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.
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).