this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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My take is that no matter which language you are using, and no matter the field you work in, you will always have something to learn.
After 4 years of professional development, I rated my knowledge of C++ at 7/10. After 8 years, I rated it 4/10. After 15 years, I can confidently say 6.5/10.
This take gets colder as you get more experience.
Amen. I once had an interview where they asked what my skill is with .net on a scale of 1 - 10. I answered 6.5 even though at the time I had been doing it for 7 years. They looked annoyed and said they were looking for someone who was a 10. I countered with nobody is a 10, not them or even the people working on the framework itself. I didn't pass the interview and I think this question was why.
Your mistake was giving them an answer instead of asking how the scale was setup before giving them a number. Psychologically, by answering first your established that the question was valid as presented and it anchored their expectations as the ones you had to live up to. By questioning it you get to anchor your response to a different point.
Sometimes questions like this can be used to see how effective a person will be in certain lead roles. Recognizing, explaining and disambiguating the trap question is a valuable lead skill in some roles. Not all mind you... And maybe not ones most people would want.
But most likely you dodged a bullet.
I was kicking myself for days afterwards for not doing exactly as you said. I'm not good at these types of interview questions in the moment. Also before that was the tech interview classic of asking a bunch random trivia questions, which I actually nailed. Also this was for dev II position.
I definitely dodged a bullet though. Some months later I got hired at a different company for 30k more.
Did your interviewer profess to be a 10 in .net, otherwise how would they know what that looks like? I was told that I'm unsuitable as a programmer of PLC because I never used their software before. That I write the algorithms that go into a PLC was not sufficient. These people are looking for unicorns but find donkeys everywhere they look.
He claimed everyone at dev II and higher was a 10 in their company. Complete dunning Kruger. I have no doubt I could've understood and worked on whatever software they have.
Ouch! Red flag. Sucks to get rejected, but maybe you dodged a bullet.
That's a good way of looking at it.
Hahaha man I feel you
The mark of a true master.
Understanding how complex something is, is irriversible. Once you reach that plateau you will always know how much there is you don't know.