Programming as a career

I've started looking again (thankfully a voluntary search this time), but I've been whiffing pretty badly so far. Just 3 phone screens, and nothing beyond that (though I'm not applying every day), and one thing that I've noticed is that I hate the "walk me through a complex project you've worked on" prompt. Maybe this is confirmation bias but I feel like every time I get asked that, the interviewer is at best unimpressed with my answer. What exactly do they want to hear? (Obviously that depends on whether it's an HR person vs. someone on the tech side, but I don't think I've success with either.) If I'm being honest with myself, I don't think I have any impressive projects in my career, but maybe I'm not being generous to myself?

Imo the point of that question is to demonstrate some combination of: you are good at explaining something, you have done actual work, you made technical decisions, you worked effectively in a team, you worked effectively with limited direct supervision, you worked effectively with legacy code. It’s not to dazzle the interviewer with like “I wrote full self driving for Tesla!” Just pick something from the most recent gig that you can explain what you did and what the impact was.

For a phone screen, I don't really know what they'd be looking for. Probably some combo of impact and your importance to the team? I've never been asked that question on a screen

But in a technical interview, I've struggled a bit with that question. The only project I've worked on that truly felt complex was in a 16-developer team but I only worked on a couple parts of it in depth and I struggle to explain the project in full

I should mention I did finally get a senior SWE job late last year which I'm still working in now. So far so good: place is a bit behind in tech stack but the people are good to work with and open to improvements. Very relieved to be out of the search for now

I tend not to ask candidates variants of "toughest challenge" or "hardest bug", but if I were to, here's what I would look for:

- Level of technical depth in at least one area engaging with the problem. As you engaged with it, what things did you bring to the table to help break it down? A decent understanding of databases? A clear understanding of how mobile a11y works? considerations around network protocols, latency, errors? Nuances and tradeoffs in web frameworks? Etc

- Field of view: How aware were you of how your work fit into the bigger picture, either with your teammates, your management chain, or other "crossfunctional stakeholders"/non-programmer types? Did you see flexibility in requirements where none was necessarily obvious, bring insight to others or learn insight from others that helped you resolve the challenge?

- What would you have done differently in retrospect, or what did this challenge teach you about how to engage with other challenges in the future?

Not all of everything needs to be present, and a lot somewhere is better than a little everywhere. But that's what I would look for.

One challenge is that the person evaluating you may know absolutely nothing about the domain you were working in. I am fortunate to have a pretty diverse background, but I see this sometimes when I get folks who have very specific experiences that I do not (working on network switches, or non-consumer systems, etc)

Failed to move onto the next round of interviews at a place I *really* wanted to go to, seriously gutted. I might've come off too strong/desperate.

Found another bug in this framework I'm using (after a few days of crippling self-doubt / depression.)

The market seems pretty tight right now, especially if you're trying to avoid the AI craze. Very low rate of responses, as well as an unusually high rejection rate at the initial phone screen stage (or I've become a worse interviewer than the last time I did this).

Here at the big tech company I work at, we are basically hiring zero new grads (after always hiring plenty every year). We don't even have interns.

And we're not hiring anyone else either except as backfills, it seems :(