
I want to be happy.
I want to, you know, have meaning in what it is that I do.
I want to be challenged. I want to be engaged.
I want to enjoy the people that I work with and the work that I do for the most part.
It's never always perfect.
But, you know, my career path has been, I'm absorbed by this problem.
Now I'd like to try something else.
Right? I mean, so that process, I'm not going to, you know, completely reinvent my entire career approach, you know, at this point in time.
Maybe in the future, but my goal is in five years to be enjoying my work and to be doing something that is engaging and productive with people who I respect and admire.
It's not really much of a career plan, but that's what's worked for me so far, and that's what I like.
Yeah, fundamentally, that's exactly the answer I would give, too, because that sort of is my goal, Steph, is to be working somewhere, doing something that It's personally meaningful and with people that I admire and respect.
Right. I mean, I remember getting people who would be like 50 and had never held anything more than a junior programmer or maybe intermediate programmer position.
And they talk all about their big career goals.
And it's like, have you read the resume that you gave me?
I mean, you can't have big career goals and have the resume you've had and not know that they don't match.
Right. I mean, if you say, well, I've had these big career goals and I've completely failed in them because I'm still a XYZ or whatever, right?
I'm not running GM or some GE, right?
I'm still an intermediate programmer.
So I had these big career goals.
They haven't panned out, blah, blah, blah.
That's okay, right? Or I'm going to have these big career goals for the last 15 years of my career, whatever.
But if they talk about all these big career goals they've always had and it doesn't match their resume at all, That's just someone I don't want to work with, because they're just not in reality.
So, and again, I'm not living in this category.
Right, living in complete fantasy land, for sure.
Well, or they're just lying, right?
And don't even seem to know it.
And I'm not putting you in this category at all, right?
This is the thing.
If you have a resume, what you say has to have fidelity to the resume that you have.
And if it doesn't, you have to at least acknowledge the discrepancy, right?
Or the difference. Right.
Otherwise... If someone's going to hire you who doesn't notice that, you don't want to work for them, right?
Because they're just as insane.
Yeah, something like that. I mean, for better or worse, and whether the reasons were good or not, the fact is that I never had any large goals.
No, I totally understand that.
And I hope you understand this is no way, shape, or form of criticism.
It's just a reality, right?
Right, right. That's quite right.
So that would be, you know, because they will ask you, they're likely to ask you the sort of five-year question, and it's like, hey, you know, enjoy enjoyable work, but I don't have, you know, I'm going to I want something that's going to challenge me intellectually and emotionally, and I want to work with people that I respect and admire.
That has always been to be a perfectly valid answer to that question.
It's an honest answer, and it's an answer that matches your resume.
I, you know, and it's, you know, you've enjoyed most of the work that you've done and it's been absorbing and it's, you know, it's had good, you have had a good income.
So, you know, you just, you know, and it shows a kind of self-acceptance, which is to say, I've never had any big career goals.
I've really enjoyed the work that I've done, right?
That to me, that's what I was looking for in people is, you know, do they have a sense of humor about themselves?
Do they have a realistic view of themselves?
Are they comfortable? With the decisions that I've made, right?
So some guy's 50 talking about his big career goals when he's an intermediate programmer.
I get that he's not at all comfortable with the decisions that he's made.
And that's going to be a source of tension, right?
Right. And the flip side of that, too, is that if I walk in there and they're really judgmental about that, but like, you know, dude, you're going on 43 and you're still just kind of hanging around.
What the hell is that all about, right?
Then I don't want to work for them either, right?
Yeah, it means that they're justifying their own decisions by putting other people down who have different decisions, and you don't want to work for people like that.
Right. In my opinion.
Yeah, I mean, see, and that's the beauty about being authentic, right, is that you're either going to end up with people who are like you, which is good, or other people aren't going to want you around who aren't like you, and that's good too, right?
Right, right. You discover exactly what it is that you want and don't want, and you get to discover exactly whether or not they meet that need, right?
Right, right, right. Absolutely.
Absolutely. All right.
Do you have any other questions? That's been very helpful.
No, I think that's pretty much it.
That was my only sort of really big concern was sort of explaining that problem, right?
The resume is full of great keywords, but it doesn't have, as you say, that arc.
And so that was sort of making me anxious.
But you don't sit there and say, damn, I wish I was vice president of IT for this company for the eastern region.
I mean, you don't sit there and kick yourself with that as far as I understand it, right?
No, actually, I don't.
No, you've just never really wanted that stuff, right?
No. And if you're comfortable with that, see, this is the great secret of life, and I've mentioned this before, but it's really, really relevant here, right?
People, I mean, everybody's a philosopher, everybody's a genius, but very few people have principles, right?
They just have gut, right? And so, there's almost nobody in the world will ever judge you According to some objective standards.
Why? Well, because I think these objective standards were in the process of trying to work it out, right?
They're judging me by the judgment that I'm emanating about myself.
Exactly. Exactly.
This is the amazing power that we have over other people.
And it's not a bad power.
I think it's a good power. I hope in the future there'll be more objective judgments.
People look at you and they're not judging you by any objective standard.
We imagine they are because they pretended to when we were in school or whatever, right?
But they're not. What they're doing is they're saying, well, I don't know you, but you know you a lot better than I do because you're 43 and I've just met you for the last five minutes.
So you've had 43 years to figure out whether you're a good or bad person or whether you're a happy or sad person, whether you've done the right thing or the wrong thing with your life.
I have no idea.
But you have 43 years experience and I have only five minutes experience.
So I'm going to defer...
To your experience.
To your judgment. Because you're an expert and I'm not.
And all of that is unconscious.
It is. It is unconscious.
It is unconscious. And this is exactly what bullying is, right?
The bully picks on the person who already has a negative opinion of himself, right?
He's not judging the kid by any objective standard.
He looks at the kid and says, well, you already have a big problem with yourself, so you're going to be easy, right?
And when people look at confident people, they have no idea.
Like, who the hell knows anything about Barack Obama's political, philosophical, psychological, who knows, right?
But they look at this guy and it's like, damn, he really seems confident.
Yeah. So, let's give him an army, right?
Let's give him prisons.
Let's give him nuclear weapons.
He seems really confident, right?
So, this is the great secret, right?
I mean, and We hope that philosophy will change this over time, so that people can judge others according to objective standards, but they simply do not judge you according to any objective standards.
They'll claim that they do, but they really don't.
What they do is they judge you by how you judge yourself.
They simply inherit your judgment of yourself.
That makes damn good sense.
That sort of explains Yeah, that's an interesting way to wrap this up because that's sort of the way that I've been answering most of the questions tonight too.
Right, some objective standard.
And if you've never been interested in a career but you want to have involving and interesting work and you're comfortable with that, Then most people will be comfortable with it.
I mean, unless you trip over some weird thing on their own.
But then they're still not judging you by any objective standard.
They're just picking off you for some weird shit, right?
And the minute I stopped judging myself about it is the minute I stopped trying to give you manipulative answers and the minute I stopped feeling really anxious about it too.
Because you were trying to control me by pretending to be something other than who you were and all that was was ceding the power to judge you negatively to me because you were judging yourself negatively and saying, well, I can't say what I really think.
So I have to say something that I think you'll like or something that I think is appropriate or something that covers up something that you might judge negatively.
That simply creates the negative judgment that we're trying to avoid.
That's the tragedy of that approach to life, right?
That makes perfect sense.
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
That's quite right. That's hard to keep in the moment, though.
That's hard to keep.
It's hard to stay conscious when the impulse is so strong, you know?
It absolutely is because we look at a job interview as begging for favors or begging for approval from a whimsical authority figure, right?
Fundamentally, that's how most people approach it.
Right. And so it takes us right back to, you know, bad teachers or, you know, if we had bad parents, bad parents.
It takes us right back to that moment where Oh shit, I'm in trouble.
What can I say? To fog it, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's quite right.
But, you know, you've got to outgrow that stuff.
That's not what a lot of people say, right?
The thought that popped into my head was, I'm basically just...
The goal here is just to say, more or less, hey, look, I'm interested in doing this.
Will you give me an opportunity?
And in the process... I could probably add an awful lot of value to what it is that you're already doing.
I would not say that... Sorry to interrupt.
I would not say that is the goal.
Okay. I would not say that is the goal because you don't know that yet.
You don't know if you want to work there.
You don't know if you can add value.
If they're a really...
I'm not saying they are, but if they're a really screwed up organization, you will not add value.
No, that's true. You're right.
Your goal is to explore...
The realities in the company.
To explore the realities in the room.
To explore the degree of honesty, connection, integrity that you get from the person and that you can provide to the environment.
You can control that.
Your own curiosity.
I'm going to be comfortable with who I am.
I'm going to be comfortable with the decisions that I've made.
Why? Because I am.
I'm not making it up. I am.
I'm comfortable with those decisions that I've made.
Have all my decisions been perfect?
Well, of course not, right?
But they've been pretty good, right?
And you've had a career that has had variety and enjoyability.
I mean, you took a year off, you traveled around, you did all this great stuff, you've met people, had great talks about philosophy and so on, right?
So you've taken a non-standard path.
I've always felt that you're relatively comfortable with that.
I know there have been moments of stress and tension, as there always are, but I don't think you look back and say, Damn, I should never have left that original job.
He's like, well, it's been tough, right?
You know what?
Even at the toughest points, I look back and I ask myself, would I have been happier staying?
And every time I ask, the answer that comes back is no.
I'm damn glad that I've done what I've done.
You know, even if I spend the rest of my life scrambling to make a buck, I will never regret doing that.
Right. Right. And particularly, you know, when you're on your deathbed and all, right, you're not going to look back and say, I never should have gone to Europe.
Right? I mean, that would be terrible, right?
Right. Right.
No, I think that's exactly right.
I mean, one of the things I had said to myself When I did that was, you know, what the hell good are life savings if I'm not going to spend them while I'm alive, right?
So that's kind of how I feel about it.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, so I think your goal is to be honest and curious about the environment and the situation, to see if there is a value fit, to see if it's a place where you want to be, to see if it's a place where they want you, the real you, to be.
I think, you know, the purpose is honesty and searching for a connection, you know, on an economic and intellectual level, which is, I think, really all you can do.
And to some degree on an emotional level, but that's obviously not the fundamental priority.
But it's not to convince them that you have value.
It's not to convince them to hire you and all that.
Because as soon as you have a goal that's not about being honest in the moment, you will be manipulative.
Right. No, that's exactly right.
Because then your goal is to get something from someone.
Right. To try and control them until I get it.
Right. Which is never going to work.
I agree. Never going to work.
Well, or if it works, you don't want it to have worked, right?
Right. Well, because I wouldn't be getting what I originally wanted to get in the first place anyways.
Anyways, I would be getting something else, which is, I don't know how to explain it.
Whatever it is I would be getting in a situation like that is not what I think I would be getting.
Right. So that would be my goal.
This work that you've done to get to there, I would just stay there and not jump out of all the work that you've done in order to get something from a particular situation, but continue in with that.
That's a great point.
The hard part about that though is the temptation is to try and squeeze it into something that it's not, if it's not, Right.
If it doesn't seem to be, if there's not a fit, then the off-stop manipulating, right?
Right. Because the alternative is I'm back here, right?
And I'm back at square one again, starting over.
Not starting over, but recycling the whole process again with another company and another company, right?
Absolutely. And so the anxiety is that With everyone that doesn't come through is like, oh God, nothing will ever come through.
Absolutely. That is the anxiety for sure.
And I mean, there is no easy way out of that, right?
That's just something that you have to deal with.
And you may choose, right?
You may choose to say, well, I'm going to not be honest and I'm going to start manipulating people.
You're perfectly free to make that choice.
It's not like evil. You're not killing anyone.
You're not stealing. You're just not being as honest.
As long as you're conscious of that, that's the important thing.
None of this stuff, all the APA stuff out of UPB, like being on time or whatever, it's not, to me at least, it's not good or bad, right or wrong.
It's, are we honest about ourselves with that?
Do you say, okay, well, I really do want to move to New York, or I really do want this job, and I'm willing to put up, you know, there's more, there's less dishonesty here than in my last job, so whatever, right?
I'm going to make the choice to start giving, feeding them a few more pat answers, and I'm going to minimize my, right?
That to me is perfectly fine.
You just don't want to do it unconsciously, right?
As long as we're conscious of the choices that we're making, I don't believe that we can ever do any particular great harm, and we can do some relative good, right, for ourselves and for others, right?
The real challenge is not to follow rules other than to be conscious of what it is that you're doing.
Yeah, but at the same time, to consciously choose to be dishonest, right?
No, no, no. I didn't say dishonest.
I said manipulative. I thought you said I could choose not to be honest.
Well, yeah, and that's right.
That means not to bring your full sense of integrity, but choosing not to be honest is not the same as choosing to be dishonest, right?
If I choose not to spend money in a particular store, that doesn't mean that I'm not spending any money at all, right?
So if I choose to be less than perfectly honest in a particular situation, that doesn't mean that I'm actively lying to someone.
It just means I'm withholding or not bringing this up.
Because everything that is around honesty is around pick and choose, right?
Because we can never be honest about everything all the time.
Because it's simply impossible because we have to put it through the filter of language.
It's emphasis. It's focus.
It's, you know, talking about this rather than that or whatever, right?
It's not asking a question that we might otherwise ask because we've decided to take a different tack or whatever.
That's not being dishonest, right?
Right. And there's that rule again.
Just trying to impose that rule on myself.
Right. And to me, even if you choose to start lying outrageously, as long as you're conscious of it, that's okay, in my opinion.
Right? Again, two more, because I believe...
Well, that's what actors do.
Yeah. I mean, it's something that, you know, it's the old thing, you know, like someone holds a gun to your head and says, where's your dog?
I want to shoot her. Well, you're going to lie outrageously, right?
Right. But you'll be conscious of it.
You won't feel ashamed of it.
In fact, you'd be ashamed of not lying in that situation, right?
Oh, right. Absolutely.
Right, so I trust that as long as I'm conscious of something, that it's really not going to do me that harm.
It's the repression and the unconsciousness that causes the harm.
Because that breeds the shame and the guilt and the manipulation that we can't control.
But as long as we're conscious of something, I don't really believe...
That it can do us any great harm.
In fact, it can sometimes do us good because it gives us a freedom from the chain of, quote, perfect honesty at all times, which I think is inappropriate.
Right? Because we don't want to follow rules.
There's no such thing as being authentic and by following rules, right?
There's no such thing as being who we are by filling in the dots or painting the numbers, right?
Right, right. No, that makes sense.
That makes sense. Because then you're just being the rules.
Well, yeah, which is not being anything, right?
Right. Philosophy is not inter-fascism, right?
It is not inter-totalitarianism.
We do not become free in our lives by installing this, you know, Gestapo called ethics in our brains and following their every grim, barked commandment, right?
Honesty is the first virtue.
Right, and that just means if you're going to do something that's even dishonest or something that's wrong, be honest with yourself about it and be honest with the people who you care about about it and talk about it.
That's all, right? Just don't repress knowledge from yourself.
That's a fun paradox.
No, I think you're right about that.
Alright, well I'm trying to keep these not too brain-bustingly lengthy, so is there anything else that you wanted to add or is this enough useful stuff for you to approach the interview with?
I think that was hugely, hugely helpful stuff and I really appreciated this.
Besides the few mechanics and the excellent questions, just the whole, just getting to the point where I can relax about it was incredibly helpful for me.
Right. And of course, it's not about job interviews.
It's about life, right? I mean, just be relaxed and comfortable with the choices that you've made.
Yeah. All right.
Well, if there's anything else I can do, let me know.
And I hope that you'll keep us all posted.
And obviously, I don't even need to say it, but very best of luck.
And I hope that you enjoy the interview.
Oh, thank you very much. All right.
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