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I recently got an offer from one of the bigger technology companies (a publicly traded fortune company). On glass door I see people saying that they cannot share the questions that they were asked during the interview due to some non disclosure agreement. When I got the offer, I didn't see any such agreement. Although I must admit I did electronically sign many of their yada yada documents (work place harassment etc) without reading thru. So its possible that I might have missed it.

Generally speaking is it okay to at least tell those questions to your friends who are applying at the same place? Can revealing those questions get me fired?

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  • I don't know about the labor laws where you live - but if you signed an agreement like that, it would be dishonorable to go against it - though I find it pretty silly when companies treat interview questions like intellectual property. As for whether or not revealling those questions can get you fired, I believe there are more human factors than legal ones involved.
    – user10483
    Nov 5, 2013 at 19:41
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    If you have signed an NDA and broke it, then yes, that can be grounds for dismissal.
    – MrFox
    Nov 5, 2013 at 19:43
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    "I didn't see any such agreement. Although I must admit I did electronically sign many of their yada yada documents (work place harassment etc) without reading thru" maybe go back and read them then?
    – CincinnatiProgrammer
    Nov 5, 2013 at 19:59
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    Never ever sign anything you have not read!!!
    – HLGEM
    Nov 5, 2013 at 21:47
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    Even if something was explained to you, read it yourself! Usually it's glossed over and there's nuances they don't explicitly mention, but will explain if asked.
    – Izkata
    Nov 6, 2013 at 3:09

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Generally speaking is it okay to at least tell those questions to your friends who are applying at the same place?

Generally speaking - Yes, it's okay to tell your friends the questions you were asked during an interview. Remember that not all interviewees get asked the same questions, though. And remember that you may not have understood the question, or provided an acceptable answer.

The clear exception would be if you promised not to reveal those questions. That promise could just have been someone asking you not to do it and you replying "Yes", or it could have been your signature on a non-disclosure statement.

If you aren't sure if you actually made such a promise ("So its possible that I might have missed it."), err on the side of caution and don't reveal anything.

Can revealing those questions get me fired?

If you promised not to reveal those questions and you do - Yes, that could easily get you fired (or not hired in the first place, depending on when your transgression was discovered).

Although I must admit I did electronically sign many of their yada yada documents (work place harassment etc) without reading thru.

Huge mistake!

You must never sign anything (electronically or otherwise) without reading it - even the yada, yada documents. Don't repeat that one!

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    +1 for "never sign anything without reading it". Even if it's the "standard form", and even if you're just taking a minute to skim it looking for interesting tidbits, taking the time to read sends a powerful message to the employer about diligence (and general "don't pull a fast one on me"-ness)
    – Allen Gould
    Mar 28, 2014 at 16:49
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    While I agree with the "never sign anything without reading it", often these documents are many pages long, written in Legalese and worded so obscurely that you can't be sure what exactly it pertains to, but be sure to know that whatever it is, it likely covers their ass in any situation. That being said, just because something on a contract seems rather fishy or outright unfair, the actual likelihood of the company pursuing those actions is slim.
    – Mike
    Jan 2, 2015 at 17:05
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You might not be able to tell people what the specific questions were, but you could hint at the direction of them.

"What is boxing/unboxing?" - What you would tell your friends is that this employer is focused on knowledge of particular development environments and programming features.

"Tell us about that manufacturing control system you wrote in Microsoft Access" - You would tell your friends this employer wanted to hear your success stories, and how you go about solving an application problem.

"How much work have you done with FPGAs?" What ever they are doing is 'aggressive' - I had to go look up a chip to find out what it was. Since these are fast, they must be doing something that has to run in fractions of a second.

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  • Fractions of a second is slow. Fractions of a millisecond, however, is somewhat less slow. (Following on your example of a development position, I recently wrote .NET code where microsecond timings could easily make a difference in the user experience. In a virtualized environment, to be executed in production in a virtualized environment. Eek. It wasn't timing critical, but it had to run as fast as possible. I ended up writing an application to run various implementations a couple million times in a row and measure the time it took for it to finish, to point me in the right direction.)
    – user
    Nov 8, 2013 at 13:04

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