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Comment by odshoifsdhfs | Hacker News Reader

Can I honestly ask what is the point of this question:

> Why do you want to be at Obvious?

I never understood this. Unless you are Apple or Google or some other big brand, most likely people found your job through a job forum or even HN and never heard of you before. Then most likely the answer is money. So what is the point?

I just stopped filling up job applications that have this. Seems so counter productive. Heck, I was approached by a CTO of a Ycombinator company a while ago, he found my resume somewhere, asked me if I would be interested in the position, then redirected me to a form where 2-3 questions was about why I wanted to work with them, and what I would bring to their team. I want money, and in exchange I give you my time and knowledge. Is that so hard to understand?

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No, it's not hard to understand, but that doesn't do you any favours.

I'm not saying that someone needs to be so desperate to work somewhere (that would probably be bad), but if a candidate can't express why they have an interest in a particular role then that's of note, especially if I'm comparing to someone who can. Pretty much everyone wants to exchange their time and knowledge for money, but they could do that anywhere, so why here?

I'm not sure what to reply. I was going to be snarky but prefer not to.

From their website 'We help people create digital experiences their customers love.'

Has anyone been 6, day dreaming in school, 'when I grow up, I want to help people create digital experiences their customers love.'?

My interest in the role is it matches my experience and I want money. Again, if you are a FAANG, fine, if you are a startup no one really knows but pretend you are changing the world, you are making yourself a disservice by asking these questions. You can ask 'What are you looking in a new position/What excites you/etc', but to ask specifically why this company is tacky and I know I am not alone with this as I regularly talk with friends that feel the same.

Maybe I am jaded as a software developer with more than 20 years professional experience, but job=money so I can money=things/time I want. 99.9% of companies aren't changing the world. They are trying to make money for the owners/shareholders/investors, and employees should think exactly the same, and that is motivation enough.

If you paid a million dollars a month for people to dig holes for 8 hours a day, you would see the fastest shortage of shovels ever.

This is one approach and way that people feel about work and job hunting but (anecdotally) many others, including myself, do care about things like culture fit and company vision.

Beyond a threshold salary level, these intangible things matter much more than money since I am going to be spending every single day working on these things and with these people. I want to work with skilled technicians but I also want to be in alignment with my team.

I understand the "not changing the world" mindset but motivation is still a hugely important consideration when hiring and when choosing where to work. Every job has bad days/weeks/months and it takes motivation, beyond the paycheck, to hold myself and my team together through those moments.

Similar to your million dollar situation: If you paid high performing knowledge workers a million dollars a month to do soul-crushing stressful grind work in a bad environment, those people are still going to quit after a short period of time.

> do care about things like culture fit and company vision.

And you know this from a job post in a job board/website how?

This is what I mean. A no-name company can't say 'we want people to be motivated to work with us' when 99.99% of the world have no clue what they do/how they work.

If you are Uber, or Microsoft, 37 Signals, or even Doctors Without Borders you know in general their motives/how they work (from the 2389472309 blog posts). But 5 employee start ups? Or a consulting firm that does client work for companies you never heard from? Really?

> If you paid high performing knowledge workers a million dollars a month to do soul-crushing stressful grind work in a bad environment, those people are still going to quit after a short period of time

Maybe being from different country shows my bias, but even with a lot of friends in the USA, most don't change jobs for lower paid positions. There is even a term for it: 'Golden Handcuffs'

> And you know this from a job post in a job board/website how?

I don't need to know it from a job board or website because I don't apply to companies that I'm not already familiar with. When I apply to those listings, I already know how I will answer this question, because that's why I'm applying to the company.

> Has anyone been 6, day dreaming in school, 'when I grow up, I want to help people create digital experiences their customers love.'?

No but that's a strawman and I'd be surprised if you don't recognise that.

> My interest in the role is it matches my experience

I doubt that's the only reason. You could have experience doing a billion things but you probably enjoy what you do a lot more than that, and when we break it down, there are almost certainly subsections within what you do now that you enjoy and hope that the company aligns with that. When a listing asks "why are you interested in working here", you hopefully already know and can express that.

There are a large number of ways from location, culture, processes, technical decisions, people, problem domain, etc that you can discover about a company before applying.

Honestly, it's just part of the game. If you want a job at a company, you have to play the game of interviewing.

> My interest in the role is it matches my experience

This is a great reason to want to work at a company.

"I specialize in X technology and I see that you use X technology as well and I believe my expertise in it can help your company solve problem Y, and in particular I'm looking to join a company of Z size because blahblahblah"

Yea you have to stretch it a little bit sometimes, but that's life. You don't get paid to write code, you get paid to solve human business problems using code, which comes with the baggage of dealing with humans.

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