Being a good programmer is not the same thing as being a good engineer or developer. Also, there are the true and corporate varieties of each. True Developer:

Being a good programmer is not the same thing as being a good engineer or developer. Also, there are the true and corporate varieties of each. True Developer: builds technical assets (apps, scripts) based on business needs, often by self-initiated awareness of what the company's needs are. Corporate Developer: turns managerial ideas (with no audit of whether those are good ideas) into apps that sorta work, very quickly, with a smile on his face. True Engineer: focuses on infrastructural concerns, performance, debugging and monitoring, and maintenance. Writes solid code with good tests and, usually, high-quality documentation. Corporate Engineer: bike-sheds the hell out of technical choices (war of attrition, and managerial favor helps) so he controls the stack and becomes the "blazer" while the other N-1 spend most of their time keeping up with his changes and look like underperformers. Calls himself an "architect". True Programmer: writes excellent code to solve problems. Enjoys writing code, perhaps a little bit too much. Constantly learning new languages and technologies. Cares more about the technical challenge than the macroscopics of the problem (unlike the developer, whose stance is the reverse). Corporate Programmer: drags windows and highlights stuff on his IDE. Moves the mouse around in circles for 8 hours per day, then goes home at 5:01. Occasionally plays with the menus and something "magical" happens, like the auto-generation of 18 Perforce clients due to some bizarre interaction of IDE plugins. OP sounds terrible at interviewing and is probably really bad at Corporate, too. He could get good at interviewing with a month of practice. I could coach him on that. Being good at Corporate is not something I'd be qualified to teach, and I'm not sure if it's desirable in the long-term (although it is convenient in the short term).