| > There's not a single language I'd consider myself good with, maybe one or two I can write and maybe one I'm ok with. Can you get things done in the one or two languages that you can write? If yes, that's already something. Forget OOP, forget whiteboarding questions - if at the end of the day you can build something even if you write sphagetti code it's _something_. I'm of course not encouraging writing unreadable code and I'm in no way saying that OOP is not required-knowledge, but if you can (somehow) get things done you are sufficiently intelligent. The rest is all a matter of putting in some effort (writing clean code takes some practice) > and there's no way in hell I'd make it past a phone screen for your average whiteboarding company One of my friends has never (AFAIK) passed a whiteboarding interview. Regardless, if I start a company, I'd pick him over everyone else I've ever worked with - not because he's the greatest engineer ever, but because I like working with him. He loves what he's doing and he get things done, and engages in interesting conversations. Leetcode skillz (IMHO) are so overrated. > I also suppose that I'm an ok "hacker" in that I can get very interested / fixated on certain problems, although my solution is more likely to be a complete mess. Most people I know are day programmers - they'll do what you ask them to do, but they'll never do something for the fun of it. This does not make them worse programmers, but I'm inclined to think that given enough time, people who do things for fun tend to get way better than people who just see it as a job. You got to love the process and not just the results. Also, if you are feeling terrible because you tend to get harsh comments during code reviews, I'd whole-heartedly recommend detaching yourself from the code you write. Now that I look back, a lot of the code review comments I got were annoying nitpicks rather than genuine design/code critique. |
I'd suggest that spaghetti code disqualifies one from anything but the smallest teams and projects. "Coding" is what we do on our own time w/o the likelihood of others interacting.
[1]: https://research.swtch.com/vgo-eng> I'd whole-heartedly recommend detaching yourself from the code you write. Now that I look back, a lot of the code review comments I got were annoying nitpicks rather than genuine design/code critique.
+1 understand that most code comments are 0.5% more effort for 1% better result, death by 1000 cuts, style things. They by no means denigrate your skills (unless you believe yourself to be perfect, godlike) and do have value for the team because those gains compound.