&gt; Too much focus on happening to have encountered the particular skills you ask about in the technical grilling.<p>I agree somewhat, but I&#x27;ve seen many people making mistakes, learning on the job what not to do, and making the entire team learn from their mistakes. So there definitely needs to be some technical experience at the helm of the team to make sure any technical mistakes can be corrected without undue effort.<p>In other words, knowledge, intelligence, understanding, and wisdom are all different things. I&#x27;m very excited to hire smart, humble people, but only if my org has some defenses against well-meaning people that are trying out some new technology for the first time. And if a good chunk of the team is smart, inexperienced people, even diligent code review doesn&#x27;t really cut it.