I think the source of this is professional "career adviser" types. When applying for jobs out of school, I was told: 1. I needed to "tell stories" about mysel

I think the source of this is professional "career adviser" types. When applying for jobs out of school, I was told: 1. I needed to "tell stories" about myself (doesn't matter if they're true) 2. I needed to boast in my resume about my "accomplishments" using buzzwords 3. I needed to have some kind of catchy elevator pitch describing myself 4. I needed at least one "playful" descriptor (e.g. "semicolon enthusiast" or something like that) 5. Lying on your resume is expected and totally fine 6. I needed to apply for ~10 positions a week All of these things made me deeply uncomfortable. I don't think self-description is possible. We reveal ourselves through our actions and nothing matters less than "how you view yourself". When people attempt to describe themselves they tend to list things that they want other people to believe about them but have no correspondence in reality. I disregarded all of this advice and worked really hard on my projects. I didn't do any "coding interview prep" and during my interviews I admitted when I didn't know something and explained what I thought I knew about it. This worked well for me; I didn't have any trouble finding a job.