Good article, reflects my experience hiring at a small services firm, too.

One thing I'd add re: "non-obviousness." There are also tarpits; people who make you think "I can't believe my luck! How has the market missed someone this good!?" At this point, I have enough scar tissue that I immediately doubt my first instinct here. If someone is amazing on paper/in interviews and they aren't working somewhere more prestigious than my corner of the industry, there is often some mitigating factor: an abrasive personality, an uncanny ability to talk technically about systems they can't actually implement, a tendency to disappear from time to time. For these candidates, I try to focus the rest of the interview process on clearing all possible risks and identifying any mitigating factors we may have missed while getting the candidate excited to work with us assuming everything comes back clean.

Thanks for writing this. As an IC, I read this more from a perspective of "how can I be better at my job and derive more satisfaction from work".

Personally, I think my biggest gaps are around "hunger" and "agency"... I have these things at times, sporadically, but I have difficulty sustaining them long enough to become a really high performer at most jobs. Eventually I get kind of burnt out and stop really giving my all, then transition to something else within a year or so.

I have a high-pedigree CV, so people generally want to hire me, but I often don't live up to their expectations because of this.

Any tips on how to cultivate these traits?

Thanks, this might come in handy. Currently, 4 years in the business. Working for an S&P500 company at the moment, but I am considering running my own thing or joining a startup as the next stop.