I look for three things that hobbyist (or college trained) programmers usually don’t have but will put you head and shoulders above the crowd: 1. Being able to

I look for three things that hobbyist (or college trained) programmers usually don’t have but will put you head and shoulders above the crowd: 1. Being able to work with version control — pull requests, branching & merging, etc. 2. Being able to step through and debug code and write tests that expose low level bugs. 3. Being able to write defects clearly and precisely that others (technical and non- technical) can understand. Sadly, most interviewers won’t be looking for these skills: 1. They’ll either be looking for someone who memorized (or can guess) their chosen coding challenge trivia. 2. They’ll want someone be who agrees with them and makes them feel superior. 3. They’ll want someone whose resume and demographics ticks the most boxes on their list.