[caffeine]

I was a younger, inexperienced tech lead sitting in on an interview led by an engineer about 10 years older than me.

I was shocked when he spent the whole hour asking soft questions like “So describe your previous team structure. How did ideas and plans arise? Who took responsibility? How was conflict resolved? What were your impressions?”

I always went hard on technical stuff when interviewing, was always worried that an incompetent would sneak through.

I asked the senior engineer his rationale. He told me “This guy went to X school and got Y degree and worked at Z company. So I know he’s smart enough. And I can teach him to write good software. But I can never teach him not to be a prick.”

[klysm]

I think people say that and interview like that till they get a bad hire.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I interviewed like that for 25 years.

I did get a couple of "bad hires," but never for tech reasons.

[caffeine]

To be fair, all the other interview rounds were with more junior, low-EQ CS nerds like me, so he could still be pretty confident the candidate would get a good grilling.