Job interview with no specific project details revealed

It depends.

I've dealt with a few clients like this. Most wouldn't say anything till I signed an NDA, usually the first day of working on the project. However, with some, if I came out and said I wasn't comfortable until I knew more, and was willing to sign an NDA, they'd agree, I'd sign, and get the whole spiel.

Here comes the bite: Some would respond to the request by showing me the door.

Information is paramount in business, and some people are simply unwilling to risk letting anything leak till they're ready.

I absolutely agree that faith in a project determines how much effort beyond the norm I put in. [0] However, sometimes you'll just get a job that needs the professional treatment, because it will fail no matter how well you do: but its still a paycheck, and you still have a contract.

If they end up unwilling to let you know more, then try and judge the product on its caretakers, the people you meet. It might be worth the risk of a terrible tedious failure. [1]

[0] On a bad project, I work my hours. On something I believe in, I've been found sketching relationship trees at 4AM because I had an idea.

[1] The last project I had was terrible. The inception idea was fantastic. It got gutted twice over whilst I was still building it. I went from senior developer, to junior. I lost creative input. So, I was pissed off, exhausted with politics, and demoralised. However, I still got the project in on time, to specification, and got a nice paycheck.

Edit: Why I did [1].

Yeah, I get where you are coming from. We all have to eat.

I got the impression from them that they wanted more than 40 hrs a week from me, almost to the point of wanting to own me. One of the managers had a problem with me continuing to support my own apps after accepting the job.

For me, that's a pretty steep job requirement. You'd have to really convince me that what you're doing matters and that lives are literally at stake if I don't come join your company. Otherwise you're just being selfish in my view.

I told them I can't accept the job unless they give me more details, and you're right, there's a good chance they will show me the door.

But then I'm pretty sure that's a business I wouldn't want to work for anyway.

On the bright side, they might give you some insight, and it might be a great product.

In the end though, its not worth risking your humanity over. If they show you the door, it's probably a bullet dodged.

I didn't start in software development: I was in forensics. But, though I loved the work, I didn't love what I found. I was losing faith in people, so I moved away to what had been only an interest area. You don't want to get caught up by a company that eats you alive.

There's not really a bad outcome here, the worst case is you get something boring on your plate.

Though, anecdotally, just about every contract I've had wanted exclusivity, to ensure I didn't steal their ideas, or borrow any code I wrote on their dime. It was annoying, but I mostly dealt with it by: a. Putting my projects on a temporary hold, or b. Getting them to acknowledge I already had support contracts for my projects, and wouldn't they want support from me, too? (I usually have 6 months support in my agreements, after that... Depends how much I like the client.)

But again, it isn't really something to sweat over, but it does seem to be getting more common.

Interesting. This wasn't really sold to me as a contract but rather as a full-time employment situation. I think I might be willing to make that sort of compromise if I knew I had a chance to decompress after the six months are over and I'm on to the next thing.

And yeah, part-time software dev jobs seem to be increasingly rare these days. People either want your soul or they don't want anything to do with you. I would be totally happy working half as many hours at the same hourly rate with lower living expenses than working full-time or overtime with a high salary. We all have different priorities. I need my tinkering time.

Yup, definite red flags.

How are you supposed to evaluate if it's worth your time if you don't know what you'll be working on ?

Had a similar interview once - the guy just wouldn't give me any specific info. Since I didn't know what the role was and I have very wide experience I couldn't target myself, in the end the feedback was that I was too vague !?

Is this sort of thing common in the software industry?

Oh, it's incredibly common. Aside from companies paranoid (perhaps justifiably so) about sensitive information leaking out through the interview process, by default many companies use at least the initial stages of the process as a kind of a "one-way mirror" -- in which they're scrutinizing you for ticks, fleas, what-have-you, and only in subsequent stages do they lift the skirts, as it were, on the actual projects you might be working on.

With the apparent basic message in mind that they (and their projects) are so self-evidently awesome that they shouldn't have to bother trying to sell you in the idea of working for them (by say, letting you know what you might actually be working on).

But it could also be much more mundane than that. Sometimes the reason they won't go into details is because they've already decided to pass on you, and so they prefer to cut the discussion short to whatever extent possible.

Yeah, it just seems kind of odd being the one who is interviewed. They ask me if I have any questions, and the only question I can ask is "well what the hell will I be working on?" (obviously phrased in a much more diplomatic way).

I think a company like Apple could get away with this because their reputation in the space speaks for them, but this company hadn't ever launched a mobile app of any sort.

Perhaps the best thing in these sorts of interviews is to try and ask as many questions as I can so they have fewer chances to get information out of me.

How big is the company and who was interviewing? If it's HR, they genuinely might not know. I've been to interviews where the interviewer admitted they had grabbed him 5 minutes ago while he was walking past, and he had no idea about the project. They might be hiring because they have budget, for some future project (that might never happen).

Don't get me wrong, all of these scenarios aren't good, and it's a warning sign. Personally, the secrecy alone would make me think the job isn't a great fit for me.

> tell them I can't accept the job without any specifics about the project itself

This, if you aren't happy with the arrangement don't do it (if you have that luxury). Gut feeling can be quite helpful.

It's a 600 person company, and I interviewed with engineers as well as management for the project. They all knew in advance that they would be interviewing with me.

Once again, not a good sign. It means a few possibilities.

1.) They didn't think I was good enough, so they decided to keep the information secret.

2.) It wasn't really an interview but more of a screening. They wanted to see if I pass their smell test.

Gut feeling overall wasn't good. I'll have to go with that.

> I might really want to take the job, but if I were offered it tomorrow...

Turns out that companies blow the Interview Courtship Dance ALL the time. Hence the War for Talent myth.

Push for a follow up meeting with the Hiring Executing, your direct boss. Be candid, tell him you have some areas you need to discuss before moving forward.

Have a solid list of probing questions prepared in advance. If they can't or won't answer to your satisfaction, move on. You've got leverage.

You can always quit if the work isn't good enough. Realistically, they're not going to be able to give you a full and accurate picture of the work ahead of time anyway.

Most places I've worked there's been a fairly good idea of what I'll be doing before I start.

I'll add that it would feel as though I am acting in bad faith not notifying them about my uneasiness up front.

Yes this is quite common.

I would try telling them what you said here - "I know from my past experiences that my enthusiasm for the job is directly correlated with the degree to which I perceive their projects will be both meaningful & successful."

Then you can find a middle ground - maybe they can tell you about a past project, or maybe you sign an NDA, or maybe they can just tell you.

If it's a consultancy, it might be the case that they don't have any big signed projects for you to work on yet and they're hiring in the hope of closing some deals soon.