Staying behind on tech trends can be a career killer.

But let’s face it, no one has hours to spare every week trying to stay updated.

That’s why over 200,000 engineers at companies like Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here’s why it works:

Join 200,000+ engineers who read The Code to stay ahead of the curve.

A few weeks ago, I got rejected for an easy contract role that I’d been recruited for through LinkedIn.  I could have done the job in my sleep, as all it required was talking to some top leadership at a major media company, and distilling conversations into a white paper, something I do (and have done) quite frequently for the last ten years. The rejection, as always, was delivered with the particular gentleness people reserve for bad news, and it was simply that I was too experienced for the role. 

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t bothered by it. For one, who wouldn’t want to earn an easy $10k over a month? Secondly, the idea that someone else decides what was above my pay grade and work quality and what was below it, is something that particularly gets under my skin. But the part that particularly irritated me was that the recruiters were “moving fast,” which meant I had to blow up three days of my week to make time for random last-minute interviews in which I was required to wear “business professional” garb. (Which, really? Unless you’re in banking, who even wears a suit to the office these days, and WHY?)

Following the rejection, there was also a part of my brain that went: “It’s because you’ve hit a certain age,” but in reality, that isn’t the case at all. The folks I interviewed with simply didn’t want to deal with someone like me, with a breadth of experience and skill that probably well outstripped their own. 

The decision was ultimately about them, more than it was about me, but I also learned something from the experience, and it’s something I think that experienced journalists (myself included) tend to forget. 

You not only need to tailor your resume and cover letter to the job you’re applying for–you need to tailor your interviews, too. These days, being an overachiever is a detriment to getting hired.

I have spent most of my career believing in the opposite approach: bring everything you have, show the full range, let people see what they are actually getting, show how indispensable you are and how much you can accomplish, and bring your whole self to the work. That philosophy has served me well for a long time and landed me countless opportunities. It still feels right to me in principle (and admittedly resonates deeply with who I am). The best hires I have made myself, and the best work I have done, came from people who showed up whole, not those who trimmed themselves down to fit a rubric.

As my dad told me while I lamented about the experience, “Maybe you need to be a little less who you are?” At first, my reaction was outright rejection of the idea, but it’s come up a few times in the last few months, with various interviews and rejections,  and I think he may be on to something. 

The market clearly does not reward showing up as a full and complete human being these days.  At lean, often understaffed outlets, full of people afraid to lose their jobs, a candidate who looks like they could do three jobs reads as a flight risk, a salary problem, a future management headache, or an outright threat, even when none of that is true. The breadth of experience and expertise that used to open doors is now making people nervous, and nervous hiring managers pass. 

So the adjustment that I’ve learned I’m going to need to make, as uncomfortable as it is, is to edit myself down. Keep your skills to the job description; don’t show what you can really do. Do not misrepresent yourself, but deliberately narrow what you lead with. Pull the clips that map directly to the role, and talk about the experience you have that directly relates to the role–nothing more. Leave the rest off the table. 

The person sitting across the table from you in a Zoom meeting is probably going to be threatened by what you bring to the table as a deeply experienced journalist. Lead with what they need, as specifically outlined in the job description, rather than with what you have done or what you can do, because those are not always the same.  Unless the interviewer is a very rare bird, and has a good grasp and comfort level with their own expertise, and sees you as a compliment to add to their team, they will take a pass on you, no matter how well you could execute their project.

Tailoring your resume and cover letter up is one skill. Tailoring your lived experience and skills down is a whole other. For those of us who were taught that underselling yourself is a form of dishonesty, that second skill takes some practice, and I’m clearly still working on it.

Those of us who have both self-awareness and assuredness know that the only way to improve any performance is to review, learn from, and reinvent ourselves. Sometimes, however, you need a coach.

Chess turns out to be a surprisingly good training ground for exactly that kind of thinking. Not the playing, but the analysis afterward and the learning process going forward.

If you play chess online (on Chess.com, for example), there’s a tool you should be using to get better at the long game.  My other half has built an app that provides individualized coaching to help you become fundamentally better at Chess, and he’s looking for a handful of Android beta testers to give him feedback on the app. 

The app is called Chessalyze, and it is a new Android app that imports your games from Chess.com and Lichess, then gives you move-by-move Stockfish analysis with accuracy ratings, move classifications (brilliant, blunder, and everything in between), and an interactive evaluation graph, plus player insights including strengths and weaknesses, all running locally on your device. You can rerun old games to learn where you went wrong, and you own all the data.

Sign up via this Google Doc link to try it out and give feedback before he releases it into the wild. Once you sign up, you’ll get a link to download the app for free. Right now, it's only available to Android users, but he plans to open it to Apple users once he completes this round of testing. If you signed up last week, be sure to find the automated email response and download the app to start learning from your games.

The job list is solid today and includes more than 30 new opportunities for journalists to earn up to $210,000 per year.

All of the roles are hybrid or remote, all pay at least $1 per word or $100k per year, and I include all email addresses and pitching guides so you can chase down the right editors to pitch.

On the freelance front, there are opportunities to pitch and work for:

There are tons of brand new opportunities to go full-time, too, at publications like:

The Dishonorables are rip-roaring today, and there’s one really nice Passion Project for you.

All jobs pay at least $1 per word and up to $210,000 per year, and have been posted in the last 7 days.