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This is one of the things I look for when I'm being interviewed. Does the company want me to be desperate?

Some companies will only hire those who are desperate and will do anything. I assume, hopefully correctly, that those are the companies not worth working for, so instead I use the interview opportunity to get better at interviewing. Because these companies want to take advantage of their employees, I do not feel bad wasting their time.



Careful, lads, it's possible to be TOO confident.

I interviewed at a few places for some really easy, fun-looking jobs while I was doing freelancing. I didn't care if I got the jobs, but they did look trivially easy compared to what I'd been doing earlier in my career. Surprisingly though, after making it through all the technical people and talking to the CEO in every case, I never got the job.

Later on I applied to a really awesome job at a FAANG-class megacorp, and the hiring manager's manager called me. He said "Look, you've gotten the highest marks I've ever seen for a candidate. Everyone loved you. But I have a hunch that you aren't going to be dedicated to this job. So before we move forward, I want your personal promise that you aren't planning to just hop ship in 6 months to start a company or something"

I was JUST starting to get nervous about finding a new job at this point. My consulting work had dried up, I was down to about 3 months' worth of cash, and I was thinking about selling my car to get a few more months' runway while I grind Leetcode in order to be able to pass the bar at Google.

So you can imagine how shocked I was to hear that this guy thought his awesome senior engineer FAANG job wasn't good enough for me. I promised to stick it out, got the job, and so far it's been my favorite job of all time (other than the glorious week where my crypto trading bot was working well and just printing free money..)




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