Job Interviewer Demands Interviewee Quit His Side Hustle in an Unrelated Field if He Wants to Work For Them

Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor

Jun 17, 2026 8:30 PM EDT

Why would he quit something that's making him money?

Job interviews are a tough nut to crack. As the interviewee, it feels like the interviewer has all the power, and you have to read their cues and predict what they want to have a shot at the job. You feel like you have to answer every single question, no matter how silly or pointless. "Are you a morning or a night person?" obviously has a right and a wrong answer when you're interviewing for a job that starts at 8 AM. "What is your biggest weakness?" has so many wrong answers, including but not limited to, "I work too hard." When you're in an interviewing stage of life, you have your four STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) stories rolling around in your head, and you have to be incredibly strategic about which answers you give to which behavioral questions.

Some questions in job interviews are actually a trap. They don't want to hire someone who has goals and ambitions beyond working for their company. They don't want to hire people who have hobbies that enrich their lives. They want someone whose only life goal is to work as hard as possible and make their company a lot of money, without caring whether they're making any money themselves. There's a reason companies ask prospective employees about their salary expectations rather than stating the salary range outright. They're trying to manipulate them into thinking they can't ask for more.

The job interviewee in this story told the interviewer that he wasn't willing to give up his side hustle in order to work there. It cost him the job, but it also saved him from abandoning a source of income.

via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

_{A representation of a job interviewer telling a job interviewee that he doesn't want to hire somebody who has a side business for extra income.}
A job interviewer asked me if I was willing to quit my side business if they followed through with an offer.

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via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

_{A woman pretending to be a small business owner, whose main job is not paying her off the clock to not have extra sources of income.}
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_{A man who could or could not be a German boulderer, who was forced to give up his side-hustle of teaching bouldering after he got hired to be a teacher by the state.}
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