Fair, but I disagree. This person is interviewing at Anthropic. If they’ve done a decent job of prep work, they know something about the business, the challenges, possible adjacencies, etc.
Springing “hey what if our core business goes to zero, what then” seems qualitatively different from “what do you think of veganism” as far as learning what someone’s motives are and what their understanding of the core business is.
If I were the interviewer asking that, I would score “oh that’s fine I don’t care about money” exactly the same as “wow I’d be out of here so fast”: total failure.
I think HN folks are imagining the question, imagining the responses, and imagining the interviewers’ criteria. Which, sure, easy to decide it’s a terrible question on that basis.
Comments
Fair, but I disagree. This person is interviewing at Anthropic. If they’ve done a decent job of prep work, they know something about the business, the challenges, possible adjacencies, etc.
Springing “hey what if our core business goes to zero, what then” seems qualitatively different from “what do you think of veganism” as far as learning what someone’s motives are and what their understanding of the core business is.
If I were the interviewer asking that, I would score “oh that’s fine I don’t care about money” exactly the same as “wow I’d be out of here so fast”: total failure.
I think HN folks are imagining the question, imagining the responses, and imagining the interviewers’ criteria. Which, sure, easy to decide it’s a terrible question on that basis.