[lexarflash8g]

Most companies aren’t Apple, Nvidia, or Google chasing the top 0.1% of “elite” talent. Outside of a few AI-focused startups, the reality is that 90% of companies are sitting on legacy codebases, still running VMs, or duct-taping CRUD apps together with APIs.

If you happen to be a superstar with a rare niche skill (like building frontier AI models), you basically skip the interview loop and get fought over with million-dollar offers. But that’s a tiny fraction of the market.

For everyone else, hiring looks a lot like dating: both sides aim for a “10,” but usually settle for a “6 or 7.” And the whole process is signaling—candidates overstate their skills, companies oversell their culture and tech stack, and the match lands somewhere in the middle.

Probably the most important non-technical skill is dealing with the egos in the industry since you will come across a lot of them.