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.
