As part of my duties as the Delivery Head, I am present when candidates are being interviewed for the positions of a software developer. Though I come from a Java background, the company that I am working for currently has all development in .Net. That means I don't generally venture into technical questions except for basic OOPS stuff. And yet, surprisingly, I find that the candidates who claim to be very good developers are often at the deep end when it comes to the fundamentals. Some cannot give a whole picture of the project that they have worked on except for their own contribution. Some are clueless as to how the project is going to help the end client. And some are over-confident to the point of sounding arrogant.

Last week I dealt with one such developer who answered my questions as if he was doing me a favor by providing answers to the questions that I in my ignorance wasn't capable of finding on my own. And then, at the end of the interview, he had the cheek to ask me for feedback. I almost heard myself say 'You are very confident - because you gave even the wrong answers very confidently.'. But I held back out of sheer politeness.

Looking back, I think I need not have been so polite.