At an interview for a tech startup, they asked me “If you could be any animal, what would you be?”

I answered “Otter” because you know, fun, active, work well with their hands and cute.

They really debated whether or not to hire me because of that answer because, and I quote, “We only hire predators, never prey.” and they weren’t sure how to quantify an Otter, because none of them had ever paid the least bit of attention to any sort of animal documentary or read biology or you know, visited a zoo recently.

God that job sucked hard.

I was thinking the job is for humans right, Apparently their hr department got too involved in psychology

Here are what netizens think:

Otters are pretty brutal

The what kind of animal would you be question is so weird…”Uh, a human, because this job is for a human right?”

From my personal experience tech companies seem to love that question for some reason. That’s something you ask a kindergartner not a fully grown adult.

I’ve heard the same thing from other people I know, some of whom are fairly high up in their organizations. All of them were asked the same thing, and disturbingly a couple of them see it as an important part of the interview.

Tech companies like to think they transcend normal boundaries by always “disrupting” industry standards. Unfortunately, HR doesn’t always realize that treating potential hires like adult human beings, and asking them about their applicable job skills, would be best practice.