Can you expand on what you believe is the best way to show your abilities? How do you get pass the gatekeepers? How do you make sure your getting leveled at the right level during the process?
Yes, there are actually people with real life issues who actually face this scenario.
"Gatekeepers" are usually HR, recruiters, or some sort of sourcing agency. Unfortunately resume buzzword bingo is a fundamental of that type of low quality screening.
You can get high quality contacts through other methods. Open source contributions, "published" papers, public presentations, and mailing list comments all provide very good signal for recruiting candidates. Old fashioned networking through peers, user groups, and conventions can not be beat. Those types of contacts usually lead to an internal referral, which is one of the best indicators for hiring.
By "show your abilities" i was thinking of during the interview. When someone asks you how to implement a linked list (ugh) ask questions, use code comments, note edge cases and optimizations, heck write a quick test case to go with it. You can also accomplish via the open source contribution route noted above. A key point is demonstrating knowledge of a problem domain instead of asserting it.
WRT "correct" leveling its very hard to get right. Frankly you, as the candidate, will have a difficult time succeeding with an assertion of "im quite senior". Besides the aforementioned technical ability leadership is incredibly important for senior positions. Its your job to increase the value of your coworkers. A very powerful technique is conveying information through the questions you ask. Asking abiut mentoring opportunities and team growth are positive signals, for example. Ask questions if have concerns during the process. "What types of problems will i be solving" or "how will my work affect customers" might give you insight in to how youre viewed.
Your a newly arrived immigrant from Europe. You wanted to make your fortune in the Americas.
During your journey, your portfolio sank with your ship. You have no contacts in the New World. It would take months to years to gather the letter of recommendations from Europe - that is if they are still there and you remember their address from memory. The other evidence of your work is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
A historical notion that still has applicability in today's world. Think refugees.
How about the pigeonhole effect of linking titles with compensation?
Also, in many places, having the "Junior Dog Walker" outshine the "Lead Dog Walker" can end up being a severe career limiting move. This seems to lead to some hierarchical tensions as many people seem to want their juniors to be juniors and little more but not too much more. How is this countered?
There's really no substitute for good leadership. If your boss doesn't rewards and respect you for being awesome then go to a company that does. It's that simple. The good boss might give you a grandiose title or not, it shouldn't matter.
Many companies have (sometimes without intending to) and it almost always ends really bad. You hope for a an agressive argument and an ultimatum( vs lawsuits)
Are you self-taught? I'm pretty sure that's a pretty basic CS term. To not know it means you're going to have problems communicating.
This goes back to my original comment. You probably know what polymorphism is. You've probably used code that did it. You've probably written original code that exhibits it. And if someone explained it to you, you'd probably be like, oh, right, yeah, that thing, I did something like that over here in this code somewhere.
But, we have special words for things for a reason. Jargon increases the accuracy and efficiency of communication between specialists. You don't have to spend five minutes explaining the semantics of message passing, you can just say it's polymorphic.
Being able to write code for use by a team, and being able to communicate the value of that code, and the structure of that code, to that team, is a skill set completely separate from being able to cobble something together yourself.
"Jargon increases the accuracy and efficiency of communication between specialists."
I think this statement is too broad. This really depends if we're on the same page (i.e. think Java and Javascript). We could end up having a long conversation about something and end up with two ends if we're not careful.
If we've been doing the same thing and working together for many months on end, then I would say yes, jargon works as an efficient means of communication. If we've never met each other and you and me have 20 minutes (realistically 15) before the next interviewer takes me - then we're going to have a problem.
Maybe it's not that you're failing the technical part of the interview, but the cultural and interpersonal parts.
In your cited scenario, it's up to you to ask, "do you mean it generally, at the computer science, theoretical level, or specifically in language X, Y or Z?"
There's nothing wrong with asking for clarification. There's no game to win. There's just basic, professional, communication skills.
Talking and interviewing are skills. They are skills you can learn and practice. Getting defensive when someone is trying to help you is not going to help you.
You will be communicating in many, many different scenarios and with many, many different people who are at different levels of technical knowledge and interpersonal engagement, for the rest of your natural life. Being able to do so well is the most important skill in your professional existence. That's the whole thing. There isn't anything else if you don't have that.
Working on a team is very different from working alone specifically because there are other people involved. The social aspects of a professional relationship outweigh the technical ones by tonnes.
Pick up a copy of the book "Programming Interviews Exposed", it'll give you a good guide to the standard topics covered in programming interviews. Revise those and you'll do much better.
What I consider unethical is sites which track you across hundreds of internet sites while trying to figure out your previous URL history of sites it doesn't track all the while hiding behind the fine print saying what it does is legal.
Internet advertising is nothing like newspaper or magazine ads. Internet advertising has a tracking component built into it and that tracking component doesn't stop once you leave the site. It follows you forever.
"I guess the point I am getting at with all of this, is that perhaps we should all try a bit harder to try to understand what's really going on when we use those libraries and abstractions we have come to embrace so much."
The answer to the question is "follow the money".
People don't get paid to learn the inner workings of something. They get paid to do stuff that produces results even if they do it in the worst possible way. Except for a rare few companies (who usually are very good at what they do but are rare), the incentive to make things better does not exist.
The short and even medium term payout of deeply learning the inner workings of something is very small. The people who decided that are the ones with the cash and cash is what most people follow.
is elitism really the right word? it sounds like you're mad at something and using the word "elitist" because it's the first thing that comes to mind.
what i would suggest doing is sitting down and thinking very carefully about what has happened and what annoys you. make a list on paper if that's the way your brain works. tease out all the details and your emotions.
i would guess, if you do that, that (1) you'll see that the "elitist" part is largely emotional related to how you feel and (2) that you can actually some real problems at a lower level (like being rude, or lazy, or incorrect, or not giving credit, or whatever). once you have more detailed lower level problems you can think about how to address those.
tldr - "elitist" is an emotional "catch-all" phrase that isn't helping you or anyone else here. you need to do some work and think through in more detail what happened. once you do that you'll have a clearer idea how to continue.
tldrtldr - only once you see things clearly can you fix them.
Yes, there are actually people with real life issues who actually face this scenario.