Bombed more than one technical interview but here's one example.
Phone screen interview with Google. Interviewer asked about how I would keep track of the nth highest value in an infinite stream of values. I said I would use a heap. Then interviewer asked to me write the code for that heap in a Google Doc. I can't remember what I wrote, but I'm pretty sure that I barely got started. Boom.
Lesson here is that simply knowing something in general might not be enough. If you think you know something, try implementing it from scratch to be sure.
"Have everything in writing, complete with date and signatures"
It is possible that the executives won't take it well to all of the formality here (writing and signatures). How would you convince them that this is necessary?
Compared to REST APIs, I like how it eliminates the coarse-grained vs. fine-grained decision for designing queries in APIs. You can just spec out the model and let the clients decide what they need.
Some mechanism to significantly improve intelligence. This could be in any form: book, coaching, game, etc. Some examples of benefits:
- Avoiding making mistakes that cost time among other things (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure). Programming bugs are on my mind at the moment but could be in other areas as well.