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Comment by engi_nerd | Hacker News Reader

The defense industry is strange. I've had three jobs in it. In every single interview, the most technical question that anyone ever asked me was, "What do you like to do on the weekends?"

And all three jobs have been engineering positions.

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My last two jobs (including my current one) have been at smaller defense firms. Both interviews involved some amount of coding (mostly a 'homework' project).

Now, several years ago when I interviewed with a frickin' huge aerospace company who shall remain nameless, my experience was similar to yours. The interview was a panel-style discussion with the hiring manager and several engineers. They had to follow a script given to them by HR and ask every candidate exactly the same questions in exactly the same way. It was.... surreal. At one point I was asked something along the lines of (my memory is a bit hazy here) "Describe a time when workplace diversity significantly contributed to the accomplishment of a challenging project."

"Oookay. Uh... Well.... Uh... So... Hmm...," and so on and so forth.

Ah, yes. I had a bit of a strange experience when interviewing for my current job (at a large, hyphenated aerospace company...probably the same one you interviewed with). Because I knew the hiring manager already, and he knew I could do the job. So it was very much a "Well, tell me what has happened" and "When can you start" kind of interview.

So does that anecdote reflect poorly on the interviewer, or the interviewee?

I personally would be hard-pressed to answer that question. If they mean diversity by gender and ethnicity...well, for some reason I always find myself in teams largely of white males. Not through any selection process of my own, it's just that is how it works out.

What about teams where some of the white males solve problems or think differently from others? How about foreign language proficiency helping with suppliers? Not all diversity involves overt differences. Sometimes it's as simple as one guy's test-driven mentality shipping something on time.

...Thus why I said on the basis of gender and ethnicity

"I've never had the pleasure of working at a company where this was even attempted, would [present company] provide opportunities in this regard?"

Exactly. If you can't think of a canned answer for that question, there is approximately 0 chance you can navigate the workplace politics of a large defense contractor.

Is that a bad thing? I mean, I could probably BS something, but this strikes me as the kind of question that only an HR person would ask.

And yes, I'm already in the exact scenario you say I shouldn't be able to handle.

Who knows what random stuff will come up in an interview. I've worked at companies of all sizes and never received any guidance on interviewing, so questions swiped from internet headlines would come as no surprise. This is an old story around here.

> "What do you like to do on the weekends?"

I code for fun in Ada.

I've only interviewed at one, but yes, it was the exact same for me. They asked me about school projects and times I acted like a "leader". No technical questions whatsoever, other than asking stuff like what programming languages I liked.

I left feeling very confused, but after I received the offer, I realized it was basically a grunt work position, despite what the original job listing said.

The DoD are the biggest offenders in my past. They were the "what do you do for fun on the weekends" people. Turns out they are hiring engineers and telling them they will be doing actual engineering, then putting them to work as project managers and job estimators.

It is contracting. They bill cost plus, so performance is irrelevant

Tell that to my boss.

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