[wpietri]

Personally, I have a bias against subjects who claim to be the best. Some of the best people I've worked with, would say things like, "Oh, I guess I'm ok at that" and then blow me away. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect [1] in action.

Because of that, I generally avoid people to self-evaluate versus others. I think it's ok to ask them to compare on purely internal things (e.g., "What languages are you strongest in"); people seem pretty good at that.

I think that approach makes it a lot easier to hire nice people; niceness and humility are correlated.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

[konradb]

I like Lao Tzu's take on this:

'Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know.'.