> Stops you from being painted into a corner, and if you are, you can still leave with your dignity.

Talk about wasting time. You are bothering to do the interview because for one reason or another you're interested in the job.

It's weird to feel good leaving the interview where you somehow saved face for yourself by not answering any of the questions. You just guaranteed that you neither get the job nor learn anything useful for your next set of interviews.

Not quite. Confidence is a big part of interviewing, and having someone turn the screw on you on some esoteric topic doesn't really help build your knowledge or your confidence.

That's totally subjective. What someone may perceive as "turning the screw" could simply mean "probing deeper" or "seeing how you handle tough questions". One can get self righteous about that but it may be costing you tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earnings.

I understand your point of view, but I'm the sort of person that responds poorly to someone asserting too much authority. I've had issues with bad interviews before, where I've been rejected by someone, but then got the same job at the same firm, when interviewed by a different person.

Also, the lost earnings argument doesn't matter much if it comes at the cost of your mental health.

A bit unrelated, but there's an old joke my boss once told me, highlighting how poor interview questions/criteria can be at assessing one's ability for a particular job:

A guy goes for an interview. The interviewer tells him "forget everything you learned in your degree, it won't be useful here". The guy says: "actually, I don't have a degree". The interviewer responds: "in that case, you're not qualified enough for this job"!

I hear your example and I have the counter :) I had an interviewer push deep on a failure. The entire interview, maybe 45 minutes, focused on something I failed to pull off at my old job. He kept pressing me for "what else I could have done" and I kept coming up dry for most of the interview.

Two magical things happened - during this interview, I realized that I missed a huge opportunity at my previous job (in that case, the step I fell short of was escalating to the CEO) but more importantly, I got the job.

I learned later that the company put a huge emphasis on their employees, especially managers, to be self reflective and not shy away from self examination or probing by others. The point of this interview wasn't whether I could come up with an answers but whether I had the stomach for looking critically at my own failure.

So, I got the job. It paid a lot because the company had to pay for people who could pass these kinds of tests. And it was great to work with people who knew that "their shit stinks too" because they had all passed this kind of self reflection bar.

If I walked out of the interview because the questions felt uncomfortable, I would have missed out on all that.

Huh, that's a really interesting story.

I can only imagine how difficult that company finds it to hire though, as a lot of people I encounter in professional settings don't seem to have this ability when applied to ther own actions.

I don't really agree with your point. In the example, the candidate did the interview for as long as he/she thought it could turn into something. As soon as he/she realized that they ask questions that are completely irrelevant to the job (in his/her eyes, at least), the candidate let the interviewers know that it's not the kind of job, team, priorities the candidate wanted. Nothing wrong with that.

Wasting their time would be to continue the interview process and answer questions you think are pointless for the position at hand. It's something you can do when you already have other offers or your current position is good enough (meaning it is better than what the interviewers can offer).

When you know you won't take the job, it's okay to cut the interview short.

"You are bothering to do the interview because for one reason or another you're interested in the job."

I'm interested in learning how other companies do things, what technologies people are looking for in the industry, what sorts of questions are being asked in interviews, and what kind of problems people feel are in the domain of a particular job title. I'm also interested in compensation trends in the industry.

I can get all that information from a decent interview even if I walk away. Politely, of course! It's a matter of respect for each others' time.

Interviews can be a valuable information-gathering exercise even if you don't want the job.