I just finished reading How To Recognize A Good Programmer, and kept thinking “hey, that’s me” for every point. So why did my last two job interviews not go so well? I’m a good programmer, I know I’m damn good actually, and according to this, everybody else should think I am too.
Oh well, I’ve got 6 months left on this contract. Maybe I should get some paper qualifications to impress the people who aren’t smart enough to read that article.
Do you really want to work for someone who isn’t smart enough to read that article?
Are you sure the problem is with the interviews and not the references?
Most companies hire bad programmers. I’ve met them, and I’m sure you have too. I’d guess they either don’t know what a good programmer is, or that they’re not very good at interviewing
And most job interviewers, in any walk of life, have already decided whether they like you or not before you even sit down. Eye contact and positive body language are at least as important as the conversation.
Think of it as a blessing – by being rejected, you’re passively filtering out the employers who you probably wouldn’t want to work for.
Can you can use the article as the basis for your interview strategy?
Work out a bullet list of what a good programmer is, and for each bullet, a short description of how you satisfy that desideratum. Have lots of examples: “when I built X at Y, the big challenge was Z. Here’s how I did that.”
Get the interview conversation to come around to what makes someone a good programmer. Then rattle off your bullet points, and the one-sentence self-descriptions.
Steven, that’s a great idea. So basically you’re saying that I take control of the interview rather than sitting back and waiting for questions. I can be more like a candidate in a debate who twists the question around in order to talk about what he or she wanted to talk about.