laurent_du parent
There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is not that they were playing a childish game, it's that they were over-estimating their own abilities by a lot. It's ok to acknowledge you are good at something if you are, in fact, good at this thing.
> The problem is not that they were playing a childish game, it's that they were over-estimating their own abilities by a lot.
Why not both?
In an interview, you need to impress, and that's true for both the job-seeker and the hiring team. So yeah, you need to talk a bit about your accomplishments, and it's hard to do that without being a little braggy. But you can let your work be measured on its own. If you directly measure your accomplishments against the other person's, and especially if you put their accomplishments down, you're not selling them. You're showing off your personality flaws, even if you "win" the pissing contest.