The Simple Answer to the Interview Question: What Is Your Greatest Weakness?

"Honesty"

"Uh... I don't think honesty is a weakness."

"I don't give a fuck what you think."

Like, I have a real weakness when I run into something puzzling, I can't help myself from solving all of it.

Sure, it's technically oriented, but a) there's no reason it can't be derived into something non-technical and b) it shows the absurdity of the question with tact and diplomacy. Not to mention that it still manages to actually answer the question!

I'm not a recruiter, but to me, point (b) is a sign of clear intelligence and social grace. Frankly, I like working with people like this.

I'd go as far as saying everyone has these. The question is intended to tease out whether you're aware of yours and whether you actively work to counteract it.

Your greatest weakness are the character flaws that reliably lead to poor decisions. For example (not based on you in any way) you might be an impatient person. When you're starting out and tackling relatively simple problems, this is no big deal. But as you graduate to working on more ambitious and complex endeavors, it could turn out to be a major limiting factor.

The real point f this question is to see whether you're the sort of person that will ask for help when you run up against your own limitations, or whether you'll project your shortcomings onto the problem at hand while you attempt to rectify them, reducing overall efficiency. This mindset is a major reason for projects going way over budget despite being glaringly flawed.

I don't like using this question in interviews, because it's neither realistic nor polite to invite a complete stranger to engage in deep character analysis in an asymmetrical commercial negotiation. Even a shallow person can sense the loaded subtext of the question being 'give me an excuse I could use to fire you if I felt like it,' and has a strong economic incentive to obfuscate their answer. So I'll generally ask 'what would you like to be better at?' which typically generates a more honest and useful reply.

When you're on the receiving end of this question, you can leverage it in your favor. For example 'I'm not great at time management - if I'm told a problem is important I'm likely to just keep working on it to the exclusion of everything else. I do better when I have an understanding of the big picture and the relative importance of different tasks.' This is an indirect way of inviting your future manager to share information which you might otherwise not be considered worthy to receive. As a general rule, offer a solution to the problem immediately after the problem statement. This shows you to be both a good team player and require little emotional maintenance, both of which are far more interesting to most managers than your primary competency - especially in tech, where your primary competency probably has a short life before it's made obsolete.

Your greatest weakness is a lack of long-term perspective. Your post suggests to me that right now you can't imagine yourself doing anything but pounding out code for the rest of your working life. That's not a sustainable trajectory because software development isn't a body of truth like mathematical knowledge, but more like a jigsaw puzzle where pieces are taken away and replaced at random intervals. In short, what you'll be doing in the future will almost certainly not be what you signed up for. For yourself, it's vital to have an answer to the question of what you'd do if you weren't writing code (another common interview question) because there's a good chance that at some point you'll get sick of it.