I helped with interviews at a company a few years ago. We eventually stopped asking candidates to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 in the language we used.

The answer was consistently 7 or 8 (with one 6 if I recall correctly), independent of experience, skill, or understanding. Since we were doing technical interviews and testing, we could actually judge the person's skills for ourselves, so we dropped the question as a waste of time.

I'm curious how well the person who answered 6 did on the technical interview. My first guess would be that person would be one of the most competent.

I would have hoped so, but if I recall correctly the person was below the average of what we had been interviewing.

The main reason we dropped the question was that we got no useful information from it.

G. Wade

Personally, I believe very little of what I claim :-)

Anyway, I agree: you lose your edge by either believing you're "good enough", or "perfect", not merely "good".

--
use JAPH;
print JAPH::asString();

There is a lot about Perl (and many other things) that I don't know. I know that. I also know where to go to (re)read about it. I am striving to be honest about the breath of my knowledge in the face of a simplistic rating scheme.

There are very few things where I know that I know everything there is to know about the subject. And, there are some subjects where I know that I have read everything currently available. Most everything else falls in to the 'I know enough to follow your argument, and if you want more detail, here is where I was reading about it a while back' category...

I figure that I loose out on some gigs because of this attitude. On the other hand, a number of folks have come back when the contract comes in six weeks early and said: "you under-rated your self on the questionnaire; we are adding a performance bonus for finishing early." And I get a lot of repeat customers this way.

Life is too short (especially at my age) to remember all of the detailed nits about pack()/unpack(); knowing that there is a table in the Perl In A Nutshell, however....

It is interesting that you chose A-Rod as an example, since he just 'fessed up to using steroids.

Oh, and, for the record, Pete Rose, who would be in the Hall of Fame had it not been for his transgressions, is banned from all things baseball.

I wonder... is there any (Perl) programmers analog to 'roids?

Portfolio theft? I'd say it's one of the highest crimes one programmer, designer (software, graphic, or any other kind), musician, artist, or engineer can commit against another in the context of work.

I know when I found a guy claiming pieces from the portfolio of mine and my former coworker on some freelancing site, I was entirely appalled. I expected them to kick him off the site, but all they did was make him remove the specific work I could prove wasn't his. Who knows how much of his supposed work is just ripped off from someone else? What I really wanted to do was pretend to pretend to want his services so I could negotiate a meeting and beat the living hell out of him. Thankfully, my cooler side prevailed. I'd probably have served the jail time he has, IMHO, earned.

Open source is great, and I have no problems with contributing to publicly available projects. Don't ever tell someone you did work that I did, though. That's fraud for one thing, and it's likely to harm my livelihood for another.

That includes listing programs you didn't program in your portfolio, taking other people's copyrights out of credits, inserting your name into credits for parts of a work you didn't do, and just generally claiming any work that isn't yours. Anyone who does such things should be banned from the industry.

I LOVE the baseball analogy. It must be pointed out that regardless of Mr. Rose's transgressions off the field, you can't take away anything he did as "Charlie Hustle". Hall of Famer without question, as long as Shoeless Joe Jackson is in.

To the extent that the question has any utility at all (see gwadej's reply) that is not a problem. papidave's replyhits pretty close to why: when you are selecting a candidate for a position a base level of competency is assumed. You've got to have someone actually capable of doing the job. If the question provides any useful information, that information is related to finding the most appropriate candidate, not for making the cut between immediate rejection and further consideration.

---

True laziness is hard work

It is certainly true that the worst of players paid to play professional ball at the A or AA level exceed my baseball capability by several orders of magnitude. It seems to me, however, that the distinction being made is only attempting to differentiate between people with the minimum skills required to play the game at all.

Likewise, I know plenty of people whom I would never trust to develop software for me in Perl or any other language. Many of these same people I deeply respect for other reasons; they simply don't have what it takes to think through a software project and make it a reality. It is unpleasant to consider that people who don't have those minimum skills would be trying to work in a field where they should know they can't do the job, much less well.

What's most interesting about this metaphor is the set of players who really need more seasoning at AAA, but are 'stuck' in the bigs because they've used up all their options. The demands put on them day-to-day prevent them from learning the skills that would allow them to become the quality player they could be. I think this happens in IT also.

Seeing that my salary has somehow crept up to the major league minimum (not a bad thing, I might add), I am now really hoping I'm not one of those people who has been elevated to his level of incompetence. In the mean time, I'm going to give myself the benefit of the doubt, and vote myself a (4). But all other things being equal, I'd still rather be the starting 2B at AAA than ride the bench all season for the Pirates.

Another trap of a question like this is complacency. The second that you start labelling yourself as good, you lose your competitive edge.

I disagree. It's an opportunity to exercise self confidence. This type of question is too subjective to provide a meaningful metric. Before you sell yourself short, how do you know their definition of "expert" is the same as yours?

So, if you think you can actually do the work, rate yourself a 5. Screening candidates is their job, not yours. Your job is to get hired. And so what if you jump in a little over your head. It's good motivation to improve your skills.

It would be pretty rare to find any professional (as in "paid") players below the Conference (tiers 5 & 6).

(Hmm - don't know exactly where to go with this post, so...)

"Meditate accordingly."

You have to decide if the interview question is honestly asking you to appraise your own programming skill, or else trying to determine if you a) lack self esteem, or b) have an inflated ego. If it's the later, I'd go with "4" (confident, but not egomaniacal). If it's the former, I'd go with a "5". Note that you're not really comparing yourself to all perl programmers, just those competing for the same job. If you were all being chased through the woods by a hungry bear, you don't have to outrun the bear, just the other programmers! (assuming the bear stops running while eating...)

1. If you are to be praised, then let other people praise you. If you praise yourself, you will sound like a macaw.
2. A skilled craftsman can transform a toothpick into a thing of beauty, while a tyro can do nothing more with the finest woods than to saw them into little pieces.
3. Not every task requires a skilled craftsman. There is plenty of need for sawing wood into little pieces, but for this, knotty pine will do nicely.