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RawData

I've built lots of stuff that doesn't suck. I'd still bomb a technical interview.

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Step 1:

Throw out this attitude. It's utterly useless.

Step 2:

Go bomb five technical interviews and learn from them.

Step 3:

Ace the sixth.

This applies to any type of interviews/beginnings. Since op listed himself as an entrepreneur who has sold companies, I'd expect this concept to not be novel. Probably, just a matter of regaining some confidence.

Yes. The first step to success is repeated failure. It's okay. If you can accept that it will happen then you can get it out of the way and be ready to succeed.

This is absolutely the right answer.

From the article:

> but I’d probably utterly fail any type of formal interview where they asked me to write or explain code on the spot.

It seems to me that you lack comunication skills to explain what you know. I would be very difficult to somebody to hire you to do team work, maybe you should try freelancing or improve your understanding of what are you doing, commenting your code would be a good start.

I feel like the parent, and not due to communication skills per-say, but because that kind of thought requires self-reflection and doesn't just come up naturally while in conversation. If I went away for a while to think about it, then I could explain it to you just fine, but I've never been in an interview that operated that way.

Agreed. Communication is a skill and it is learnable. I suggest attending a PHP meetup [1] in your area or nearest city. I'm sure many of them would be interested in your background and they in return would be able to help you hone your communication skills, both verbally and in code. Good luck!

[1] http://www.meetup.com

This. Communication skills seems to be the real problem, specifically technical communication skills. In addition to comments, try reading "Code Complete 2" to build vocabulary or giving short talks at your local user groups to practice technical speaking skills.

Out of a 5-year computer engineering degree, the "technical" bits of most developer interviews draw on what I learned in one class. One.

Go take an undergrad algorithms class at a local university. Make sure it covers "big O" notation. Read a book or two on data structures.

You're now equipped to handle CS interview questions.

If you want to practice for technical interviews, you can do programming contest type problems. They're generally similar to technical interview problems, but a bit more difficult. Interviewstreet is probably one of the more accessible places to start doing this, but there are lots of others.

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