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Comment by coroutines | Hacker News Reader

I am a junior dev.

It is hard for me to get in that dating mentality that I should be testing to see if my interviewer and I are simpatico. I feel a lot of pressure to fill in the blanks on what I want to know without asking, so I don't seem like I'm still deciding if I want to work there.

I know that sounds ridiculous.

The only time I do well is when interviewing for roles in faraway Australia because I feel like I have no chance of getting picked up.

Or maybe Australians are just great at no-bullshit interviews and put me at ease like talking to a friend? Confusing.

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I think you are selling yourself short by not asking questions particularly as a junior dev. Depending on the role, people are hiring you for not only your current skills but your potential to grow. Write some questions down in advance - no one is going to ding you for having a cheat sheet for asking questions.

Here's some questions I'd ask:

- what sort of training or growth opportunities do you have? - do you offer any aid for continued education or online courses? What about conferences? - do you have a buddy or mentor program to help me get moving quickly? - Are there any books or resources you recommend so I can hit the ground running? - If I got the role, what would make you feel you made a great hire in 6 months or a year?

I thank you for your kind and very welcome advice.

These are great questions - I think I probably have trouble locating more junior dev opportunities.

I always do research on the history of a company but because of turnover it doesn't score me any piñatas to know where they started if the interviewer can't engage with the stuff I'm mentioning. :(

Just doing the research puts you in the top 20% of candidates.

I have lost track of over the years how many time I have got the answer “nothing” to the question what do you know about the company.

I personally find it amazing that people don’t make the most basic investigations into the place they are wanting to spend most of their waking hours. It is like waking into a car dealership and saying to the first salesman you meet “I have $30,000 - just sell me any car as I don’t care.”

Or maybe Australians are just great at no-bullshit interviews and put me at ease like talking to a friend? Confusing

Australian are notoriously bad managers of non-Australians. We are often far too blunt and say things that we think are trivially minor that the non-Australian takes as hugely serious. We also expect and give far less praise than others for just doing our job. We do have a nice climate though :)

Not really. Australian managers can be just as bad as any other managers anywhere in the world. I should know, I've worked in Australian companies all my life and there are good firms and bad firms :-)

P.S. If you are from the UK or US they might treat you with a bit more respect... Put it down to cultural cringe

It's just really hard for me to view an interviewer as a friend usually. A couple weeks ago I had a really amazing interview experience with a company called Volantio because the first screening was a 'get to know you' sort of thing. Dude made it easy saying he wasn't yet interested in my qualifications/education and just wanted to talk about my interests.

We must have talked for over an hour about how great we think Coffeescript is.. (I'm a zealot).

Anyway, I wish I could make more interviews like that. I've actually started putting it in my cover letters that I'd appreciate going for lunch or something just to hang out and talk about frameworks.

It's great when I can detach myself from 'needing a job'.

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