oh god, my tolerance for embarrassing tech interviews has been stripped since i switched jobs i'm in PAIN
NOOOO HE ASKED THE INTERVIEWER TO REPEAT HER QUESTION "WITH THE SAME EXACT WORDING" AND YOU CAN SEE HIM TYPING!!! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO MEEEEEEE
@imp@federatedfandom.net 
(I assume you’re not in a position to just call it? Because yeah if I suspected someone was doing this in an interview I would just immediately call it…)
@alis yeah i was shadowing someone who took the FULL hour but i'm going to ask the actual consulting managers if it's kosher to cut an interview short if i'm leading it and this happens bc i absolutely would not have kept asking this guy questions he visibly doesn't know the answer to lol (editing to add: basic questions. 4 year degree 8 years experience says he doesn't know what SOLID or DRY is even VAGUELY)
@imp@federatedfandom.net I think some people fall into a kind of politeness trap about “oh, well, it was scheduled for an hour so we have to do the whole hour”? But honestly, sometimes you just know, and it’s almost unkind to the applicant to drag them through the whole process…
(Thankfully I escaped the ChatGPT Era, but our instant fails were people being sexist/racist/etc. Which a depressingly high number of people will casually be in interviews!!! 
)
@alis yeah the woman i was shadowing told me once she asked a candidate a mistake he'd made and he just fully detailed being racist and getting in trouble with hr *and then defended his behavior and doubled down on the call with her*. absolutely wild shit lmfao
@Satsuma@glitch.cat.family @imp@federatedfandom.net Real talk: This happens a lot, though. Like not necessarily with the racism (which… ugh), but quite a lot of people answer the “mistake you made and how you learned from it” question as “mistake someone thought I made but I didn’t actually and what I learnt was that they were stupid.”
i get the impulse to try and find a mistake where you don’t look too bad (bc you’re only partially culpable or its a relatively small incident or whatever) but “actually the whole thing was someone else’s fault” feels like it clearly doesn’t fit the bill?? and it’s so risky if someone hears your recounting and decides you WERE at fault bc now you’re just admitted that you learned nothing and blame others for your mistakes…
@Nentuaby having done a lot of interviews now, we ask so we don't end up hiring people like this: https://www.askamanager.org/2024/02/i-was-rejected-because-i-told-my-interviewer-i-never-make-mistakes.html
(legendary post, if you're not familiar...)
@Nentuaby literally, that post and the update(!) to it were legendary in the circles I run in.
we don't really care what the answer is as long as you answer in a way that implies we can work with you!! that you're willing to be like, "yeah I fucked up, here's how I fixed it" is a GOOD thing.
"ooh, racism/sexism" is also sadly common. see: dude who explained that the mistake had been not sexually harassing someone post-maternity leave, but *adding her on Facebook to continue harassing her further*. "I don't add colleagues on social media now", like...my dude...not the point...
(he didn't get the job, in case you were wondering.)
@Nentuaby@wandering.shop @Satsuma@glitch.cat.family @imp@federatedfandom.net 💯
Generally people who give, ahem, interesting answers to this questions have red flags elsewhere (or, alternately, are really, really young, in which case you can maybe cut them a bit of slack), but this is definitely a good final nail in the interview coffin, as it were.
@Satsuma @imp @alis Yeah, I always hated that question with a passion because it can seem so humiliating, and TBH I still don't LIKE it, but I GET it now. Having been on the other end of a couple interviews now, that kind of person is *exactly* why we ask it. Its primary purpose is to screen for people who answer it exactly that way. Just show one grain of humility and the interviewer ticks it off their list without another thought.