[austin-cheney]

At my current employer there were two or three interviews of 1 hour each and no code test. It felt like a breeze like anybody off the street could get this job with excellent incentive pay. It turns out they are highly selective and interview frequently selecting almost nobody. The most important quality is personality, things like honesty and humility.

I have been writing software for over 20 years and probably interviewed at two dozen places before moving in with the current employer. Here is what I have learned:

* Don’t be awesome. Employment normalizes to a bell curve. Awesome is a less compatible outlier. If you want to be awesome write software outside of work as a hobby and write about the things you learned.

* Be selective. If you are confident in your skills and experience (realistically, not a Dunning-Kruger fantasy) you can afford to be less desperate about who you will work for. High pay is great but maximize for emotional fulfillment.

* Vanity is for the fashion industry. Software is about automation. Many developers never see the distinction. They try to make things into something they aren’t and are miserable and low performing as a result. Conscientiousness is negatively correlated with intelligence so smart people frequently fail hard at this and cannot see it.

* The qualities that are most well rewarded in employee assessments are helpfulness, honesty, and writing. These take time and deliberate action. It also means maximizing mutual respect but simultaneously don’t shy away from hard truths or disagreements.