Knowtu

There’s a paradigm I think out there in some organisations that technical consultants/architects don’t write code. In a small product company this just doesn’t hold. If you’re going out to client sites to explain how to integrate you need to be able to talk to the gamut from management to coders.  The success of the project falls to the people on the other side actually doing the implementation and if you can’t guide them and act as a mentor/lead when necessary then the success of the project is at risk which affects the success of the product.

The 20/80 divide between excellent and average means that if you do a rough reversal 20% of people doing the code will be below average and you will need to mentor them and you should be a shining beacon of coding excellence.

That means when you interview you shouldn’t act as though coding is below you.

If you rate yourself as 10/10 in java but haven’t coded in two years and then fail the intermediate/advanced java questions with “I know but can’t remember as it’s been a while since I wrote java day to day” then you shouldn’t have rated yourself as a 10. It’s just going to annoy the people interviewing you. A 7 or 8 with a passion to learn and grow would in my opinion would be more successful strategy.