> I have a pet theory that when people interview they bring this buried frustration into the room with them and use the interviewing process to play the part of the people they feel humiliated them.
I think it has more to do with impostor syndrome and a fear that a new person will expose them as the frauds they perceive themselves as.
In my experience, sometimes that fear is justified. The people whom I've run across who are the most condescending to engineers who "haven't proved themselves" often have the most lax coding standards on the team. They're often the ones who build Rube Goldberg programs and who never document their work - you can't be replaced if nobody knows how your core programs work.
I think it has more to do with impostor syndrome and a fear that a new person will expose them as the frauds they perceive themselves as.
In my experience, sometimes that fear is justified. The people whom I've run across who are the most condescending to engineers who "haven't proved themselves" often have the most lax coding standards on the team. They're often the ones who build Rube Goldberg programs and who never document their work - you can't be replaced if nobody knows how your core programs work.