{"id":20973,"date":"2008-09-05T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2008\/09\/05\/tales-from-the-interview-anticipating-your-own-incompetence-is-not-a-good-interview-strategy\/"},"modified":"2008-09-05T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-05T10:00:00","slug":"tales-from-the-interview-anticipating-your-own-incompetence-is-not-a-good-interview-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20080905-00\/?p=20973","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the interview: Anticipating your own incompetence is not a good interview strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some years ago, there was a candidate who was interviewing for a programming position in my group. The first interviewer asked the candidate about career plans with that old standby, &#8220;Where do you see yourself in five years?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> <i>&mdash; In five years, I see myself in program management.<\/i> <\/p>\n<p> This is a fair answer. Many people see programming as a stepping stone to management. <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2008\/05\/07\/8464281.aspx\"> It doesn&#8217;t have to be<\/a>, but it&#8217;s certainly a career path more than one person has taken. <\/p>\n<p> My colleague decided to probe further. &#8220;What is it about program management that appeals to you?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p> <i>&mdash; Well, after five years, all the kids graduating from college will be so much smarter than me, and they&#8217;ll know all about the latest technologies, so I won&#8217;t be able to cut it as a programmer any more. I&#8217;d have to go into management.<\/i> <\/p>\n<p> It&#8217;s bad enough that your career plan includes never developing any new skills and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0887308589?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=tholneth-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0887308589\">failing upward<\/a>&#8221; into management. It&#8217;s another thing to <i>anticipate it in your interview<\/i>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some years ago, there was a candidate who was interviewing for a programming position in my group. The first interviewer asked the candidate about career plans with that old standby, &#8220;Where do you see yourself in five years?&#8221; &mdash; In five years, I see myself in program management. This is a fair answer. Many people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-20973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Some years ago, there was a candidate who was interviewing for a programming position in my group. The first interviewer asked the candidate about career plans with that old standby, &#8220;Where do you see yourself in five years?&#8221; &mdash; In five years, I see myself in program management. This is a fair answer. Many people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}