I was reading a Reddit thread recently that stopped me cold. A sysadmin with over 25 years in tech mentioned they'd never been on a "real" job interview. Their first gig? Unlocking desktop chassis and throwing away the keys. Seventeen years later at the same company, their "interview" for a new role was a three-minute chat with a busy director. The post got 421 upvotes and 110 comments—clearly this resonated.
But here's what struck me: this isn't some rare anomaly. In 2025, with automation reshaping everything from infrastructure to hiring, there's a growing cohort of tech professionals who've built entire careers through what I call "the backdoor path." They're not gaming the system—they're just operating in a way that makes traditional interviews irrelevant.
If you're wondering how this works, or if you're someone who dreads the standard "tell me about a time when" interview format, this article is for you. We're going to explore how automation skills, strategic networking, and demonstrated competence can create opportunities that bypass conventional hiring entirely. And we'll look at what this means for the future of tech careers.
The Unlocking Keys Story: More Than Just Anecdote
Let's start with that original story, because it's more significant than it appears. A contractor hired to literally unlock desktop chassis? In 2025 terms, that's like hiring someone to click "next" on software installs. But here's the thing: that person stuck around for 17 years. They progressed. They learned. They became indispensable.
What the original poster didn't say—but what every experienced tech professional knows—is that the person who starts with the grunt work often ends up understanding the system better than anyone. They see the patterns. They notice what breaks. They develop institutional knowledge that's impossible to hire from outside.
And that three-minute "interview" for the new role? That wasn't an interview at all. It was a formality. The decision had already been made based on 17 years of demonstrated competence. The director wasn't assessing skills—they were just checking that the person was still interested.
This pattern shows up repeatedly in the comments on that Reddit thread. One person mentioned moving from help desk to senior engineer through internal promotions. Another talked about being "adopted" by a team after a contract ended. These aren't flukes—they're evidence of a different career progression model.
Why Traditional Interviews Fail Tech Professionals
Let's be honest: most tech interviews are terrible at assessing actual ability. The whiteboard coding challenges? The hypothetical scenario questions? The "culture fit" assessments? They're proxies for competence at best, and complete noise at worst.
In 2025, the problem has gotten worse, not better. Companies use automated resume screeners that filter for keywords. They implement multi-round interview marathons that test endurance more than skill. They ask about technologies that were relevant five years ago but have since been replaced.
Meanwhile, the people who are actually good at their jobs—the ones who automate themselves out of firefighting, who document their processes, who mentor junior team members—these people often interview poorly. They're not necessarily great at selling themselves in 45-minute windows. They're great at solving problems over months and years.
And here's the kicker: the better you are at automation and DevOps, the less your skills lend themselves to interview demonstration. How do you show your expertise in infrastructure-as-code during a whiteboard session? How do you demonstrate your monitoring and alerting setup in a hypothetical question? You can't, really.
The Automation Advantage: Building Your Own Backdoor
This is where things get interesting. If you work in automation, DevOps, or infrastructure, you have a unique advantage: your work creates artifacts. Code repositories. Documentation. System designs. These aren't just outputs—they're portfolio pieces.
I've seen this play out multiple times. A sysadmin automates their company's deployment process using Ansible or Terraform. They share the code (appropriately sanitized) on GitHub. Someone at another company sees it, likes their approach, and reaches out. No job posting. No interview. Just: "Hey, we have a similar problem. Want to help us solve it?"
Or consider the SRE who builds a monitoring solution that catches issues before they become outages. They write a blog post about their approach. A former colleague, now at a different company, reads it and says: "We need exactly this. Can you consult for us?"
These aren't theoretical scenarios. They're happening right now. In 2025, your GitHub commit history is becoming more valuable than your resume. Your Stack Overflow contributions carry more weight than interview performance. Your documented solutions to real problems are your best job application.
The Network Effect: Relationships Over Resumes
Here's something the original Reddit poster hinted at but didn't state explicitly: relationships matter more than credentials. When you've been in tech for 25 years, you've worked with hundreds of people. Some have moved to other companies. Some have started their own. Some have become hiring managers.
This creates what I call the "permissionless referral" system. It doesn't require someone to formally refer you through HR channels. It's more organic. A former colleague mentions they're looking for someone with your skills to another manager. The manager reaches out directly. The conversation starts with "So-and-so said you might be able to help with..."
This bypasses the entire traditional hiring pipeline. No job posting. No applicant tracking system. No HR screening. Just one professional talking to another about solving a problem.
And in automation and DevOps, this effect is amplified. Why? Because these fields are still relatively specialized. The pool of people who truly understand infrastructure-as-code at scale is small. The network is tight. Everyone knows (or knows of) everyone else.
Demonstrated Competence: The Ultimate Interview Bypass
Let's talk about the most powerful career currency in tech: demonstrated competence. It's simple, really. When people have seen you solve real problems, they don't need to interview you. They already know what you can do.
The original poster had 17 years of demonstrated competence at their first company. When they "interviewed" for a new role, the director already knew their capabilities. The three-minute chat wasn't an assessment—it was a confirmation.
In 2025, you can build demonstrated competence in several ways beyond just internal promotions:
- Open source contributions: Fixing bugs or adding features to widely-used tools
- Conference talks: Sharing your expertise with the community
- Technical writing: Blog posts, documentation, or even books
- Consulting gigs: Solving specific problems for multiple companies
- Mentorship: Helping others grow in their careers
Each of these creates evidence of your abilities. Each builds your reputation. And reputation, in tech, is everything.
The 2025 Landscape: Automation Changing Hiring Itself
Here's where things get meta. The same automation skills that help you bypass interviews are also changing how hiring happens. Companies are increasingly using automated tools to source candidates, assess skills, and even conduct initial screenings.
Some platforms use AI to analyze GitHub profiles and recommend candidates based on actual code quality rather than resume keywords. Others automate technical assessments through coding challenges that mirror real work. Still others use chatbots for initial screenings.
For someone with strong automation skills, this presents an interesting opportunity. You can essentially automate your way through parts of the hiring process. Well-documented code becomes your resume. Clean repositories become your portfolio. Automated tests become your skills assessment.
And if you really want to stand out? Build something that demonstrates your automation expertise. Create a tool that solves a common problem. Automate a tedious process. Document it well. Share it. That single project might do more for your career than a dozen interviews.
Practical Steps: Building Your Interview-Free Career Path
So how do you actually build a career that doesn't depend on traditional interviews? Based on what I've seen work for others, here's a practical approach:
First, specialize strategically. Don't just be "good with computers." Develop deep expertise in specific areas of automation or DevOps. Infrastructure-as-code. CI/CD pipelines. Cloud cost optimization. Container orchestration. The more specific your expertise, the more valuable you become to the people who need that exact skill.
Second, create public artifacts. Your private work experience only helps within your current company. Public artifacts help everywhere. Contribute to open source. Write technical blog posts. Speak at meetups (even virtual ones). Create tutorials. Every public artifact is a potential career opportunity.
Third, nurture your network authentically. This isn't about collecting LinkedIn connections. It's about building genuine professional relationships. Help people when you can. Share knowledge freely. Stay in touch with former colleagues. Your network should be a community, not a contact list.
Fourth, solve visible problems. Look for opportunities to work on projects that matter to the business. Automate something that saves significant time or money. Fix a chronic issue. These successes become stories that people remember and share.
Fifth, document everything. Your processes. Your solutions. Your learnings. Good documentation serves multiple purposes: it helps your current team, it demonstrates your thoroughness, and it creates artifacts you can share (appropriately).
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
This approach isn't without risks. The biggest? Becoming invisible. If you're great at your job but no one knows about it outside your immediate team, you're limiting your opportunities.
Another risk: over-specialization. Becoming the world's expert in a technology that becomes obsolete is a career dead end. Balance depth with breadth. Have one or two deep specialties, but maintain awareness of the broader landscape.
There's also the comfort trap. Staying at one company for 17 years can be great—if the company grows and changes with you. But if you're not learning, not facing new challenges, not growing? That's a problem, interview or no interview.
Finally, don't neglect soft skills. Even if you bypass formal interviews, you still need to communicate effectively, collaborate with teams, and understand business needs. Technical skills get you in the door, but soft skills determine how far you go.
The Future: Are Interviews Becoming Obsolete?
Looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, I see traditional interviews becoming less important for certain tech roles. Not disappearing entirely, but becoming one of several paths rather than the only path.
We're already seeing alternatives gaining traction:
- Contract-to-hire: Work with a company on a specific project, then transition to full-time if it's a good fit
- Open source contributions as screening: Companies sponsoring development on their open source projects as a way to identify talent
- Technical apprenticeships: Learning while doing, with the option to join full-time
- Portfolio-based hiring: Evaluating candidates based on actual work products rather than interview performance
For automation and DevOps professionals, this shift is particularly relevant. Our work is fundamentally about creating systems that run without constant intervention. It makes sense that our career paths would follow similar principles—building systems that generate opportunities without constant active job searching.
Your Next Move
So where does this leave you? If you're early in your career, don't assume you need to master the interview game. Focus instead on mastering your craft. Build things. Solve problems. Document your work. Share what you learn.
If you're mid-career, look for opportunities to create visibility beyond your current role. Mentor someone. Write about your experiences. Contribute to projects outside your day job. Each of these expands your network and demonstrates your competence.
And if you're later in your career like the original poster? Recognize the value you've built. Your experience. Your network. Your proven ability to deliver results. These are assets that can open doors without traditional interviews.
The key insight here isn't that interviews are bad or that you should avoid them at all costs. It's that there are multiple paths to career success in tech. For some people, that path involves acing technical interviews. For others, it involves building a reputation for solving hard problems.
In 2025, with automation reshaping every aspect of technology work, the latter path is becoming more viable than ever. Your code can speak for you. Your solutions can demonstrate your value. Your network can create opportunities.
So the next time you worry about interview performance, consider this alternative: focus on being so good at what you do that interviews become optional. Build systems. Automate processes. Share knowledge. Help others. Do this consistently for years, and you might find yourself following that same unconventional path—building a career not through interviews, but through demonstrated competence.
After all, in a field that values results over rhetoric, what better recommendation is there than a track record of actually getting things done?
