Interview advice that got me offers

> Your mad technical skills no longer matter to them. If anything, humility and an openness to learning will show you in the best light.

I've been interviewing for the last couple of weeks and I agree with this. Being a "good" human being, i.e. candid, humble, kind, friendly, seems to be valued a lot more than what I thought before.

At the end of the day is people working with people, and the more humans that interactions can be, as opposed to a rigid, dry act, the better.

At least, that gives an idea of the company and if it's a fit for me.

“Keeping those skills sharp even when you’re not job hunting.”

It’s so tiring to continue to see this.

If the “skills” you need to keep sharp are not the same thing as the skills you exercise through your job, that’s a giant red flag that the hiring company should be avoided.

If you’re practicing leetcode or Kaggle in your spare time to pass interviews, you need to stop and realize you’ve set up your goals completely backward and you are actively helping companies to commoditize your labor product and short change you on poor job quality or experience building.

If you don’t reject companies when they try the algorithm hazing crap that has no bearing on the real day to day job of software engineering, you are setting yourself up to fail and burn out, with crappy resume experience and nothing but perpetual leetcode skill to show for it.

its easier to train someone up in technical skills than to untrain them from being a dick

> Keeping those skills sharp even when you’re not job hunting.

I rather hire someone with wisdom across multiple areas than a bleeding edge expert in few, very narrow specialty.

In my experience, a group of generalists will often deal better with a problem than a group of specialist.

Can confirm as a senior engineer at a FAANG. I've rejected people for showing negative non-technical traits but being ok technically, and recommended people for hire with not the best technical skills but with excellent non-technical/leadership traits.

Life is too short to work with assholes if it can be helped.