An interview is a sales pitch for a product. The product just happens to be you. Set aside whatever negative feelings you have about this previous job or the people you worked with there. The interviewers care if you will do their job well and with consistency and professionalism. Your personal feelings are irrelevant as long as you can keep them to yourself, or maybe tell your dog.

ANY negativity during a job interview is going to work against you. It is expected that you find a way to spin every situation and every project in some kind of positive light. Even when interviewers ask for weaknesses or about conflict, the “right” answer is to be able to talk about that negative thing in a way that lets your true brilliance shine through. Skilled candidates know how to inject just the right amount of humanity and relatability in an otherwise perfect employee.

If you are having trouble separating your feelings from your ability to keep to your talking points, then a good therapist may be able to help you learn better emotional regulation skills.

In the future, keep working to proactively manage your career. Keep yourself in roles where you are learning and thriving. When you feel burnout creeping in, deploy strategies to counter it or at least get yourself into a new situation.

Having been on both sides of the table, I can offer a few pieces of advice:

1. It’s probably best not to mention negative experiences unless it’s prompted by the interviewer. In some cases it may be super relevant and unavoidable, but aside from that, best to leave it alone.

2. Be clear and unambiguous about what was negative. Don’t be vague. I once had a candidate say something like “yeah and that job didn’t end very nicely…I’ll just leave it at that.” This is not a good thing to say in a job interview.

3. Always tie it to something positive. The story should end with a note about how you grew from the experience.

One:

You talk about bad situations, not bad people. “Shifting financial realities meant we had to pivot our product deep into the deployment process.” That’s not anyone’s fault. It just happens sometimes. Talk about how your team struggled to deliver success despite a challenging external speed bump.

Two:

Talk kindly about people you can't stand. Your coworker wasn't an asshole. He was an assertive person with a different perspective than yours, and you worked to find common ground so that you could succeed despite your competing visions. Bonus points if you can internalize this mindset and start seeing said assholes as people you merely impersonally disagree with. This makes life much happier.

Don’t lean into the negative. Lean into the positive results you managed to scavenge even with those obstacles. That's what a new boss wants to hear that you're capable of.

1) It sounds like you have a decent amount of negativity built up from your previous role, and you haven't quite vented it all out. Get it out of your system -- talk to a friend that gets how annoying that was and vent until you're tired of talking about it. Get heard and you'll feel like the negativity is finally behind you.

2) Think about the opportunities that your previous job gave you. Specifically opportunities. Every time a negative thought comes up, ask "What was my opportunity at that moment?" and write down your answer. Opportunity to disagree and commit? Great. Opportunity to solidify your understanding of your own values? Great! Opportunity to challenge yourself and work on something outside of your comfort zone? etc. Write those down and brag about them to your next amazing job!

The truth is, while you had past jobs you hated or regretted it, you got something out of it. You learned to deal with difficult people, you learned to manage hard situations, you navigated through tumultuous times, you learned a ton about growing, and you found out what you were capable of even in the darkest times. If anything, this can be super positive. You can also just say your past roles "were a good start to your career but didn't fit my future goals as much as this role does" and then jump in to what you want to do in your future and how this role fits.

There is always a positive takeaway after you get enough distance from something. My last studio was a complete catastrophe. I was angry for a while after they laid us all off. But I realized that I had been given a college education in how Big Gaming really works and been paid 2 years of salary to attend. I took that education to do my next thing that I'm working on now.

Major red flag to say anything negative about prior employers during interviews.

It’s pretty simple. Just put a positive lens on everything. Yes, you’ll need to paint a new (positive) story in your mind that might be different from what you’ve told yourself after leaving the job.

The main thing you’re trying to avoid is making the interviewer wonder if you were actually the problem all along. (When you’re interviewing a candidate it’s impossible to know “who was in the right” - so, avoid putting interviewers in a spot where they have to judge whether your complaints are valid)

Start by writing down everything that annoyed you in this job. Treat it like a journal/therapy session where you just “vent” all your frustrations out onto the paper/screen. Then take a breath and a break. Go back to it later and review each situation and find something positive in it. In every situation you at least learn something, or you strengthened a skill, or you helped the business by just getting it done, etc.

I don't. This is simply not the place for that.

If they were bad, I would say that they were not (whatever you seek - technical or challenging or whatever) and move on. I will mention that I did them right and I am looking for a more (take your pick from above) position.

Really, this is not a psychologist cabinet.

FWIIW, I hire technical or semi-technical people for my teams, from besides basic to get senior. Not a lot because people tend to stay a long time - one of the things I am truly proud of (just after having a fantastic team)

First rule of interviewing- NEVER say bad things about past employers (or anything else, always be positive). Second rule of interviewing- ALWAYS say good things about past employers, or say nothing. Unless you are specifically asked about employer you prefer not to talk about- then ALWAYS say only good things about them. You talking bad things about past employment means you will also talk bad things about people you try to join. And it also potentially can backfire if recruiter figures you was actually the problem.

IMHO, if you do have negativity in you it will leak out later and make your situation worse. Better treat the core problem- which is you not being able to leave past where it belongs- in the past.

when i interviewed candidates for software engineering roles in $non-tech-megacorp i was primarily interested in how folks did in the problem solving / coding / API design interviews.

but, we also asked some behavioural questions about past experiences. we don't say it explicitly, but we're looking for responses like --- can you say some words that suggest you have demonstrated initiative at work, or you can sometimes influence others and build support for a decision rather than unilaterally doing stuff without consultation (we're $megacorp, not $startup...) . you don't need to be able to talk at length about all aspects of your past job, but you do need to be able to offer a few examples of That Time When I Demonstrated Initiative, or That Time When I Influenced The Stakeholders that can be mashed into a digestible Situation / Task / (your) Action / Result format & where you can give a few reasonable answers to follow up questions from interviewers who probe and ask annoying questions like "so, what exactly were your responsibilities?"

another thing we'd be probing for is "growth mindset" type stuff. a bad response to "if you were in a similar situation in future, what would you do differently?" is "nothing, everything i did at $oldjob was optimal". a response that shows some reflection, a willingness to admit not everything you do is perfect, and concrete ideas for improvements to behaviour or process comes across much better. no need to enumerate all your worst failings, cherry-pick and offer one or two lesser ones.

for these kinds of behavioural questions based on past experience, we didn't really care if junior / intermediate hires struggled to give strong responses. We would be a lot more concerned about poor responses to these questions for engineering managers or other positions with a leadership component.

having a prepared short form answer to "why are you applying for a job here" is also a good idea.

if you have friends or acquaintances who regularly interview folks who you can hit up for a favour, you could see if they'd be willing to conduct a mock interview and then give you feedback about things you could improve on.

“I learned a lot” - this has the advantage of being, hopefully, true. And you probably worked with some interesting and talented people. Think about your positive interactions with them.

Given the context, I am assuming this is on the "behavioural" side of the IV (aka what most companies call culture fit). And I am assuming you are applying to "traditional" companies, that is companies that have a defined hiring process and are large enough. This includes all FAANG and what not.

My advice:

  - write down the stories (use cases) before the actual IV
  - for each story, focus on what you learnt / succeeded
  - for the really negative ones, focus on the learning
  - for the other ones, focus on the outcomes, mentioning  things that worked and maybe some things that did not work  and how you did it

The thing about these situations is that it’s a small world, and the interviewer isn’t necessarily your friend. That cuts both ways. The interviewer may know people at your place and love/hate them. You may be the 25th person from your company to come through the place for all you know. Demonstrate that you add value and GAF.

Having been in this situation, the way I handled it was treating it as a business problem. My story was that I loved the work and feel a great reward from delivering great products/outcomes, but we got pulled into a bad cycle of poor time management that compromised the work. You’re here to deliver excellence. It’s not about blame, it about finding a place to win.

If you can deliver a narrative like that which doesn’t sound bitchy, it’s really powerful.

It’s an incredibly privileged position, I accept, but I don’t want to work somewhere that doesn’t want to hire the real me, and so I’ve always just been 100% honest and assumed things will work out.

It's about telling a story, and it's important to tell the right one. They don't want to hear a data sheet of facts or an emotional unloading of regrets and dissatisfaction. They want to know that you are a professional, you know how to work with others and how to get the job done. If all that stands between you and unemployment is taking creative liberties in how you explain your employment history, well that's your choice to make.

We ask this question in interviews too. One purpose is we want people who disagree and can handle this maturely. Everyone has negative experiences. People who don't have likely never tried anything difficult. But you have to be diplomatic about this.

Practice it. Write the answer. Go over it for 20 hours. Treat it like a presentation because it is. I go so far as to make an AI "interviewer" in Vapi so I can voice it out, and you can mod the tone to be supportive, indifferent, sarcastic, etc.

If you're disappointed with yourself, say that. Humans make mistakes. Someone out there started smoking or drinking once. Someone had an affair. You don't know which of your interviewers did which, but you can assume that everyone has done something they knew was a bad idea.

It's also reasonable to assume that an applicant is leaving for reasons. Bored? Wants more money? That's a pretty bad reason. Unhappy? That's a much better reason. What's the catch? Why is this property on the market for cheap? A trick is to imply what people want to hear - you're looking to work with smarter people, better processes, get your shit together, etc.

There are many interview guides available on the internet. They often contain good advice for how to behave in an interview.

There's no secret, actually. Be kind and be honest.

Try to separate your feelings from objective facts. And focus on facts in the interview. Be very biased towards facts that show your best sides and achievements. It helps to prepare a list of such facts and stories in advance.

You’ll have to muster some positive energy from yourself: write the experience in a positive way: “I learned here that authenticity is important to my leadership style; I expect that my team to be motivated by serving the customer, rather than checking off busywork for made up deadlines.” And practice giving that positive statement with a friend or in a less important interview.

List the top 3 to 5 learnings or growth experience and be able to explain each of them in detail, write it down and practise saying it. If you haven't done this already, I'd be a little surprised, do you just wing it? It can get hard to talk about the best demonstrations of your ability when you've worked for several years

If you did do "pretty cool work" be prepared to say what was cool about it. It may be a struggle but it's what you have to do.

Find positive and useful things you did or learned there and invent a story around them to tell at interviews.

While you don't want to lie about your qualifications, achievements, titles, responsibilities, I don't see an issue with inventing a story to get these points across. It doesn't matter.

Focus on the stuff you learned at the bad company. Even with jobs I’ve had that weren’t great, I still learned a lot.

If nothing else, spin it as 'experience'.

I just go with honesty. Hasn’t been a problem yet.

Lie.

> I'm currently interviewing for new roles

> I have to talk about this one role, in detail, multiple times with every company.

Ok; so how do _you_ talk in interviews about this past job that you regret? If you've had to talk in detail about that one role multiple times, haven't you yet come up with a way to talk through it? Haven't you yet developed, either deliberately, or spontaneously, just through the sheer fact of repetition, some kind of a story around it?

From the behavioral interview standpoint, all you have to talk about is what you did and how well you did it in STAR format.

I have asked a question both in interviews and one on ones with current employees, “If you had a magic wand, what are the three things you could change about the company?”.

That’s the time to be more honest about unrealistic deadlines.

But even then I’m going to ask a follow up question about what did you do to try to influence change. I don’t think there has ever been a time in my career (29 years, 10 jobs) that I couldn’t have talked to higher ups and negotiate between time, cost and requirements. I didn’t always do a good job at it early career.

There are two strategies, first ask the same “magic wand” questions. The second is to have an emergency fund large enough to confidently say “no” and knowing that your bills will be paid while you look for another job.

Oh and the third - keep an up to date resume, a constantly updated longer form career document that lists out your major accomplishments in STAR format, an up to date skillset, and a solid network.

  Bat shit crazy management = top management's strategic goals were frequently updated
  We did everything in Excel = tooling was not optimal, budget restrictions limited out tech
  My manager was a fucking moron = although we had different approaches on topics, we worked to complement one-another, for much better outcomes