> so I'm expecting an offer, but it still feels like a major blow to my ego to even be considering taking the job.

If they sensed that, it might hurt your chances of getting an offer. (I don't mean to be a downer, and I really hope you get it and it's better than you expect.)

Oddly enough sometimes an employee kicking ass during a technical interview and coming off as a "great deal" is a bad thing. They may realize you'll likely leave in 6 months and they'd rather invest in someone who will need to stick around longer.

Believe me, that thought has crossed my mind. After the HR interview, where I found out the job wasn't at all what I expected or wanted, I was actually sort of depressed at the thought of taking it. I eventually settled into the idea that I therefore had nothing to lose - either I got the job and had cashflow again, or I didn't get the job and didn't have to move to a city (town, really) I didn't want to me in, doing a job I didn't want.

To that end, I decided that I wasn't even going to bother preparing for the interview, and I'd just wing it and see what happened (this was likely a defense mechanism - if I don't bother to even prepare, then it doesn't reflect on me if I do poorly / don't get the job). Feeling how I do about the interview, if I don't get the offer then it doesn't hurt my ego since I can be reasonably sure they passed on me for the exact reasons you described.

That said, I did try to do some preemptive damage control. I asked about opportunities for advancement in the company, expressed an interest in the certifications they mentioned, etc. In the HR interview, when asked whether I could be happy in a testing role, coming from development, I explained that I had enjoyed the bits of testing experience I had as part of my last job, that I wouldn't mind a break from development at the very least, and that any development itches I had could be scratched by my side project. Incidentally, this also opened the topic of intellectual property and all that, and she said that there were established procedures for that, and that it wouldn't be an issue.

So whatever happens, I'm ok with it.

This exact scenario actually happened to me. I thought everything went extremely well, but I was ultimately rejected for fear of me using the position as a stepping stone. I find that logic to be pretty flawed - as someone who was unemployed for a few months, wouldn't my best interest be to hold a steady job for a decent amount of time?

Why would it be?

Employment is like dating - you're more desirable if you've already got a job. The number of companies willing to speak with you dramatically increases - and why wouldn't you trade up if given the opportunity, especially if this current job is "below" your standards to begin with?

Well, they called me to do one last interview with a manager this afternoon, so maybe they actually are interested in me,.

This is exactly the sort of inefficiency of the market that the article discusses. Location is key. In Chicago, we are trying very hard to find good programmers, and we can afford to pay them very well. But there just aren't a whole lot of programmers in Chicago that we can find, so we have unfilled open positions.

In the mean time, you are stuck at a job where your skills are wasted and where you don't get much money.

Very inefficient market.

Have you considered an AnyBot?

I think our hiring problems revolve around artificial constraints. We want to go through recruiters, and we want people with experience "in finance".

Obviously there are plenty of great programmers with no finance experience, and going through recruiters does not work for recruiting programmers.

If you are hiring an HR person, you get too many applications, and you need someone in the middle to weed out obviously unqualified people. But for programmers, there are not nearly enough candidates that reviewing each resume would be too onerous, and recruiters can't ask the right questions to separate excellent candidates from mediocre candidates. If I saw a resume that said "experience writing Haskell and QuickCheck tests", I would call the person that instant. When a recruiter sees that, though, the resume goes in the garbage because "it doesn't say TDD", or "we need 10 years of experience with Java", or something. While it's true that we aren't hiring for a Haskell position (though we do use Haskell), it's also true that someone who's good at Haskell will pick up Scala pretty quickly. (They might not want to switch languages, which I completely understand, but it's nice to give them the option.)

Anyway, industry still doesn't "get" programming, but we are getting closer. Some day. Some day.

(We also do some weird things, like find great candidates and then say, "oh yeah, we can only give you a four month contracting position with no benefits, and also, we can't pay for your relocation". I'm sad that we can't hire people, but happy that good programmers won't take such an obviously shitty deal.)

I am in similar position but doing a depressing job ( for major portion of the day) takes a physiological toll on you . Everything ( lemonade ) looks uninteresting .

Seriously. I have a job I never imagined having, it pays my bills but is killing my soul. I can't wait for people to start hiring again, I will leave in a heartbeat. It's not the money, it's about doing something fulfilling.

People seem to have started hiring again at least in the US . I heard my boss lament how they are having hard time finding "bodies" ( they apparently need 2.5 resources for some upcoming project ).

A portfolio / CV (even anonymized) would be nice to see if you would fit other companies profiles.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. Do you mean to post on Hacker News? It wouldn't need to be anonymized since my name is trivially discoverable by looking through my comments, but that's why I wouldn't post it here. It's simply too embarrassing; I'm not a particularly impressive or skilled person (yet).

how much prior work experience do you have? did you work primarily as a tester?

It's hard to explain. I spent about a year in my last job validating a code migration a different vendor had done for our client. It's not really the same as what I'd be doing at this new job, but there are similar principles at play.

The job is basically entry-level testing (0-2 years experience, the ad - which was otherwise inaccurate -said). The technical interviewer did mention that experience wasn't necessary and that they regularly interview people with literally no experience - they just look for people with the right mindset.

She seemed to indicate that my technical background was a plus, and I definitely showed that I understood what the job required.

Still, in the first interview, the HR woman noticeably hesitated before giving a salary range, indicating that she was probably aware that it would be a pay cut for me (also, if HR feels the need to give a number first, that's probably a bad sign in terms of expectations of overqualification). As I said above though, going into the technical interview I really didn't care if I got the job or not, and it wouldn't kill me if I didn't get it, especially since it would be very obvious that the reason wasn't underqualification.