> Meanwhile I’m very good at competitive programming Not to burst your bubble, but you aren't. You are very good when you get it right. You aren't when you don

> Meanwhile I’m very good at competitive programming Not to burst your bubble, but you aren't. You are very good when you get it right. You aren't when you don't get it right. But then you are leaving out that part because nobody likes to focus on the negatives. Consider this - at some point of your life, you didn't know competitive programming. Were you 100% un-hireable at that point ? Most likely, you would have done perfectly fine if you were hired without all this ceremony. That's what people are frustrated with. People dismiss college credentials as elitist gatekeeping, When you create entire artificial domains out of whole cloth, like "competitive programming", that's gatekeeping on steroids. Because that whole domain is artificial, I can stuff anything into it. The surface area of that domain is practically infinite. Forsure there's some patch where you'd under-perform. And I reckon the area of that patch is quite large. You just haven't found it yet.