Do not give [free] honest advice/assesment in job interviews

Ok, this is a rant, so feel free to skip it!

About a year ago I had a job interview for a contract position. The project was complex, ill organized and with high probability of failure. A brief description of the project is:

Company A starts a job for a customer. They were going to adapt their exisiting product, based on US business processes, to the Canadian business processes. After a year, and no progress, company B purchases company A. Another year pass with nothing to show. It is now two years after the project has begun and the customer still has nothing. When company B realizes the mess, decides to cut their loses and hires company C to finish the project. Customer sets up a team to speed the project that will coordinate internal resouces with company C, who incidentlly are located in a different time zone.

At this stage I interviewed for the QA position in the coordinating team. Among other responsibilities, it includes testing the code that Company C is producing. There were no procedures, vague specs and the group of developers used the word Agile methodoly to describe what is a cowboy approach. The PM, working for the customer, has no carrot no stick over company B or company C. My assesment of the situation was somehow bleak, and I proposed measures like change control, regular risk meetings, clearly defined [and achievable] goals for each iteration... I know I sounded a bit negative, but definitely I didn't wanted to sound like all was fine: it wasn't.

A year later, and because Vancouver is an small IT town, I have learnt they hired another person that had 'Don't worry, be happy' as mantra. Six month after the hiring the PM realized it was not working. So, they started to do risk meetings, put in place a change control and each iteration has a small number of features that had to be implemented. It has took over three year for the customer to have something that is operational and can be put into production.

Conclusion: next time I want the job I need to smile, assuage all fears with 'It's going to be fine' and send a bill for any advice I may give during the interview.