A's hire A's and B's hire C's.

http://www.hrdusa.com/As_hire_As.html

And since everybody knows they're an A, the only explanation for a 'no hire' decision must be that the interviewer is a B.

Or more likely the overwhelming majority of people who think they are "A" just aren't.

Funnily enough, often people who clearly are top rate don't think so (impostor syndrome). Dunning–Kruger appears to be very healthy in development circles.

I'm a C, I hire A++ and steal all the credit!

You're an A because you know you're a C and have employed this workaround to compensate ;)

Well now you and my wife can agree on that. So I've got two people in my corner!

I'm actually a mediocre software engineer. Making an accounting system do XYZ for the 4000th time isn't interesting anymore. Doing it in Angular with all the new whizbang whistles and shit is more annoying than fun.

I'm looking at a career switch or something different. I can't keep creating the same nonsense over and over and watch IT run by people that largely wouldn't be good as managers of a McDonald's much less an entire organization's IT department.

The first way to see if a company actually understands the importance of IT is to see whether they have a CIO or a Director of IT / VP Engineering / Other less than CIO role. If they can't even commit a C role, what do you think their thoughts are on IT?

</rant former IT Director> :-)

Who hires the Bs in the first place? :)

People with no budget.

That seems more aspirational than realistic.

That's because B's are much more common than A's.

> The guy was scared of competition.

Or being moved down in the stack ranking and cut.

This is a great point. I wonder how many good candidates get rejected simply because an interviewer's bonus depends on him remaining the most talented person on the team?

A lot probably. Is very common among scientists hiring another scientists in my opinion.

The guy who wants to get you ignored due to potential competition is not likely to frankly admit that you are better. He will have some excuse, like you didn't use enough design patterns.