Am I Even Good at This?
What One Month of Developer Interviews Taught Me About Tech Hiring, Anxiety, and Starting Over
Over the last month, I’ve been in full-on interview prep mode—grinding LeetCode, rewriting my resume, tweaking cover letters, and trying to prove I’m a “good enough” software engineer.
It started with what I thought was a dream opportunity: a Senior Developer role at YouVersion. I made it deep into the process. Culturally, it was a great fit. Technically, I held my own.
But I didn’t get the job.
The reason? I wasn’t able to articulate how I’d refactor a function during the technical interview. That’s it. I blanked—performance anxiety kicked in, and I froze.
Five minutes after the interview ended, I figured it out. But it was too late.
The Broken Game of Technical Interviews
Since then, I’ve done a couple dozen interviews and sent out 100+ applications. Here’s the truth:
The software engineering hiring process is broken.
It’s often more about gatekeeping than genuine evaluation. Even with years of experience, every interview feels like I’m starting from scratch—answering textbook questions in multi-step gauntlets where you’re judged not by your problem-solving process, but how quickly you can recall a specific algorithm under pressure.
You can be ghosted without a word. You can be told you’re a “great fit” only to be rejected without explanation. You can pour your energy into a position that’s never really considering you to begin with.
I had one interview recently for a tech support role—low stakes, great culture match, great technical fit—and yet I didn’t even get invited to the second round.
That one hurt more than I expected. It made me ask: Why am I even doing this?
From Senior Dev to Starting Over
The hardest part wasn’t the rejections—it was the way those rejections chipped away at how I saw myself.
I started questioning whether I deserved to call myself a senior developer at all.
So I stripped the title from my identity. I stopped worrying about what I thought I should be, and focused instead on what I needed to become:
Not a developer looking for a job, but a job seeker who happens to write code.
That shift helped. I began breaking interviews down into components. Practicing not just solving problems, but explaining my thought process. Reframing technical interviews as their own skillset—because they are.
The Mental Battle: Pressure and Performance
Even with all that prep, the anxiety hasn’t gone away.
Performing under pressure is brutal.
You want to do well. You want to impress. But that urgency often backfires. Your brain stalls. Your mouth goes dry. The code you know suddenly feels like a foreign language.
And yet—I keep reminding myself:
This isn’t just a “me” problem. It’s a system problem.
A system that rewards those who memorize instead of those who reason. That prioritizes quick thinkers over deep thinkers. That favors performers over builders.
What I’d Tell Myself a Month Ago
If I could go back, I’d tell myself this:
You’re not bad at this. You’re just bad at interviews. That’s fixable.
I’d say: Practice. Learn the game. Play it if you have to. But never let it define your worth.
Because here’s the truth: I’m a better engineer today—not because I passed more interviews, but because I learned how to be honest with myself and adapt.
What Needs to Change
If I could change one thing about how we hire developers?
I’d eliminate the obsession with trick questions and arbitrary live-coding exercises.
In the real world, software engineers Google things. They ask teammates. They iterate. They fail and retry. We’re not paid to regurgitate trivia—we’re paid to solve real problems creatively.
But the hiring process still rewards people who are quick, polished, and algorithmically sharp—at the expense of those who are thoughtful, methodical, and experienced.
It needs to change.
Final Thoughts
I’m still applying. Still practicing. Still fighting to believe that my skills are enough—even if the system says otherwise.
So if you’re reading this, and you’ve been passed over, ghosted, or made to feel like you’re not good enough…
You’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
And you are so much more than one bad interview.
—Austin Howard
Full-stack developer, builder, recovering interviewee
