Painful read, as it resonates with me. I think I’m pretty hot shit but was humbled by the interview processes a few years back.

But in a different vein, found myself laughing at this reply in the comments:

Peter Lindberg 9 months ago

This reminds me about the time I almost got fired. I was at work, playing an intense round of table tennis, when the CEO burst out of his office. “This is it everybody!” he yelled, running over to the Big Wheel. He gave the wheel a spin, and then hurriedly explained “I’ve got a linked list and I need to know if it contains a cycle!”

I watched the wheel slow to a stop and panic set in as I realized the pointer was on my name. All eyes were on me as the whole team rushed into the Coding Room. I opened our communal laptop and started up notepad, which was the only application it was capable of running. The CIO loved to brag how he had cut 1% of costs by eliminating laptop and IDE purchases.

Everyone watched intently as I started to implement a linked list in C, which I needed to do before starting on the actual problem. I was pretty sure I knew how to solve this problem, so I started banging out some code. Then I hit a mental block. Someone behind me said meekly “couldn’t we just google this?” The crowd had barely begun to gasp and murmur at this suggestion when the CEO shouted “No! That’s not how we do it!”

I began to sweat. “How much time do I have left?” I said. “Five minutes!” was the panicked reply from one of my teammates. Suddenly I remembered the final part of the solution and frantically began to type again. “What happens if he runs out of time?” someone whispered. “Nobody knows… But do you really want to find out?” someone else said. I knew I’d be fired at the very least.

“Done!” I said confidently, and the CEO peered over my shoulder at the screen. After a few seconds, his eyes narrowed. “Ssssyntax error” he hissed. My heart raced as I scanned the code for the error. I found it just in time! A missing semicolon. Everyone sighed in relief and resumed their ping-pong and foosball games. I chuckled to myself and thought “this is why they pay us the big bucks!”

We’re not actually sure what the company’s product is. Whatever it is though, it relies exclusively on things like sorting and searching algorithms, and somehow doesn’t need data storage, infrastructure, networking, apis, or any of that amateur stuff.

An interview is just a test. Like any tests there are false positives and false negatives. There is a trade off between having more false positives/negatives and generally when it comes to hiring, a false positive is much more expensive than a false negative so many interview processes will end up rejecting good developers.

An interview can’t tell the company whether or not you are a good developer or a bad one. It can only say you can demonstrate certain skills to a certain level under interview conditions which means you are pretty likely to be a good developer.

It’s tough when you get rejections but because of the above factors, unfortunately it’s not enough to be a good developer to pass interviews a lot of the time. You also have to be good at interviewing. The good news is like any skill it can be practiced and if you’re already a good developer it shouldn’t really take much effort to become good at interviewing but it does require practice.

That’s my take anyway. Keep your head up, practice interviewing and you’ll be alright.

'I’m a bad programmer" then later lists extra curriculars that dwarfs my skills

I don’t think the issue is him; it’s the economy. Companies are probably not really looking to increase their workforce but still conducting interviews just in case they find a “Rockstar”

The programmer job market is weird, because organizations that value programmers aren’t organizations that are constantly having to hire new developers after losing the ones they had.

So the average organization that has an open position for a programmer is an absolute shitshow of a place to work.

I mention this as explanation why so many hiring practices that don’t work well are still so prevalent.

His language list is a bit specific imo. For good or bad many corporate applications are c# and Java. If web add JavaScript in there and if data or cloud add Python. All things being even between two candidates if your language skillset matches a project you’d be more likely to get hired. Wondering if this guy can broaden his languages to include one or two of the top 5 languages.

Unfortunately are not all about programming skills alone, working within flexibility of learning new skills, team politics and team structure can play a lot for candidate selection.

The main thing I’d say is don’t give up but use some of your free time to maybe diversify your skillset and apply for some other positions in those areas.

Ducking Medium again. No I don’t want an account with you. The article can’t be that interesting.

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Dude shouldn’t worry. Kids will understand that he has or had a boring job with not much to talk about… and still be the greatest dad in the world. Kids don’t care about the job of their parents.