Despite all his colleagues, friends, and coworkers telling him he is proficient, keeping current in the industry, coding for fun, contributing to open source, proactively bettering his coding style and knowledge, and knowing a lot of theory, his mediocre interviews are enough to convince him that he's a bad developer. I'd wager that the problem is NOT his skills as a developer, but his skills at interviews... especially since he seems to have gotten a lot of his previous jobs through networking.
>I am now in the buffer zone and have interviewed with close to ten companies to date.
Seriously??? 9 interviews without a job offer from companies which I'm assuming he didn't have any connections with, and despite all his past accomplishments, which he barely even mentions, that's enough to convince him that he's a bad coder and bad at his job.
Come on dude. Get real. You're probably a great developer and suck at selling yourself. What's more likely? Being bad at the thing you love, that other people agree you're good at, and have been doing for years, or the thing that you admit you find difficult and in which you have almost no interest?
When I hit the "I allowed one month for interviewing and one month for buffer", I already knew what the outcome would be and my brain was screaming "WRONG!"
Job applications are very stop-start affairs. Post a job ad. Wait a couple of weeks for it to finish. Then leave the collated resumes on the hiring manager's desk for a while, then someone prods the manager "why don't we have a -foo- yet?". Manager starts the callaround, does the first round of interviews, makes a shortlist, then they sit on the desk again. Maybe discuss potentials with other staff, but it peters out. There's so much other stuff to do! Then someone says "Why don't we have a -foo- yet?". Rinse, repeat. It certainly doesn't always happen, but it's common enough.
At one place I worked, I was basically the sole applicant - my friend worked the other support role and recommended me. The HR officer (CEO's wife...) called me in. That went well, so I had a second 'confirm this guy isn't an idiot' interview with the CEO. A couple of polite proddings received no response. I asked my friend and he said "I thought we did agree to hire you, that's what I heard". A couple more proddings and the CEO said 'Yes'. But the HR officer wasn't responding. At this stage it was six weeks from first interview to CEO 'Yes'. We hadn't even discussed salary yet. I was so desperate for a job at the time, that I just rolled up and started working, because fuck it, the worst that can happen is that it's abysmally low and I go elsewhere - it's not like my days were productive otherwise. A panicked call from the HR officer the next day did a hurried salary negotiation.
Now sure, the last part of this story isn't typical (though I find it funny), but it took 6 weeks for me to get a job with a small, busy company who had staff with prior positive experience with me as a colleague and no competition. One month is nothing when it comes to applying for skilled work.
Granted 10 is a bit much. But it depends on who to interview with. If you are good, there are consulting companies like ThoughtBot or PivotalLabs who hire good developers pretty easily. And their interview process is all about checking if you are good and get along with people rather than just if you know how to traverse obscure data structures.
Imposter syndrome does sound quite right. Or the guy is just depressed pretty hard.
> Imposter syndrome does sound quite right. Or the guy is just depressed pretty hard.
Setbacks at the interview stage rank among the most depressing and confidence sapping experiences in my professional career. I think it could make anyone fairly depressed, but IANAD.
I think it's a combination of both. He sounds ashamed to be a software developer to the extent that he doesn't want his daughter to know. What's up with that? It might not be the same as being a heart surgeon, but at least in the US software engineering is viewed very positively as a career, probably alongside chemical engineering and law (actually law is viewed fairly negatively by many these days).
Heart surgeon? No. But lawyer? Yes. Chemical engineer? Yes. Physician? Yes (private family practice is a dying art in the US). Movie star? Yes.
Very few career paths offer absolute job stability and an infallible guarantee of employability. That's no reason to be embarrassed of a career choice.
Despite all his colleagues, friends, and coworkers telling him he is proficient, keeping current in the industry, coding for fun, contributing to open source, proactively bettering his coding style and knowledge, and knowing a lot of theory, his mediocre interviews are enough to convince him that he's a bad developer. I'd wager that the problem is NOT his skills as a developer, but his skills at interviews... especially since he seems to have gotten a lot of his previous jobs through networking.
>I am now in the buffer zone and have interviewed with close to ten companies to date.
Seriously??? 9 interviews without a job offer from companies which I'm assuming he didn't have any connections with, and despite all his past accomplishments, which he barely even mentions, that's enough to convince him that he's a bad coder and bad at his job.
Come on dude. Get real. You're probably a great developer and suck at selling yourself. What's more likely? Being bad at the thing you love, that other people agree you're good at, and have been doing for years, or the thing that you admit you find difficult and in which you have almost no interest?