Not technical enough -- that's what they said.

I remember walking away from those interview rounds feeling pretty crushed.

Not technical? How the hell could I not be technical?

Is it because they asked me a technical question that involved knowledge about physical network cards in a data center? I have no idea how anyone without very specific knowledge would have figured out that's what the interviewer was after.

Is it because in the coding round the interviewer wasn't engaging in my explanations and checking of understanding? I had been programming (almost) every day for 17 years up to that point.

That was the start of my Big Tech interview journey for an engineering manager role. Google made me feel pretty worthless after those interviews.

I had interviews with Amazon after. I was technical enough for them.

I had interviews with Microsoft at the same time. I was technical enough for them.

It took some time to get out of my funk, but maybe I needed that reminder. At that time:

- I had made it through one of the top engineering schools in Canada.

- I had programmed for 17 years.

- I knew C#, so I could have ended this list with just that (obviously).

- I had 10 years of professional working experience as a software engineer.

- I had managed teams for 8 years WHILE managing one or two teams of engineers.

- I had helped build many of the products at the startup I was at from scratch. Literally -- that was most of my job.

- ... They would later go public and then get bought back to private for approximately $2 billion. Those products worked.

- I had two patents granted while at this company. I had two more pending.

I won't allow another person to make me feel that I'm "not technical enough". 🎤

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