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Comment by Closi | Hacker News Reader

It’s not asking “why do you want to work”, it’s asking “why us, and not someone else”.

The question assumes that you have a choice of multiple people you could work for.

Why do you want to work for an indie game studio and not EA? Why backend engineer rather than front end? Is there something you see in our company other than money that means you want to stick around for a few years rather than move after a few months?

Ironically the author of the article seems to change jobs every year, so isn’t particularly loyal which is one of the things this question is trying to fish out - will you stay for long enough that you become useful.

It might be that OPs sole motivation is money, but that’s not universally true and is a pretty unattractive trait if it is.

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> Why do you want to work for an indie game studio and not EA?

That’s actually a different question than “Why do you want to work for us?”

I think if your purpose is to investigate suitability (is this a good fit for the candidate and for us), then there are better questions to ask which are directly about suitability.

For example, “This our work environment. How do you feel about that?”

So, more of a give and take approach. You still have the opportunity to judge the candidate’s responses, but you’ve given them something to work off of.

> This our work environment. How do you feel about that?

IMO this is the sort of highly-leading semi-closed question that will get an answer which doesn’t reveal much about the candidate (most candidates will probably say ‘yes, that’s exactly the type of environment I like’ because it’s all a game).

“What about our culture appealed to you most when you applied?” is a better question - it’s asking both what appeals to them, as well as ‘are you the kind of person that is proactive enough to do research before you go into an interview, or would you go into this unprepared, and if you are unprepared do you just blag it, panic, or do you give an honest response about the sort of place you would like to work in’.

In a weaker job market, it can be as simple as, "You were the first to acknowledge my application"

Like I say, the question assumes that you have options.

At worst, you can answer about why you applied for that job and not others that are equally paid, even if they are in other industries (eg you got into programming because you like problem solving, and because of your experience you looked at the requirements and thought you would do well because of xyz).

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