The Question Beneath the Question
(Transcript)
tl;dr
Coding questions, system design questions, data modeling, ML design, and more technical rounds have questions which you should answer literally. This is not true for behavioral rounds. In fact, answering behavioral questions literally is a large reason why engineers fail, get downleveled, and end up without the offers they sought out.
It’s more effective to answer the question beneath the question. Reframe: the question underneath every question is some version of “How are you going to help us?” And there are several common questions with nonobvious questions beneath the question.
Answer what they want to know, not what they said
Humans rarely say exactly what they mean. Noam Chomsky described this dichotomy as deep structure and surface structure, which he defined as: “Deep structure refers to concepts, thoughts, ideas & feelings whereas surface structure refers to the words we use to represent the deep structure.”
If you apply this to interviews, the thoughts and feelings the interviewer has is not what they say out loud. So, you need to interpret what they mean. That’s the importance of the questions beneath the question.
Common examples questions beneath the questions
There are a few common questions which have a non-obvious question beneath the question.
Before I show you examples, don’t worry for now about how to answer these questions. That comes later. For now, we’re practicing reframing from talking words at face value to recognizing their implicit meaning.
5 most common examples:
- “Why do you want to work for our company?” -> “Tell me a story that demonstrates what you know about us and how you can help.”
- If they ask you if you use their product, like: “Do you have an Alexa device at home?” (when interviewing for Amazon Alexa) -> “I only want people on this team who ideally use, but at the very least know about, the product we are working on.”
- “Why are you looking for a new opportunity?” (aka “What are you looking for?”) -> “Are you going to reveal any obvious red flags?” Such as:
- Are you going to trash your current employer? (Lowering your negotiating power, and demonstrating to the interviewer “If he talks negatively about them, he’ll probably do the same to us.”)
- Are you going to demonstrate that you lack motivation? (“I’m looking for a product that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning.” I actually heard a candidate say this.)
- Are you going to say something that doesn’t apply to this company at all? (You say “I want to get deeper into AI,” and the company you’re talking to does not do anything in AI. Another common one is that you want to work for a larger, more established company, and you’re talking to a start up.)
- “What are your compensation expectations” -> “I’m trying to trick you into telling me the minimum amount of money you want to make, so we can offer you less because you’ll probably take it anyways.” -> Never say a number first!
- “How’s your job search going?” -> “I’m trying to trick you into revealing how much leverage you have (based on the companies you’re currently talking to, or lack thereof)” -> Never reveal this information until you get an offer, and then you can do so selectively.
Reframe from answering their exact questions, to being aware of the meta-question
At the end of the day, it’s helpful to know why a company is asking what they’re asking.
And not every behavioral question is going to be in the list we just mentioned. Many won’t be. Instead of worrying about how to convert each question into the question beneath it, consider this reframe.
Every question a company asks you is because they want to know how you can help them.
“How are you going to help us?” is the meta-question of all interview questions. Transpose that question onto their question, and it gives you a wise direction to answer in. Even if you’ve never heard the question before. “What’s your biggest professional failure?” combined with “How are you going to help us?” equals “I want to know your biggest failure because I want to know how you are going to help us.” This reframe shifts the question from something akin to an embarrassing story, to a question about your appetite for risk on your next project.
“Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a colleague” becomes “I want to know about a time you had a conflict because I want to know how you are going to help us.” When framed this way, you focus less on the conflict (a very common mistake!) and more about what you learned about conflict resolution–skills which you can apply to this company.
Note on these techniques
Now, do you need to worry about translating every single behavioral question through this lens of surface structure and deep structure? Do you need to do unnecessary mental gymnastics? No. You won’t usually have time to wonder too much about “what are they really asking about here?”
But you can build the habits of framing questions for yourself in the way that’s most helpful. This is done through practice. After enough repetitions of the frame, you’ll hold questions in this new frame automatically, without thinking.
Key takeaway
The good news is that when it comes to hard technical questions about system design and coding, you don’t have to figure out what they’re really asking about.
In behavioral rounds,
- Answering questions literally is usually a bad idea. Build the muscle that understands why they care about what they’re asking.
- Don’t answer the question. Answer the question beneath the question. Especially if it’s one of the common 5 questions we went over: those you want memorized, they come up in every loop.
- Every question a company asks you is because they want to know how you can help them.