[jevgeni]

While not as profound as you, I think I'm a decent developer. The caveat being that I don't work in software development, but in a role that's on the business side with a mix of management, software engineering, a bit of maths and data engineering and analysis.

A few years ago I was applying to a well-known consulting firm, a role in data analytics. I got rejected due to "not knowing SQL" (which at that point I've used professionally for 8 years) and they hired someone else. A few months later, the same company made me an offer for another team in a more business driven role. I've ended up as a lead solution architect for a pretty involved WASM-based product with them and managing the guy they hired instead of me before. The guy couldn't code a for-loop in Python and I ended up doing all the engineering work for him until we could offboard him.

Moral of the story: perceptions, culture, and internal team politics might play a way bigger role in seeing your value as an engineer than we might acknowledge.