Yesterday I had a job interview that started out very well, but I think as it went along I started looking kind of bad. They asked all normal questions, probing about what I do in my current job to figure out if I'd be a good fit for the new job. But my current job is so dysfunctional that as I described various things, I think that became apparent. My worry is that I came off as bad mouthing or just being a negative nelly.

for example, the hiring manager commented near the end of the interview that he was a bit confused by my description of how we use Jira and could I elaborate on that. (Background: I'm a business analyst.) I explained that we do use Jira oddly and it's likely because of the corporate structure: all of the dev teams report to one division of the company and all of the BA's report to another division, and each division does things differently. I did point out that I loved Jira and think there's no reason the BA's can't also use it to track requirements and maintain traceability. So maybe I saved myself with that comment, not sure.

Another example is that they asked me if I ever had a difficult situation with coworkers and how I handled that. I told the story of how my current job kind of oddly went for ten or more years without hiring anybody and they now have a bunch of 20-30 year seniority people and a bunch of 0-5 year people and that's causing conflicts. I described how the young people are complaining about their new ideas being summarily dismissed and how the seniority people complain about not being respected by the newbies. But maybe I saved it by also explaining that management has noticed this and has implemented a culture change initiative.

At any rate, walking out of the building I kind of felt like I bombed the interview by being too honest about what my current job is like. Also I felt like they got a better idea of what my current job is like than what I'm like. Ugh!