Ask HN: I'm not a rockstar coder. Do I have a place in SV?

The reason I ask how many companies you have applied to is because finding a good job is a numbers game. Often I see engineers who do something along the lines of applying to a single company for the "perfect position for them", waiting to hear from the company, and then feeling dejected when a rejection comes and they have to find the next perfect position. I always say, apply to 25 jobs as quickly as possible. Then come back and tell me that they all rejected you.

Good luck! It will work out soon enough!

I have held two jobs in my professional career of 16 years and yet if I was out of a job tomorrow I likely could not get past this bizarre new interview process.

This is in spite of my having launched and supported four significant software products in platforms and languages that before that point I had never touched. All this in two very not-sexy niche industries that required specialized knowledge I did not have.

Did I mention that on a scale form 1-10 I realistically operate at about a 3? Take heart, until this year I have never worked with anyone that was better than I at this job. Of the two people that have the talent and evolving skills to surpass me - I trained them so there is that :)

Oh - I am also likely too old now (45) to even GET the interview without subterfuge.

While it's hard not to, it's almost never a good idea to take a generic rejection like this at face value. This is one of a number of things prospective employers just say when they've decided to hire someone else, usually designed to give as little insight as possible as to why they made the decision they did (and along with it, as little exposure to liability).

And common hiring practices being what they are (possibly as bad as random chance as far as getting people who are in fact good fits), it's likely enough that they didn't really have much in the way of insight into your skills. And may not really be clear on why they made the choices they did.

So, it may not be you.

That said, even as a fellow explorer/hiker/kayaker who likes to have other things to do when I'm not at work... some well-selected personal projects are probably a good idea to have. They may not need to be big ones, even small ones that scratch a personal itch might help with employers who use a github profile as a heuristic for engaged interest in the field. I'm thinking of a little Python script I wrote about a year ago, its sole purpose was to list unix permissions for each directory above the current one, something I occasionally need to do when tracking down reasons why a webserver might deny access to resources located within a directory. There was a period right after I'd created it and put it up on github that I was getting recruiting interest as a Python dev. But something related to your MS might even be a better idea.