by bschmidt197979 | 2026-01-04 17:28:41+00:00
There are a bajillion "Joe Software Engineer" types now is the main issue.

Want to know a sentence that makes me fall asleep and die instantly?

"SWE with 10+ years of experience <list of languages>"

This headline is out of 2015... the generalist software engineer is not a super rare find anymore, and in the age of AI why bother listing what languages you know? If you're very good at 1, and are a decent tinkerer then you are pretty good at all of them with an LLM.

If you have 10 years of experience writing code, you should presently be of SUPERHUMAN INTELLIGENCE with today's tooling. Anyone who denies this, I wonder about their curiosity and capabilities because AI gives you the correct answer in any language you want.

But the main thing causing you to blend in with the sea of other interchangeable parts is the focus on your skills instead of your value

Imagine hiring a teacher who's bio is:

"10+ years experience teaching. Have spoken English professionally."

Or, especially the folks rating their skills with stars and progress bars:

"Pretty mediocre to high-end at English. Not very good at Spanish, but I have spoken it professionally... at a company"

Guys, guys, guys...

OP should do this:

1. Your LI profile is very obviously AI written, just remove all that "keen" stuff

2. Get some contributions to mainstream companies on your GitHub. Open Issues if you have to, something might get picked up then your github will forever say you contributed to "Apple" etc.

3. 1000% delete your "Failed Interviews" repo on github

4. Go by "MarioG" everywhere online, has a nice ring to it and make a Sublime plugin published under MarioG. The fact that you use Sublime is a differentiator at this point. I don't want to hire "SWE with 10+ years of experience <list of languages>" I want to hire the dude who made "MarioG"!!!! ... "what's mario-" Oh? The best AI plugin in Sublime for ruby devs? everyone uses it? it's a household name in the ruby world? (nobody will know lmao). Support HTTP "tunneling" and now it's a pun, it was that easy, they'll even say that they LOVE your plugin because of that pun, everyone's just trying to be liked and say the right thing is what this comes down to

5. Anyway just show this plugin all the time in video calls and interviews with your "Tools by MarioG" branding (with cartoon depiction of yourself as the avatar) cleverly in view, and tell everyone that Jack Dorsey uses it

5b. Any time someone detects your bs and tries to call you out just mention that Jack Dorsey uses it again (don't get carried away and say "Elon Musk" or "Kanye" they would not believe you, but Jack Dorsey is both believable and still impressive)

6. Make up another giant lie that makes your MarioG tool seem like it does something Claude or ChatGPT cannot, and then crucially post it as a Show HN, you will get a 1000 comments which might get you doxxed but will at least put you on the map

7. Find CTO emails in "Who is hiring" threads here, and send them a link to your post. They won't know/care what the overall sentiment was in the comments, just that you had a post on HN with 1000s of comments

8. At this point you are getting 2nd round interviews, when they ask about the code challenge or take-home etc. just ask if it's paid or not. They will say it's paid then never give it to you

9. Ask for "$205k". Any less they will start second guessing you MarioG! Do not give them the chance. Can't go too high because then a lawyer or someone kinda smart might get involved. 205.

10. Ye boiii welcome back