I interviewed A LOT over the past year. Most of the time senior meant some kind of framework tool monkey. When the interviewer started asking senior level quest

I interviewed A LOT over the past year. Most of the time senior meant some kind of framework tool monkey. When the interviewer started asking senior level questions it was clear my definition and their definition of senior were very different. Most of time is was clear they were looking for anybody would could put text on the screen with confidence, which feels extremely junior to me. The interesting moments were when somebody with less than 3 years professional experience were elevated to management because it’s a startup. They were so lost trying to interview somebody with 20 years experience and prior experience as a corporate director level. I completely stopped talking to start ups. Eventually I got very lucky and found a company that is awesome with incredible leadership. They were actually looking for a senior to come in and fix some architectural things and in return they would teach me areas of programming I had never done before. Here are the common danger patterns I observed over and over: * Most importantly look for strong leadership in the employer first. If it just isn’t there stop talking to them. They are more than happy to waste your time in repeated interviews. * Determine the level of honesty present in the work culture. Look for brutal honesty up front and don’t be shy about it. If they are timid about honesty in an interview you will spend your employment walking on egg shells and playing politics, the kind of place where shitty brown-nosing people get promoted over you. * Next evaluate for the quality of work. Do this by asking about writing original code. If they are timid about original code or are horrified at the thought of stepping outside the yellow brick road to produce a superior product I don’t want to work there. There are many people thrilled to work at someplace average building a shitty product so they should hire one of those other people. * Finally evaluate for retention. Does that employer work extra hard to retain people? If not you need to drill into this immediately. Don’t be shy about asking tough questions. You will be devoting a block of your life to these people.