It's been 10 years since I did an interview and I think I would rather retire and grow rare lizards than jump through the interview hoops at a new company. I am 90% sure I couldn't pass the interview for my current position but I'm the one who designed the whole thing. -staff level backend engineer

I haven't interviewed for a job in many years, but on a whim, I decided to pursue a new role. I made it to the final interview with senior executives and was expectedly grilled about my qualifications. During the interview, I described several projects I worked on from start to finish, covering all stages such as gathering requirements and architecture. However, I received feedback that it seemed I had taken on too much responsibility, making them unsure of how much I actually contributed. Yes, totally agreed.

I was 14 years in a job at senior level and got laid off.

And yeah, it's pretty much as bad as you describe.

Why did you design it that way then? Actually asking, not taking the piss.

It is the natural result of an industry where:

- There are low barriers to entry (education is not required, profession licences is not a thing, etc.)

- A strong culture of "job hopping" has emerged, which means companies are continuously interviewing candidates, and candidates are continuously looking for jobs.

- A big willingness to sacrifice the false positives, for the sake of keeping out the false negatives. Basically companies will increase the threshold/bar to keep out the "fakers" and bad hires, even if it means rejecting legitimate hires. The mantra that it is very expensive to hire the wrong people rings throughout the industry, and has for the past decades.

- Candidates are willing to play the game. Some people are willing to grind leetcode questions for months, years, if it means they get a shot at big tech companies. Smaller companies cargo cult.

In the past 10 years and I was already 40 years old in 2014, I’ve interviewed:

- at a company where they launched a new division in a satellite office in another city to separate the team from the old guard to create a “tiger team” of experienced developers. I was the second hire. I just spoke to the manager as an experienced professional and we talked about how I solved real world problems

- a new to the company director who needed a lead software engineer to integrate systems of acquisitions that the PE owner was buying.

- the new to the company CTO after the founders found product market fit and wanted to bring technology leadership into the company from a third party consulting company. I was eventually tasked with making everything cloud native, scalable, resilient etc. I was his second technical hire. Our customers were large health care companies where one new contract could bring in 10K new users and even more ETL integrations. He knew I didn’t have any practical AWS experience. He later told me I seemed like a smart guy and I could figure it out.

- AWS itself in the ProServe division - 5 round behavioral interview where I walked through my implementations.

- (2024) third party cloud consulting company in a staff role. They asked how would I architect something and I made sure I hit all of the “pillars” of AWS Well Architected and talked through 12 Factor Apps.

I’m 51 and I stay interview ready. My resume and my career documents are updated quarterly and I keep my network warm.

I believe right now if I were looking for a job, someone would hire me quickly if not for a permanent position, at least I could hustle up on a contract.