Enh. When I interviewed at ESPN the first few questions were about sports knowledge: were you a fan who understood the storylines and stats? Or did you just want a job?
If you had somehow managed to slip through the HR screening without being a sports fan then the day of interviews would root that out and you would not get an offer.
It ensured that everybody who was there lived and breathed sports and would run through walls to create a great product.
Compare to later when I worked at FOXSports.com where sports knowledge was a bonus. The product was worse and the team had to spend too much time (more than 0 minutes) explaining to a front end dev why a baseball box score had an order that stats were always displayed in because that’s the way fans expected it (true story).
I think the value of the question is that, all things being equal, do you want the person who wants to be there because they have a connection to what you do, or do you want someone who just wants a job?
I agree that most people want someone who's there for more than 'just a job', but I wonder if this depends in part on the industry.
Like, what if you're looking for someone to help write software to manage and control parking garages? What would it even look like for a person to have a connection to parking-garage management? Does prior experience working as a valet count? As personally running, or managing a team to run, or owning a parking lot count?
Are you really looking for 'a person has a passion for what we do' or just 'a person who knows the industry already', especially in industries that aren't catering to a hobby or a 'calling' (like medicine or education or...)?
I think it more "a person capable of empathising with the users". Knowing the internals of how the baseball industry operates isn't relevent here. The relevent experience is being familiar with how the viewers interact with baseball.
Having said that, it seems like this applies mostly to frontend people writing the consumer facing portions. There are plenty of jobs where your users are other people in the company, or partner companies. In those cases, understanding the bussiness tends to be far more important than understanding the user experience.
For parking garages, the relevent experience would be someone has used them a lot. Or at least someone who is familiar with driving a car.
>In those cases, understanding the bussiness tends to be far more important than understanding the user experience.
Never understood the take that internal systems need a good UX because they very much do. Having been a consumer of ass-backwards designed software components, bad UX (apis, functions, other stuff) will inevitably propagate through the product and will rear their ugly head somewhere. Not to speak about "friction" and development velocity and so on.
Why yes, implementing this feature will cost you something like 2 hours. Not implementing it will either cost someone 4 hours to do it themselves or two hours over and over again to code around the lack of it. Please don't waste other people's time.
I mean if I was interviewing with a parking garage company, I’d actually be interested because I have used parking garages and am familiar with them (severe bottlenecks after an event ends, the use of license plate scanning, the whole UX of dealing with tickets, pre-buying parking, trying to find parking garages, etc.) so yes, if you were asking me what makes me interested in a parking garage job which I originally only applied for $$$, I’d have a toooon to say.
I had no industry experience with my current job either — only experience as a user and I was just looking for a job — and basically I just spilled my thoughts about what I liked, what I hated, what I thought could improve, and so on. They actually couldn’t hire me at the time (company-wide hiring freeze) but they must have loved me enough to call me up a year later asking if I was still available and interested (and I was).
"Why do you want to work for us?" is an open-ended question. It doesn't demand passion. "I feel like I have a strong existing knowledge of the sort of work that's done here which would make this role a pleasant fit for me," is a perfectly acceptable answer, especially if you're interviewing at a company that manages parking garages. Something about the company culture is also fine. They're not always demanding that you display a deep passion for managing parking garages; it's just an opportunity to explain why you personally would fit into the company/role better than other candidates.
To be honest I think you can find people interested in anything, or get them to be interested. The problem is, having passionate employees rarely translates into revenue.
Think about it this way: if you were a teacher, and your salary depended on your students' exam results, would you spend time trying to get them interested in your subject, or would you show them the most effective methods of cramming the knowledge before the exam?
Personally I’d way rather work on that software than some social network. I like unsexy b2b and would state that right out if I was interviewing for that company.
Which I think is the point - it takes all kinds and you’re better off picking the person who wants to be there than who’s just looking for a job.
This is gatekeeping for no good reason. You can learn on the job why box scores have an order, that's like a 2 minute discussion. And at the end of the day it doesn't matter as long as they follow the design provided. And like others have said, nobody will know every sport they're building a ui for, does that also disqualify them?
Video games, Music, Fashion here are other industries where "passion" equates to we will pay you less, and over work you at the same time. There's a side to all this that is very devil wears Prada.
> You can learn on the job why box scores have an order
What if you just don't care? I'd be one, since I'd rather watch paint dry than watching baseball. Would you want to work all day five days a week on something you don't care about? I couldn't do that.
> it doesn't matter as long as they follow the design provided
I know this it the end goal of scrum, but is this where we are now? Software engineers as replaceable cogs just doing the design provided?
I could never work such a job. Change careers, if you can't be making the decision about how it's going to work.
> And at the end of the day it doesn't matter as long as they follow the design provided
This is a great way to be utterly replaceable in your job. "Tell me what to do" is the worst trait in an employee and puts you immediately in the "first to cut when possible" line.
> nobody will know every sport they're building a ui for, does that also disqualify them?
It makes them worse from an IC perspective, because they need hand-holding moreso than someone who gets the problem space more intuitively.
In ZIRP, it was easier to coast with what you're saying. Now, it's back to brass tacks - everyone is expected contribute and be more helpful to your boss and team in order to become more irreplaceable.
i think this whole thread is a false dichotomy. I'm not a sports fan myself, but I would absolutely sit down and learn the rules/stats/whatever ahead of an interview. i also wouldn't put up with shitty hours and rude bosses.
Your point doesn't quite follow from the example. If the dev is interested in sports unrelated to baseball (tennis, soccer, etc) they'd need the scoring explained regardless.
The broader point is if you care about sports you understand the passion and that there’s often “a way” of doing things in a sport, you learn it, and you move on.
You don’t argue for 10 minutes that your way of displaying a box score is better than how literally millions of fans expect it to be.
Yes, exactly, and the game Slay the Spire is a strong example. Primarily made by a two-person team. The designer is super passionate about the game (and card games in general). The programmer doesn’t even like card games!
But it works great (it is such a successful game that it spawned a new genre) because both are really good at what they do!
so couldn't you answer that? "I'm very passionate about building useful things, and I can see how your product BLAH can be applied to valuable areas like ..."
I guess it’s a sense of why do I need a PASSION for it. I’ll do it , but my passion more so lies in say not starving to death while enjoying my hobbies rather than caring more than I need to about YOUR product
>I guess it’s a sense of why do I need a PASSION for it
I think at the end of the day, an employee with passion is always better than one without, if everything else is held even. I think this is a tough pill for a lot of people who arent/dont want to be passionate about their work to swallow. It impacts every attribute an employer cares about.
I do work for an esports company. Something a lot of devs are passionate about. In the end after a downsizing they kept the most competent developers even when they cared zilch about esports. Because your passion doesn’t make you write good code. Just makes you happy while writing bad code
Well this is a very confusing argument. If you hire someone who cares about their work, who has passion for it, you're going to need to be prepared to talk things through with them when they think they've worked out a better way of doing things. If you wanted them to just code up what they are told to, you would have been better avoiding all that passion in the first place.
I assume that you've run into this with people before, or you wouldn't be calling it out as a worry.
But I would hope that I'm humble enough to admit (at least to myself) when I don't know much about a particular topic, and would accept at face value, without argument, when someone says to me, "thanks for trying to find an improvement here, but this is just how this data is displayed, and millions of fans expect to be able to read it this way, and will get confused if we do something different".
I'm not passionate about commodity futures trading. I don't care about it at all. But when I work on software which traders will use, I understand that there are specific conventions about how the numbers are displayed and that they need to be understood and used.
>You don’t argue for 10 minutes that your way of displaying a box score is better
most people working in any particular industry understand that there is a particular way things are done for customers in that industry.
on edit: actually thinking about this I recall I was working on a live streaming sports station and I should display some scores (not baseball) I hate watching sports and yet I still chased down several people to find out if there was a well known way that scores should be sorted and displayed because I expected different sports might have different idiosyncrasies and I should provide a generic templating system for displaying the score (these folks evidently didn't care as much as ESPN because there was nothing special I should do)
I don't get it. If the box needs the stats in a particular order, don't you just put that in the task ticket for it? Like how is this requirement being communicated where someone wants to argue about it? If the ticket says "do this" and it's not done then you just fail QA and send it back.
I'm very thankful that not all developers work in a code factory where explicit requirements get spit out on their desk at the end of the process. If you're involved in the definition you get to prevent the "team <upstream> is so clueless" issues, and actually learn about what you're building beyond code implementation.
I don't think that's what's going on here, though. Developers often don't design UI, anyway. They're given a UI spec or mock-up from a UI/UX designer, and build it to spec. That's not a "code factory", that's just being a professional about it (and many software developers are terrible at UI design and should grow some humility and accept that).
Regardless, a quick "we need this score box to be laid out exactly this way, because this is the standard in this particular fandom, and our fans will expect to read it this way" should be sufficient. A developer who doesn't accept that, and argues, needs to mature and learn some social and professional skills.
Even more desirable is a dev who you can simply ask to make a score box and they deliver some think that meets or exceeds your expectations without further information.
It's something that would be assumed without being explicitly stated. I'd have no idea how the stats are supposed to be displayed for a cricket match but I'm a fan of other sports so I'd know there's a correct way and would likely ask a cricket fan coworker how to do it. Or research it myself if nobody's a cricket fan. With baseball box scores, I'd know the right way to do it without having to ask.
Wow. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this workplace you describe.
I mean, yeah, you've described it well. I can understand how it works. But I just can't imagine working as a developer where the first introduction to a "task" is this finely specified. Like, this dev won't have been involved in the feature at all before seeing it in a card in some task manager app?
Yikes.
Are you saying that you've worked in places like this? Just doing these tiny little tasks, blind, to an app that you have no context on. And you did this for more than, say, a week before quitting? And that week wasn't your first week of your first job out of school?
How would you QA something like this across all possible sports? Or test it? How was the feature even developed or requested though if the specification isn't written to explain what it is? Are the frontend designers developing the specification? The developers? What about the backend engineers who need to implement APIs?
What if there's a couple of different factions in a fandom for some particular sport that disagree on the ordering?
Imagine doing this for any other industry and expecting coherent results. An effective developer given a vague tasking will do a bit of quick research and come up with an idea, but they could also be entirely wrong compared to the business objectives. Or the task could relate solely to internal business processes, in which case there is no consensus it's whatever the internal culture of the business does.
I think that's a fairly uncharitable explanation of the GP's point.
Even if the developer is involved in the UI design (which at many shops is -- IMO wisely -- not the case), it takes all of 7 seconds to give context on why a box score needs to be displayed in a particular way.
I don't know anything about how ESPN's business operates, but I am incredibly skeptical of companies that push hard to find people passionate about whatever the company is doing. All too often that equates with working people longer hours for lower pay, preying on their love for the subject at hand to get them to accept a raw deal. Game dev is I guess the canonical example of this.
I get it, though: an employee who doesn't need an explainer about common things in the sports world is going to get up to speed faster and be more productive than someone who needs some (or a lot of) hand-holding. (And I say this as the guy who'd come up to you and ask, "ummm what's a baseball box score?")
> I think the value of the question is that, all things being equal...
But are things often all equal? I wonder if the universe of "people who love sports and are great developers" is really large enough to fill all the job slots. If you were down to two candidates, and one didn't know much about sports but seemed to be a fantastic developer, and the other was a super sports fan and seemed like they'd get the job done, but maybe not with much excellence, who would you hire? Obviously that's a contrived situation, but hopefully you get the point I'm trying to make.
Consider the statement: "You should be excited about building a website for (x) ." where x is one of the following:
A. Fecal sample collection.
B. Hardware fasteners.
C. Debt Collection.
D. US Tax Code parsing
E. HR regulatory compliance
I believe the reality is that most jobs are boring. Even if you're working in a business you're deeply motivated by, there's lots of ho-hum positions that need to be filled.
You've picked a funny first example. I've actually wanted to work on software related to fecal sample collection and am passionate about it.
I have an intestinal issue - and as a result I'm always watching out for signs of problems in my own stool. There are obvious indicators - e.g. black tarry stool suggests a bleed in upper intestine.
One issue is that it's kind of hard to get good pictures to compare to. Google images will show you some examples, but not examples of false positives. Is your stool partially pale white because you ate a ton of marshmallows recently, or because you have an obstruction in your bile duct?
A doctor once suggested I had Crohn's Disease (luckily, didn't) and I joined the subreddit for it and was pretty horrified by what I read.
A big issue with Crohn's is understanding the relationship between what you eat and how well your digestive system preforms. This is something that tracking software could help with - I imagine taking a picture of food and of your excrement and then ML on the backend sorts everything out and makes dietary suggestions.
Users could also annotate their images with additional insights or notes like "I have condition X - this sample is a good indicator of X" and curious users could image match pictures of potentially problematic stool to the annotated repository.
My point is - plenty of people are passionate about random subjects that may seem dull to you. Plenty more people can get passionate because even a random topic likely has immense depth and nuance to it.
I find coworkers that aren't passionate are a drag to work with. I want to make something useful and good to solve a real problem. If you are just there to do the bare minimum to collect a paycheck - that's very annoying, you're more of an obstacle to work around than a teammate. You can hire people like that if you don't have better options, but hopefully there are better options!
Awesome. Welcome to your first "Fecal Sample Corp." interview.
Are you passionate about programming on the IBM AS400 platform? Our parent company never upgraded their infrastructure for the past 40 years, as it was deemed too risky.
some screw types are fun. I like allen which is pretty positive engagement, and can even take ball-headed drivers. Torx is pretty positive too. I don't like slotted that much (driver doesn't self-center and tends to slide out the side). In the middle is phillips (and/or pozidrive / jis). Easy to center and use, but frequently strips out if the driver is at an angle or too little downforce is applied.
It's also fun to find the perfect tool for the job. I'm surprised nobody makes a "mechanics tool set" that is completely based on 1/4" hex driver bits with positive engagement. Organized to do all kinds of screws, plus sockets to do nuts and bolts.
I think you vastly underestimate the variety of the things humans will be passionate about.
But sure, many people will still be doing jobs that they aren't passionate about, and that's fine. Passion shouldn't be a requirement. Maybe it's a bonus, though, both for the employer and employee.
How many jobs necessarily have a focused mission where you can easily make that an implicit requirement? Even if you take a position at ESPN, you might work on nothing externally facing. Does an accountant/lawyer/janitor also need to be a sports geek to apply?
It is great if you could get a position in which you are passionate, but those are few and far between.
I don't know where I stand on this exact issue but one should be careful that the questions they are asking don't slot the acceptable candidates into a gender, economic class, race, age group, or religious affiliation.
If you changed the nouns and adjectives for this example to something else you could find your way into trouble.
See that's wild because for someone writing code I think a bit of detachment is necessary to make a good product. Emotional investment and technical decisions never really mix all that well.
And drive isn't really all that it's cracked up to be because folks will burn themselves out. I've worked at more than one place where it's been a struggle to get people to take PTO, one time to the point where we got managers to all but mandate vacation because it was affecting work.
What share of products and companies have a reasonable expectation of people passionate (irl-passionate, not ”professional passionate”) for their domain?
> surely a money-seeking apparatus can form a justified expectation?
Hiring managers have all sorts of opinions and expectations. Often they use lazy heuristics because hiring is hard work. Gauging passion (for the business domain or particular company) is one such lazy heuristic, ineffective in part because it is easily faked and sometimes not apparent. False positives and negatives both occur. It might also be irrelevant.
Also, yeah, you're right that I anthropomorphized after saying companies have no human qualities. There's a lot more nuance. The idea was that for groups of self-interested people following incentives to cooperate, they collectively have a much different character from the individuals within, in terms of their ability to reason, their motives, and their grasp on reality, among other things.
I am currently wondering, in a very similar vein, if the people who work on Apple Fitness have ever trained for an event in their lives.
The optimistic view is they've left plenty of space for third party apps to come in and thrive, and a number of them have. But if you were trying to build an app that bridged people from sedentary lifestyle to an active one that needed a 'Real Fitness App', well they haven't really done that either, and I can't help but wonder if it's a personnel problem.
The workflows are all wrong for adjusting things the night before a session and much worse for correcting things in the middle of a workout.
ESPN is good example of company where you want your employees to dog food the product. If they use it for their own passion they probably often think what could be better and what more could be done.
Not saying it is always needed, but it is example of place where you want interested people. Same goes for more creative things. You do not want disinterested writers writing scripts or composing music...
Ouch. I work at a sports tech company where about only about half the engineers were sports fans going in. I wasn't one of them. I'm obviously biased, but I think that the intersection of tech people and sports fans is small enough that the companys' growth and/or technology would suffer significantly if they insisted on hiring only the intersection. Domain knowledge is important, but "domain" can be multi-dimensional (my team's domain is "AV" more than it is "sports"), and general tech quality matters too.
But more broadly, I agree this question could be useful. It's not "say why you want to have a job, and it better not be for money", which would indeed be silly. It's more like "you're good and a lot of companies would hire you, so why this job?" I don't think I've ever asked this question, but it's good to know they have some passions that overlap with what we do, and this question could be a way to find those.
As an infra engineer, I try to pick up companies that make make a difference. But they never ask me about my motivation. They ask why I want to change the job, not why I chose them - it would be kind of stupid in the light of the fact that normally people have several interviews with different companies when they change jobs so that question would be illogical.
Agreed, actually. It does depend on the industry somewhat and sports is probably one where interest in the topic is more valuable than average.
But for me I have to care about what the company does. I don't think it's necessary to be an extreme hardcode fan of the product, but at least caring more than a little bit is important.
Working on a product that I couldn't care less about is going to be too draining. For example, netflix has been recruiting me for a long, long time but I have zero interest in movies. I'd rather do anything else than watch a movie. So I've never been interested in working there since, at the end of the day, it's a movie company and I just don't care about that at all.
As the employer, of course you want someone with passion for your business. But I think the point of the article is that the question "why do you want to work here?" is so cliche that it doesn't work anymore. Candidates just embellish the answer that they have prepared and even memorized, when not straight lie, like the "name 3 weaknesess" nobody is going to answer in full truth.
Want to check for passion for sports? Initiate an almost casual conversation about sports, and you will learn if the candidate is passionate or not.
For somewhere like ESPN where you can reasonably expect to find people who are genuinely passionate about your product, this is reasonable. ESPN employees should be passionate about sports just as employees at a video game company should be passionate about gaming.
This doesn't apply to something that nobody in their right mind can possibly be genuinely passionate about such as insurance or tax preparation.
and yet lots of people go to school for a very long time to study accounting, or do graduate work in actuarial sciences, so I think you're wrong. It's easier to communicate passionate about the verb than the noun. Like what if you applied to a tax prep company and they had an free version for low-income people? It would be easy to talk about how you wanted to really help people with a difficult and expensive requirement where there is real need.
and yet lots of people go to school for a very long time to study accounting, or do graduate work in actuarial sciences, so I think you're wrong
I’ve talked to tons of people in school for those very things. NONE of them were passionate about tax prep, auditing, or mortality tables. All of them were in the game for one reason: they wanted a well-paying, steady job at an accounting firm or insurance company. In fact, all those I talked to who had actually worked in those industries found the job incredibly boring and either put up with it in the hopes of some day making partner or flat-out quit the industry.
A big clue to how little passion there is for this field is the sheer number of co-op students employed at these firms/companies. Heck, when it comes to tax time they basically hire an army of co-ops to get it all done (and feed them pizza to keep them working late into the evenings).
They don’t use regular employees for the work because no one wants to do that as a long term job. People just put up with it as a kind of hazing (or paying your dues), kind of like how residents are treated at a hospital.
Oh, and almost all graduate students these days (in fields with decent-paying industry jobs) are people who can’t or won’t work for whatever reason (including visa status) and so they go to grad school to delay entering industry, not because they’re passionate about the subject.
That's pretty much how I'd always imagined those professions are. I'd imagine there are people in law, medicine and finance who genuinely enjoy those jobs even if most are probably just in it for the money. But insurance and accounting seem like things nobody could want to do except for money.
I actually went to grad school for computer science mainly because I just enjoyed being in school and they were paying me to go. Wish I'd scheduled an extra class my last semester so that I'd have a masters right now but I was both overconfident and totally burned out. I also discovered that I'm just not interested in academic CS research. I'd be interested in a stable tenured teaching job somewhere if writing peer reviewed papers and publishing them in journals nobody reads wasn't part of the job description. I'd say most of the other grad students, especially the non-international ones seemed genuinely interested in computer science and the AI research that almost everybody except me was doing.
What about somebody who wants to be part of a team for their culture, independently of the product, because they match really well with the culture (this happened to me and to somebody we hired). I'm not a user of the product but I'm considered a good representation of the company's culture (and I love where I work)
You are talking about two different things here. First is DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE, second is being fanboy of the company you are working for. I would say domain knowledge can even be a requirement, but the author talks about the second one, you don't have to be a fanboy of the company and still make good work.
When I worked at an online clothing retail store, I had zero interest in fashion, but I think I still did a pretty good job.
When I worked at a data mining/data broker startup, I had zero interest...--who's passion is it really to snoop on people and steal their information (FAANG)?
This obsession with hyper optimization at every level is wasteful and unhealthy. I prefer to hire a mix of good enough people, it's a less conflictual team environment. At the end of the day if they are professional, they will get the job done.
I don't understand why questions made for high-quality outlets with a very clear identity are then asked in low-paying endeavours where even founders have no clear higher-level vision and mission. I've seen the McKinsey dumberies and these questions asked even in factories and helpdesk sweatshops, for fuck's sake.
> The product was worse and the team had to spend too much time (more than 0 minutes) explaining to a front end dev why a baseball box score had an order that stats were always displayed in because that’s the way fans expected it
See, for me this is an argument in favor of hiring people who don’t know the field. "It’s done this way because our users expect it" is a good reason to do something, but it’s great to have it stated explicitly and consciously. It’s even food for thought: "how do we keep it this way AND improve it so that even our frontend dev who doesn’t know sports understands it?"
Everyone can learn any business. That your business is the passion of many people doesn’t mean you should only hire passionate people.
Yeah, one of the most fun gigs I ever had was for this little startup in the Outdoor space. When I interviewed, there were something like 30 mountain bikes parked in the lobby.
It was folks from all walks of life, ages, and income levels. But they were pretty much all fit and healthy (and generally fun to be around). There were office kayaking trips.
I can't imagine you'd be able to pull that off today. There would be some form of DEI lawsuit inside the first week.
And yet sports fans around the world complain about companies turning their favorite sports past time into a soulless business opportunity where everything including the fans themselves counts as a commodity, has a price and a number.
Everybody is in it for the money.... especially companies.
Yeah, sorry, this is exactly the toxic shit that makes interviews hell.
> I think the value of the question is that, all things being equal, do you want the person who wants to be there because they have a connection to what you do, or do you want someone who just wants a job?
I think it's none of the businesses' business why I'm there for. Under the capitalist system, you need a paycheck to survive. Attaching conditionals to this is shitty, no matter how you try to justify it post-fact.
Also, you don't ever get "things being equal" with candidates. They just aren't.
It never hurts to take a moment to figure out the real game that's being played when someone asks an especially trite interview question. (Like this one.) Here's what I've been told by HR executives in candid moments about "Why do you want to work for us?"
-- It's an easy way of finding out whether the candidate has done some homework about the company and the role. For insecure interviewers, it's a request to be flattered. For confident ones, it's a way of finding out whether the candidate has identified a specific opportunity that she or he is genuinely excited about. Having employees who are intrinsically motivated works out better than just a group of paycheck collectors.
-- It's a way of finding out whether you might be promotable. That's especially important in a growing company. As opportunities increase, there's an "up or out" dynamic that moves the most valuable employees into bigger roles, while shedding the ones that have little chance of rising higher. (Netflix is famously candid about this; many other companies think the same way but don't surface it.)
> It's a way of finding out whether you might be promotable.
Heh, so, if I googled your company before interview, and able to quote marketing sentences about how this is the "Great people. Great challenges. Great opportunities. Groundbreaking technology." etc., only then I can expect a promotion in a future years?
Not necessarily, but if the interviewer can tell that you didn't google the company, it's unlikely that you'll be the type of person who gets promoted?
I feel like this article undermines itself a bit with:
> Sure, the tech stack might be exciting. Or the product may be compelling. The work-life balance may be good. But I promise you that the biggest reason is still money.
I was always under the impression that for a paid job, the reason of money is assumed. Companies want to hear your other reasons - to show you are at least trying to appreciate what they're about aside from making money. Was the question ever being asked to find the main reason?
If you have plenty of potential job leads and you find yourself in the position of sifting through them for the best one, that may be true. That's not the case for most people.
I would go one step further: why would the question be irrelevant for a janitor? Let's say you search for a janitor for a high school. You have three good candidates. One just applied randomly. One lives just around the corner, and wanted to find a workplace where he would not have to drive for hours. The third one lives far away but loves interacting with teenagers: for instance, he is a karate instructor in his spare time.
Feels relevant to me. You can apply for a janitor job in a lot of places, so it cannot hurt to ask whether there is a reason to choose this particular one. As other said, just saying "I need a job and this fits my profile" should be an acceptable option.
Let's not pretend that question is what will make or break the interview. I always see it more as an ice breaker to get the discussion started.
Yup, this. Not being able to answer this question is the result of people just shotgunning job applications without checking up on the company first. I wouldn't want employees that could not answer why they would work for me. I also wouldn't want to work for a company that I would not have reasons as to why I would wanna work there.
The expectation that most candidates should care about the "mission" strikes me as incredibly naive. I recently did a job search and spoke with a company I really wanted to work at, and that seemed like an awesome fit. I had a great conversation with the hiring manager and everything looked awesome. Well, they actually found a great candidate that day and decided not to move forward. That's the reality of the job search for most people.
Applying for companies you want to work at almost seems stupid when more than half the time they just send you an email telling you they don't think you're a good fit. It's a luxury and a privilege to work at a so called dream job. In my view, and especially in the current market, the optimal strategy is to talk to whichever recruiter is emailling you, and do no additional research until after the technical interviews are over with. It's frankly a huge waste of time to know anything about a company before you even know if they have a position for you. Having the expectation that your employees care as much about the company as you do is just ignorance.
To be completely honest, it's pretty easy to find a job in the current market. Maybe american market is different but in Europe you can practically just chose some company and you'll get a job.
The article gives the reason. We all want to work for money. Sure, most of us can call up some enthusiasm for the technology we’ll be working with, but often we don’t quite know what exactly we would be working on anyway.
A better way to go about it is to examine the preferred working style of the applicant vs the way the company operates.
Why do you even think that you are expected to lie? Out of tens of thousands of companies on the market, you chose maybe ten to apply, including mine. Why? “Because I need money” is not an answer, or at least not the complete one. Somehow, ten companies out of thousands fit your filter. Why? That's all I want to know as an interviewer when I ask that question. Saying “you have the best compensation” is completely okay. Saying “you fit my developer profile” is also completely okay. It’s ridiculous that anyone could think that some company praise is in order. Just tell the truth, stop making up cases to be offended by an interview question.
> Out of tens of thousands of companies on the market, you chose maybe ten to apply,
You're joking, right? The question is jarring because it's asked in an interview, for many, after applying to dozens if not hundreds of companies. Not getting too attached to any applications since the majority never even see a rejection email in response, many more will send the rejection months later, and the 1 in a few dozen applications will get to a phone call with a recruiter.
So yes, the reason I want to work "here" is because "here" is the company that responded.
"I just searched for jobs that match my skills, and you were one of them" also sounds fair enough to me.
However, when it comes to choosing between a candidate who scrambles for anything and someone who has at least some interest or knowledge of the company's business, the company will always choose the latter, and they will be right, and you would do the same in their place. If you force yourself to lie to get into the latter category, that's on you, not on them.
hmm, yeah, well I sorted by salary, proximity and my skills and uhm, yeah, your company came up. Oh, sorry, I mean I really believe in your product and my grandma and I have been using it for 15 years and I want to make a change in the world and Forketyfork Inc. works on exactly that.
Matching skills is nice, but do you really have no inclinations or preferences at all regarding the domain? You're just as (un)happy to program literally anything for money?
I personally don't do ecommerce and everything vice-related, including gambling. But I can't go to the interview and say: well I've picked you because you're not doing ecommerce and gambling.
Our company recently received 4k of resumes for single position.
90% wasn't even worth reading (literally zero experience, sometimes plainly saying they're eg salesman right now) - at this point you start to wonder if people did even read the job listing or some just told them IT is easy money.
I have worked for three companies over the past decade, well the second one was an acquisition, anyway, only the last one asked me why I want to work there, I gave an honest answer, it was easy to answer because I grew up reading about things they do.
Last month I was laid off among many other during this AI race. And I was given something called a score sheet to tell me why I was selected, while the performance score was maximum, I was not not "flexible" enough. The only thing I could think off is the conversation I had with my manager about the direction the company is going towards, but alas they went on a holiday after scoring me.
The companies might want smart and passionate people, but they never want smart, passionate, and honest people. If you don't have a brown tongue, you'll not survive.
I'm a very honest person and I would say that it is _with_ a brown tounge that you will not survive. Dying a bit every day you keep playing along with the new direction that you genuinely don't believe in. Rather you should just switch job to one where you can be honest and contribute happily for some years.
>Do you really want to to be lied to by every candidate?
You misjudge managers. In my experience, managers want conformity in service of the company. The lie signals the willingness to conform in service of the company.
This is some really old-school statement... If you, as a manager, would hire for a software engineering professional, the last thing you'd want is a servant for your coding problems.
If loyalty is not a big concern (and it isn't really, currently), then I'm there to bring your business up to speed, and you're there to help me advance in this job market.
Engineering is a constant balancing act. If working with this kind of manager favors conformity over business requirements, technical requirements, legal requirements etc. we'd be having a very hard time disagreeing on topics (balancing them out) and working together.
>the last thing you'd want is a servant for your coding problems.
That doesn't match my experience. Software engineering culture is full of processes to facilitate conformity, from velocity and burn down charts, to bureaucratic decision making processes and unnecessary group meetings. Every manager I've ever had has given me the impression that they want someone to mindlessly crunch through tickets without resistance.
There is no need to make this more complicated than it really is. In this individual's case the conversation could go as follows:
> Q: Why do you want to work for us?
> A: Because I need the money.
Generalization is dangerous and people want to join groups of other people for many different reasons. Some of them are bored and have nothing better to do with their time. Others are charmed by that particular group of people because of who those people are or the kind of work that they do. A few are interested in moving to a different city or country and expanding their horizons. Making it sound like this is all about money everywhere all the time seems nihilistic and pretty depressing to me. I would not want to work with a person who is doing it just for the money or refuses to give a reason why they wish to join my group. I suppose therein lies the merit of asking "why".
You would turn away an expert professional contributor, because they are only in it for the money? I would quit my job if it wasn’t for the money. Same applies to everyone I work with.
The general reason for wanting a job is to get paid so you can have and do nice things. That's a given. Set that aside. Now that we've established that you need money, and have five companies in front of you that will give you money, surely there are some other reasons why you'd pick any one of those particular companies to work at, no? Reasons why you'd choose one over the others, or those five over the other 30 you looked at but decided not to apply to.
You seem incredulous that someone would turn away an expert because they're only in it for the money. Sure, fair. But it's not really about that. If they're so... one-dimensional?... that they can't think of anything they like about the company aside from "paycheck gets sent every two weeks", that feels like a red flag to me.
The point is that you want the candidate to muster up some fake enthusiasm, because not being able to muster up that fake enthusiasm would be a red flag.
Sure, most of us are able to find something to say about the company, but I don’t think it correlates at all with competence or professionalism. I suspect rather that bullshitters do particularly well with this question, whereas competent technical people may struggle.
Now that we've established that you need money, and have five companies in front of you that will give you money, surely there are some other reasons why you'd pick any one of those particular companies to work at, no?
Why assume the candidate has five companies willing to hire? What if the candidate has been searching for a job for the past year and, through a run of bad luck, hasn’t had an interview until now?
We assume that, because we're talking about article of software engineer posted on HN. IT jobs market might be worse recently, but I haven't heard about anyone looking for a job for a year.
perfect example -- the fact that this person has been unable to find a job so long is a great negative signal to find out about for a company. as a candidate I see only downsides in revealing that fact with such a poor answer to the question
Why? Because in my experience it is impossible to know how a job is going to be before I start on it. The stack can change, I could be put on another project, maybe the manager is toxic or the best person ever, hard to know without working there.
The only tangible fact is the things on the contract, work days and the money I am getting.
If money is your ONLY reason to work at a specific company as opposed to other companies, then your philosophy is wack.
There's plenty of companies where I like what they do, or the work is interesting and would thus be willing to accept less pay. There's companies I feel are making the world worse much more directly than most and I refuse to work for them at for any price.
Unpopular take : Money being the right answer for arguably 99% of the time, probably the real back of the mind test is how convincingly can you manage a question whose answer is obvious, and navigate to give a different answer which may sound even more obvious, atleast on the table at that point in time.
Disclaimer : I never ask these questions, I am a generalist and appreciate knowledge around wide variety of fields instead of hyper focus into one.
The point of soft questions like this in interviews is to test social skills and agreeability. While I get the motivation to cut the BS, I wouldn't want to work with people lacking social skills either.
Funny how social skills and agreeability is measured by observing how well a candidate answers a loaded question with a BS answer. That's just the way the world works, we can't get a long with someone who's straight forward and frighteningly honest.
That’s one way to frame it. The other would be the candidate being able to understand that the “apart from money” part is implied in the question and the answer given the social context. This makes the money answer go from straightforward and honest to blunt and cringeworthy.
Based on the answers in this thread it seems like there's a large chunk of people for whom the "apart from money" is not implied. And I think that's what TFA is in support of any way. Neurotypical people might understand it like that, but a large chunk of developers might not be neurotypical and don't feel like, or don't have the capacity for expending energy into finding a socially acceptable answer.
That's exactly the social skills the interview is screening for. Determining if someone can handle relatively simple questions, of you if the employee will struggle.
Couldn't you get the same (or better) insight into their social skills by engaging them in a conversation about something more relevant to the actual job, such as the candidate's experiences with some technology that would be used in this job?
As a bonus, that conversation would probably be more likely to make a desirable job candidate have good feelings about you, and also give them information about what it would be like to work for you. A one-sided interrogation like "why do you want to work here" is less likely to lead to a mutually informative conversation. (Your company is also being evaluated by them; if they're someone you really want, they'll have a choice of working elsewhere. You'll need to sell your company to them.)
To be honest, Im pretty surprised that people see it as so much less relevant or informative. When I interview and have been interviewed, it is usually one of the most important topics.
For some reason, people seem to have a default hostile reaction. If you want a mutually informative conversation, it is a fantastic opening to have exactly that.
Candidates are allowed take an active role in discussion, and those that do are massively rewarded by the hiring process. Failure to engage with questions seems like refusing to meet an interviewer half way, or do literally any of the conversational work to get want they want.
IT is taking a passive conversational position devoid of agency.
I have had hour long conversations learning about how the company operates in the context of what I want staring from this same premise.
I dont want to work with employees who dont understand simple questions any more than I want to work with people who cant program.
There might be some code factory situations where it might not matter, but everywhere I worked being able to understand and communicate is an important part of the job. Employees who don't understand a question, dont see it as personal issue, and then resent the counterparty are the worst kind of coworkers.
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>Also, what will the developer struggle with if they're not able to come up with a convenient response to "why do you want to work for us?".
I with this kind of hostile literalism I would worry about having miscommunications along the time "you asked if I could finish the task by tomorrow, not if I will do the task by tomorrow".
PS it really isnt a hard question to answer without lying or BS, and I think the fact that some people struggle with it speaks volumes.
Q: "why do you want to work for us?
A: "First off, I am looking for to grow my career and compensation progression and think [Corp] is a place where I can do that. Beyond that, I think this role would be a good fit for both of us because specialize in XYZ relevant skills.
Upon reflection, I wonder if the problem is some people cant tell the difference between BS answering a question that isnt their own.
But in many cases, that answer would be BS. Lots of people have been laid off from their jobs, and would be happy with any job in their field that allows them to feed their family and pay their rent. Their primary objective might not be to grow their career or compensation, just to quickly find a job that pays enough and doesn't suck too much. And if their skills didn't match the ones you needed, they would have never progressed to the point of getting an interview with you, so there's really nothing new to be learned from that answer.
Sure, the answer might be different for different circumstances, but it isnt really a hard question. As I stated elsewhere, I think the assumption is that a decent candidate should be able to come up with at least one thing they like about a company or look forward to without lying when given a completely blank slate to work with. If you are seeking stability, that can be part of an answer too.
> And if their skills didn't match the ones you needed, they would have never progressed to the point of getting an interview with you, so there's really nothing new to be learned from that answer.
I think this sentiment is part of the challenge. It isn't just a question of skills, but a personal question of motivation and compatibility, and somehow that is being lost. All I'm seeing is that a potential employee that either doesn't understand my question or thinks their time is too valuable to answer it.
Depends on the culture and other circumstances. In certain cases, replying with "I need the money" would result in a few chuckles, but overall a very positive response.
The answer doesn't have to be BS. It can be true, relevant to the question, and even interesting. Pulling that off is the social skills test.
Being straight forward and honest is relatively easy. Doing so in a agreeable way to your audience is a lot harder, and usually a highly sought after skill.
Surely the most significant side effect of any F2F interview is to evaluate social skills. An answer that the interviewer fully expects to be a lie just isn't required.
Anyway... "Why do you want to employ me over other candidates ? "
I disagree with this. I feel you can be honest but not straightforward. You manipulate the audience by not telling the whole truth or twisting the emotions around the truth in a manipulative way. To me this is equivalent to if not more dishonest then lying to someone's face as doing this kind of manipulation allows you to get away with a technicality that you "didn't lie" when in fact the intent was exactly the same: To deceive.
The god awful truth is that most people just want money.
Not just money. Many of us just want a job that pays pretty well, doesn't require too much overtime, doesn't stress us out too much, isn't too far from home, and has some decent coworkers to work with.
Why so many companies can't just offer this and get some dependable, competent employees and be happy with that, I'm not sure, but I know it has something to do with the mentalities of people who become founders or high-up managers.
The harder truth is that it's rare to find the perfect job, and rare to find the perfect candidate. There's an assumption with many of the views in this thread that the employment market is more efficient than it is at matching people.
I dont think the assumption is perfection. I think the assumption is that a decent candidate should be able to come up with at least one thing they like about a company or look forward to when given a completely blank slate to work with.
I didn't mean to imply anything about lying or misleading. Similarly, I don't think it is manipulation to consider your audience and what they are trying to ask.
The best coworkers I've had were honest and straightforward, but could understand and emphasize with their audience too. I think everyone who takes this question literally at face value is missing the second half of that.
I think most people want a nearly endless list of things, of which money is just one of the most important.
For example, most people won't be happy with if you give them money but treat them like shit and over work them with frustrating tasks.
I think the people who lie are mainly doing it to compensate for lack of social skills, which would enable the truth in a compelling and agreeable way.
this article is missing the picture. Yes the candidate engineer / salesperson / marketer is motivated by money.
But of all the things they could work on, why this team, problem or company? Many jobs will pay similar money.
Some version of this question is extremely helpful in
(a) understanding if the candidate is going to be disappointed/not get what they want a few months into the job
(b) identifying what motivates them, to help them find fulfllment and growth in their career (part of your job as a manager).
Maybe they applied to 80 jobs and this was the only one that invited them to interview? I think a lot of times the resumes go into a black hole, especially with AI screening no one even looks at them!
Sure, but why those 80? Hopefully there was at least one thing about each of those 80 jobs that made it worth applying to, vs. skipping it.
And if someone just mass-applied to literally every single job that was available, only got accepted to interview at one of them, and ended up across the interview table from me? Yeah, I'd think it would be a pretty basic expectation for them to do 20 minutes of research into the company or job description before the interview to find at least one or two things they like about it. Hell, those one or two things could even be learned during the interview process.
Doesn't have to be something earth-shattering. "I like working with $TECH_STACK that you use." "I like that I can take transit to your office and it's a short commute." "I enjoyed interacting with my interviewers and felt like we connected well and would work together well." It's not that hard!
Feels like a red flag if they can't even manage that.
Maybe you could interpret this question as "what makes you interested in this field/domain" rather than "why do you want to work for us in particular"?
I think the point is, that for many people that simply isn't true.
Its a down job market right now. Unless you are super amazing, you are probably getting rejected a lot right now. Many people can't afford to spend years trying to find the perfect job - rent needs to be paid. And quite frankly 80% of tech jobs are basically the same and interchangeable. Silicon valley loves to claim they are changing the world, but at the end of the day, almost nobody changes the world with a SaaS app.
It’s not asking “why do you want to work”, it’s asking “why us, and not someone else”.
The question assumes that you have a choice of multiple people you could work for.
Why do you want to work for an indie game studio and not EA? Why backend engineer rather than front end? Is there something you see in our company other than money that means you want to stick around for a few years rather than move after a few months?
Ironically the author of the article seems to change jobs every year, so isn’t particularly loyal which is one of the things this question is trying to fish out - will you stay for long enough that you become useful.
It might be that OPs sole motivation is money, but that’s not universally true and is a pretty unattractive trait if it is.
> Why do you want to work for an indie game studio and not EA?
That’s actually a different question than “Why do you want to work for us?”
I think if your purpose is to investigate suitability (is this a good fit for the candidate and for us), then there are better questions to ask which are directly about suitability.
For example, “This our work environment. How do you feel about that?”
So, more of a give and take approach. You still have the opportunity to judge the candidate’s responses, but you’ve given them something to work off of.
> This our work environment. How do you feel about that?
IMO this is the sort of highly-leading semi-closed question that will get an answer which doesn’t reveal much about the candidate (most candidates will probably say ‘yes, that’s exactly the type of environment I like’ because it’s all a game).
“What about our culture appealed to you most when you applied?” is a better question - it’s asking both what appeals to them, as well as ‘are you the kind of person that is proactive enough to do research before you go into an interview, or would you go into this unprepared, and if you are unprepared do you just blag it, panic, or do you give an honest response about the sort of place you would like to work in’.
Like I say, the question assumes that you have options.
At worst, you can answer about why you applied for that job and not others that are equally paid, even if they are in other industries (eg you got into programming because you like problem solving, and because of your experience you looked at the requirements and thought you would do well because of xyz).
I would argue ChatGPT confabulates, it doesn't lie. A lie IMO has to include an deception of some kind.
EDIT: I'd also argue that GPT4 itself can be told to actually lie, because you can tell it to substitute a true statement for a false one, then later get it to reveal the true the statement.
In a poorer economy where it's hard to find jobs it would be a dumb question as the candidate is probably applying everywhere to make money and pay their rent.
In a place where things are easier financially, the question would make some sense: there might be multiple options, many companies to work for and the candidate is not in immediate desperate need for money, so "why us?" makes sense.
I want to know that you care enough to have done a modicum of research on your new potential employer. And in turn, that you can give a short answer on why you might want to spend 40 some hours a week with us.
If you can't do that, (and it really just is all about the money) then that's just a precursor to a disaster or new future burn out.
I world argue it’s still cause of money, whether it’s more money or less money doesn’t matter, just the money (and benefits if America) to be able to live. It’s only when your answer is still the same given you don’t have financial responsibilities and health needs that one can truly say it’s not about the money.
I'll do research if you guys actually decide to interview me. Huge waste of my time for me to give a shit about your company if our relationship ends with you throwing my resume in the trash and sending me a polite email telling me to pound sand.
If you frame it as an abbreviated form of "Aside from the money, why do you want to work for us?", it makes more sense. Sure, the answer might be a lie but it can also be an opportunity for the interviewee to demonstrate interview preparedness.
Yes, people work for money, but you still have interests after that. Do you want a person who wants money and has an interest in your company or do you want a person who wants money and has no interest in your company?
It is a pretty dumb question, in that you can fabricate an answer ahead of time without much hassle.
I do think a lot of older devs don't really just do it for the money anymore. They tend to get more particular and only apply for jobs that they will find personally fulfilling. And that makes answering the question easy. Not that being older makes getting a job at easier, though.
I’ve always felt there’s still better ways to do that.
For every place where it can be an interesting question you get some entry level posting at, at best, bland corp and the real answer is “I’d like to not starve” but they expect and song and dance.
If you want to know my aspirations, ask. If I’m supposed to be doing baseline data entry, maybe skip on the high concept stuff and assume I’d just really like to afford my crippling keyboard habit
Every job pays money, mostly around the same range (at least in your search range)
Sure, if a company offers 2x pay, I'm there for the money. But otherwise, asking why they want to work specifically for you is a proper question. And I never came across of the 2x company.
"Why do you want to work?" is a very different question than "Why do you want to work for us?"
Last time I was asked that, I got very annoyed but caught myself before getting pithy and turned it around. I said I don’t know that I do yet, we’re both still trying to figure out if this is a good fit. But here are the things that attracted my attention, and here’s how they overlap with my experience and skills. It seemed to go over well.
Some markets are competitive and require sales (and sales looks very different in different markets). Some markets have differentiated products or services and some markets have fungible commodities. Some markets are under-served and any old product will do, without the need to sell.
That, and "where do you see yourself in five years" are, in my opinion, two of the most pointless things an interviewer can ask. The answers give no real insight as to their suitability for the role, and both questions basically require the candidate to qive a BS answer.
Yeah, like imagine a restaurant manager asking why you want to wash dishes for their restaurant rather than the one across the street. Are you passionate about our choice of dish detergent? We use square plates instead of round ones!
Think a teacher/nurse, would you find it ok for them to answer “for the money”.
Another angle to it; you can be professional and explain your goals but also you can’t be desperate, no one likes that, even if you are desperate you need to act professional about that.
I like this sentiment. Unfortunately we are in the minority, in software development at least for sure. The whole field shifted in the past 20 years, and now definitely more people are here only for the money. And it seems to me that this definitely affected negatively code quality and developer freedom.
It's just one of those questions that will filter out people. I am trying to discern a lot more than technical aptitude, given how many technically adept people I have worked with who have been nightmare employees.
i think it can be a fair and productive question in a sense. like yeah realistically the person being interviewed doesn't have an undying passion for whatever the business does, but at least for me, when i'm looking for work there's always some jobs that are just an instant "nope not interested" and some that i know i want to go for straight away. asking what it was about a specific role that made that difference to a candidate could absolutely spark a useful and productive conversation.
I've only applied to places with technology that interests me. To those that dislike the question, why would you want to work at a place that doesn't at least mildly interest you?
I'm not sure if it's helpful, but if you want some perspective from someone that's interviewed a few hundred software engineering candidates..
I ask this question to every candidate I interview. My expectations for this question are very low.
I find it's a very effective screener for low effort applications. A lot of candidates I interview haven't even looked at our company website.
If you're the kind of person that's doing zero preparation for a job interview, I've already learned something about you.
Many people I interview just answer the question very directly:
- "I got laid off"
- "My current company is returning to office and I want to work from home".
- "I've been working at X for 5 years now and I'm bored"
- "I want to make more money"
- "I want to work with an international team"
.. honestly, that's all totally fine.
I agree that there's no need to pretend about your motivations—I'm not expecting a lot of enthusiasm about writing boring business software at my company.
On the other hand, if you've done some basic research about the company or the role and can ask some good questions—I'm learning something about your intelligence, conscientiousness and self-awareness, which are actually the things I'm testing for.
Job interviews are full of latent variables like this. As an interviewer I want to find out if you're good at X, but I can't just ask "are you good at X?". I need to test you out by asking other questions that demonstrate X.
It sounds like you want the candidates to answer a different question than the one you asked. You want them to demonstrate knowledge of the company, but instead you ask them to muster up something enthusiastic to say about working for a company which they can only have superficial knowledge of - not having ever worked there before.
It can't possibly be just money. There is always more to a job offer than money. The tech stack, the general vibes, the commute, the subjective degree of belief if the company will do well in the next few years. Heck I even consider lunch options to be important.
If the only walkable lunch option are greasy burgers I'm not joining because i value my health.
You wouldn't join a company that paid a few bucks than the next offer if their offices were run down, right?
Of course they want money, which is why the question is asked in the first place. The key issue is money can't be their only motivation. How can you expect someone to be creative or innovative when they're not passionate about their work? I'll admit, there might be a more interesting way of asking the question, but I think the motivation behind the it is reasonable.
The question is not completely useless if the interviewer does not expect to receive in any case an answer that shows how much cool aid has been absorbed. Most companies are just that, a place to work and earn some money, regardless of how enthusiastic the company some internal fanboys are. But I don't agree that the biggest reason is mostly money, there could be some good answers to that question.
I think you're missing the point of the question. Qualified candidates have options. The question is why do they want to choose you over the other places.
? You can answer however you like. Don’t feel limited by following the prompt to the T, they’re more interested in big picture impressions than strict prompt following ability.
Even then, it’s a weak question that simply asked the candidate to imagine some reasons why this company is the one, while in reality it’s just whoever willing to hire you, stack ranked by some criteria like money and suffering. So from an engineering stand point, if everyone knows it’s a pointless game, why do it.
This would’ve been a beautiful question if everyone only applied to one job, and this was a chance to tell the future you’d like to see and how you, the candidate, would build this future. But is that ever the case in practice?
I generally answered honestly. If a place seemed less interesting but paid more I would say it was a good offer. (They usually knew.) If a place had good people I would say that. If there wasn't a reason, I wouldn't want to work there anyway.
I'm aware that I've been privileged to have options, but given that I do, I see no reason not to be honest.
The point of this question is to understand your carrier goals but also to show that you came well prepared and have done your homework about the position and the company. Experience has shown that those who can't give a satisfactory answer to this question are going to a burden to their future team.
This is just nurturing an environment where people need to act obedient and according to the hierarchy.
When you hire a car mechanic or painter, you typically don't ask them why they would want to work on your car or house specifically. But I guess there's a cultural difference between contracting and staff positions.
isn't this question in the context of a face to face interview already? so you're setting aside time to talk to these people for 30+ minutes anyway. is it really that difficult to spend a few minutes scanning the company website / eng blog and finding at least something that you could say looks interesting?
i feel like if you're talking to so many companies that this would be too much work, it's probably useful to focus on tightening that funnel so more early interviews turn into offers.
If you had somehow managed to slip through the HR screening without being a sports fan then the day of interviews would root that out and you would not get an offer.
It ensured that everybody who was there lived and breathed sports and would run through walls to create a great product.
Compare to later when I worked at FOXSports.com where sports knowledge was a bonus. The product was worse and the team had to spend too much time (more than 0 minutes) explaining to a front end dev why a baseball box score had an order that stats were always displayed in because that’s the way fans expected it (true story).
I think the value of the question is that, all things being equal, do you want the person who wants to be there because they have a connection to what you do, or do you want someone who just wants a job?
I’d pick the former.