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I can definitely write code. I've been doing it quite a while. I've been the "smart guy" to go to with hard problems, at more than one place. Feedback has been

I can definitely write code. I've been doing it quite a while. I've been the "smart guy" to go to with hard problems, at more than one place. Feedback has been very good at most places I've worked. I'm the guy who figures out weird platforms and things like that. I also clean up alright and can talk to people. I'm not bad at the job, and would be, so far as the technical side of things, a good hire for probably 95+% of all software development jobs there are that even somewhat fit in the set of things I've already worked on (which is broad). I'm good under on-the-job pressure (great, even—I kind of like emergencies, in a perverse way. Clears the mind, demands focus on a clear goal.) I am also 100% certain that I've given interviewers the impression I don't know how to code whatsoever on at least three occasions, including as recently as a couple years ago. Hell, I'll probably do it at least a couple more times before my career's up. I guarantee that the interviewers were chatting after and were like, "see this is why we have to do this, because you get guys like that lying piece-of-shit yahoo, who've somehow had a full career and have great references and can talk about software and processes and architecture and all that, but inexplicably can't code at all". I'm terribly self-conscious when people watch me code in the context of an interview where they're explicitly judging me so I get very slow even at using tools I'm familiar with ("I think that shortcut does what I want but... what if it doesn't? I'll just do it the slow way, oh no, now I look clumsy and stupid, fuck fuck fuck!"), and I tend to do stuff like forget the syntax to invoke a method in [language X that I've written 500 lines of in the last two weeks] when I start writing with a blank file (no existing syntax to crib off of, and c'mon, can you ask to google shit that basic in an interview? LOL no). Basically I have intense social anxiety but only for specific parts of interviews. What I can do is talk through architecture, and any amount of conceptually-how-things-fit-together I have in my head, including low-level stuff. I can do 100% of the talking parts of an interview just fine. I'm told I come off exceptionally good in that part, actually (I can't tell, I just go by feedback). I'm sure this just reinforces the impression that I'm some kind of god-tier social manipulator who's, for some unknown reason, decided to scam his way into mid-tier tech jobs rather than applying such outstanding bullshitting skills to something that would pay for them more directly, and probably even be compensated higher if I were that good.

cogman10 5y ago
Ok, so here's my advice for you in that sort of situation. Just talk. A lot. What are you thinking, why are you thinking it? What are the alternatives you are thinking about. All of these will give your interviewer a good opportunity to give you feedback and can make the problem a lot easier than you might be expecting. The more you talk, the better.
- handrous 5y ago
  Yeah, I know, I do try to do that. I just don't really interview often enough to get much better at getting over the anxiety, because despite that I've never really had trouble finding good jobs. I only bring it up to confirm that yes, some of those "fakers" (maybe lots of them) aren't faking, they're just exceptionally shit at a particular kind of interview. Truly, I expect that the set of people who can do a really good job of talking the talk but aren't actually competent at writing code is pretty small, because faking being able to program and talk off-the-cuff about technical topics reflects a fair amount of talent at something else that ought to pay pretty well on its own, in other roles. I think the way those algo-quiz or live-code-a-thing filters are used tends to catch people who can't talk well about it or do the job (this is the majority of would-be "bad hires", and you'd catch them anyway), some set who are afflicted with extremely bad general social anxiety so who are just fucked at interviews generally (I feel bad for those folks, especially since some of them are probably fine in normal work-social situations); the ones like me who can do the job, and can talk about it fluently, but suck at "coding interviews"; plus some very small set of actual social geniuses who've decided lying their way into so-so tech jobs is what they want to do with their lives, and have the talent (at faking it) to back that up, which are the ones people seem to think are super-common in the wild, for some reason, which seems very implausible to me for the simple reason that, again, that's a skill that's per se valuable elsewhere, if you're actually that good. (frankly, from what I've seen on the other side of the table, I suspect you could weed out a very high percentage of actual-fakers by just blanket rejecting anyone with any kind of graduate degree in CS, who's applying for a mediocre position rather than something flashier and better-paying, though obviously that would come with its own set of pretty bad false negatives and I wouldn't actually do it, and anyway even those people usually don't "talk the talk" well enough to be convincing, if you get them off-script) [EDIT] incidentally, FAANG and finance and a few of their peers are the ones where these kinds of aggressive weed-outs do sorta make sense, because their comp is so high that those "social geniuses" I mentioned might actually make more money faking their way into those tech jobs than applying their outstanding non-tech skills more directly to another role, such that it's worth it despite the stress and risk of being "found out".

cogman10 5y ago

Ok, so here's my advice for you in that sort of situation. Just talk. A lot. What are you thinking, why are you thinking it? What are the alternatives you are thinking about. All of these will give your interviewer a good opportunity to give you feedback and can make the problem a lot easier than you might be expecting. The more you talk, the better.

handrous 5y ago
Yeah, I know, I do try to do that. I just don't really interview often enough to get much better at getting over the anxiety, because despite that I've never really had trouble finding good jobs. I only bring it up to confirm that yes, some of those "fakers" (maybe lots of them) aren't faking, they're just exceptionally shit at a particular kind of interview. Truly, I expect that the set of people who can do a really good job of talking the talk but aren't actually competent at writing code is pretty small, because faking being able to program and talk off-the-cuff about technical topics reflects a fair amount of talent at something else that ought to pay pretty well on its own, in other roles. I think the way those algo-quiz or live-code-a-thing filters are used tends to catch people who can't talk well about it or do the job (this is the majority of would-be "bad hires", and you'd catch them anyway), some set who are afflicted with extremely bad general social anxiety so who are just fucked at interviews generally (I feel bad for those folks, especially since some of them are probably fine in normal work-social situations); the ones like me who can do the job, and can talk about it fluently, but suck at "coding interviews"; plus some very small set of actual social geniuses who've decided lying their way into so-so tech jobs is what they want to do with their lives, and have the talent (at faking it) to back that up, which are the ones people seem to think are super-common in the wild, for some reason, which seems very implausible to me for the simple reason that, again, that's a skill that's per se valuable elsewhere, if you're actually that good. (frankly, from what I've seen on the other side of the table, I suspect you could weed out a very high percentage of actual-fakers by just blanket rejecting anyone with any kind of graduate degree in CS, who's applying for a mediocre position rather than something flashier and better-paying, though obviously that would come with its own set of pretty bad false negatives and I wouldn't actually do it, and anyway even those people usually don't "talk the talk" well enough to be convincing, if you get them off-script) [EDIT] incidentally, FAANG and finance and a few of their peers are the ones where these kinds of aggressive weed-outs do sorta make sense, because their comp is so high that those "social geniuses" I mentioned might actually make more money faking their way into those tech jobs than applying their outstanding non-tech skills more directly to another role, such that it's worth it despite the stress and risk of being "found out".