I just turned someone down today who was by all accounts competent, but just came across as the kind of person I wouldn't want to work with.
You might want to take a lot more time working on that personality if yours. Everything you wrote in your post and your post's general tone screamed to me "humorless with a chip on his shoulder."
And dump the self deprecation bit. No one's gonna hold your hand here. I doubt you're a bad programmer, I just think you suck at being likable. Shitty, I know. Now do something about it. Much more than you've been doing. Be approachable. Politics will always get your much further than skill.
I think the guy was just being honest. I've never been in his situation before, as I subscribe to the notion of not leaving an opportunity until you have another sure fire opportunity (I know this isn't a popular outlook here), but I bet he's scared and just did a brain dump of his feelings.
I don't know the guy, so I'm not qualified to comment on his personality. From the several paragraphs I have to decipher his personality, he doesn't seem like a bad guy, and he seems to be good at communicating his thoughts. Maybe he's just looking for jobs in all the wrong places?
> I've never been in his situation before, as I subscribe to the notion of not leaving an opportunity until you have another sure fire opportunity
I think you really hit on something here.
I think the concept of "scared money" applies here. He's interviewing from a position of weakness (not having a job in hand to fall back on) and that causes him to perform in a way that could be coming of as desperate and dejected to interviewers. Some people are better at hiding that than others, but i'm thinking the author might have an issue with it.
You might want to take a lot more time working on that personality if yours. Everything you wrote in your post and your post's general tone screamed to me "humorless with a chip on his shoulder."
And dump the self deprecation bit. No one's gonna hold your hand here. I doubt you're a bad programmer, I just think you suck at being likable. Shitty, I know. Now do something about it. Much more than you've been doing. Be approachable. Politics will always get your much further than skill.