In a personal best time, I’ve secured gainful employment again! I’ll be working as a software developer again, which makes me happy. Working for a company some of you serious mechanical engineers may know, Enventive Engineering. I’m just happy to have been able to find work in less than a month! And all because I bitched about their evaluation… They had an evaluation as part of their application process, and I complained about it because on one hand, they suggested using an IDE to do your work, but on the other, there was a hard timer going, and it was a tight timeframe. So I called them on it. Led to a dialog between me and the hiring manager, and ended up fast-tracking through the process! Now I just need to keep them from finding out my real ability level long enough to get past the probationary period… 
Technical interviews (at least for SWEs) have gotten out of control. The company I worked at started giving homework after I started. They eventually dropped it. But it is the most ridiculous stuff. A C++ expert can gauge another C++ programmer’s skill well enough. At the end of the day, the process is always flawed and it’s always possible to make mistakes. So why give someone 24-48 hours to stress over some weird programming problem when they may not even be that interested (and still, they might be a great teammate)?
/rant
Glad to hear your are back on the hamster wheel. I hope you enjoyed a brief break. GL at your new job.
Looks like a fun company that will keep you busy!
Congrats on standing out, I have no interviews in the foreseeable future yet I still am very nervous about the prospect of ever doing another. My last one went well enough, I Kinda half assed a drawing they asked for on a white board because it just seemed like a time filler. Thought maybe they had decided they already didn’t want me. I got called on it, fixed it, talked them through it, got the job. I am guessing that dialog might have saved me. I totally flubbed the wages part, I never thought to research what a new fresh out of school engineer was worth so when asked how much I wanted, I just added like $2k on my previous “good” Costco salary. He smiled. “No, lets start with this number and talk again in a few months”. It was significantly more…so I am guessing I lost out on that part.
Not sure what I would do if I ever actually hired anyone to help me around here.
Double it!
FOC is so great. You’re making me want to watch it again.
I have been lucky in my job that it isn’t what you know as much as who you know. But I’ve only tried to get three jobs, really. So maybe I’m not the right person to ask.
I did have a friend trying to get a job where I worked and we told him what to say for his salary. They ended up not hiring him because of how much he asked for. Really surprised everyone.
Thats awesome on the interview. My general problem is I have no filter went it comes to stuff about me…or tact according to my wife.
interveiwer: What is you biggest fault?
me: Misdirected rage.
interviewer: head shoots up Excuse me?
me: Misdirected rage.
interviewer: Can you give me an example?
me: lets say you meet your coworker John and he uses the wrong name every time.
Hi john.
hi Jerry.
its jeremy
oh sorry jerry
And he thinks its funny so he does it every time(even when you ask him not to). 2 years later and he’s still doing it. and its already been a stressful week and you go home and yell at your kids, make them cry yell, because you tripped over their shoes in the hallway. Misdirected rage
interviewer: Thank you very much and we will be in touch.
Side note: I was told I didn’t get the job. A month later I got a job offer. Apparently the 6 people a head of me bailed and I was the last resort. I’m still there 6 years later.
In my student days I had the worst interview ever thinkable. The day before the interview, one of my best friends came back into town. He was very eager to grab some beers. We had forgotten to eat, and one thing led to another, and I had one of the worst nights of my life… by a miracle I managed to drag myself to the interview, but during the session I had to go to the toilet and fall on my knees… I actually landed the job, but when I later told them about my embarassing mishap, they didn’t find it very funny at all… Quite awkward.
And btw: Congrats with a new job!
The job I have now, they started the interview with, “Write the alphabet on the board… then write a Linux command starting with each one.”
Then they asked me to white-board a fully redundant infrastructure setup for a website.
It was fun.
Did you write:
a(tab-tab)
b(tab-tab)
c(tab-tab)
…
man
n(tab-tab)
…
(a)lias
alias (b)ob=alias
bob ©alf=alias
calf (d)og=alias
…
…
…
I actually did quite well. Stumbled on x …
xkill!
Still haven’t incorporated xargs into my arsenal.
I went with xargs. I don’t do enough ‘x’ stuff in linux.
For k, I did killall. That one made the one guy giving the interview laugh. After he laughed, I made the comment, “for when the developer screws up his for-loop while spinning up child processes”. And that’s when the second interviewer spit coke out his nose.
I figured at that point I was a shoe-in.
Awesome news mate, kudos!
I locked up one job when I noticed and pointed out a NeXT cube in the corner of the office. He hadn’t even asked me any questions. He asked me a couple of pro forma questions to make sure I had a basic clue, but as far as he was concerned, I was already hired…
Well congrats on the job!
More exciting for me though, as someone whose knowledge of command lines is limited to:
“Sit”, “Stay”, “Rollover”, “Play Dead”,
is the depth of coding talent right here, for when that scary day comes when my printer stops printing and I have to actually make something work!
Cheers to you all, and I hope none of you get so busy in your day jobs that you have no time to hang around here!
Wow, makes me wonder if my old NeXTstation would even fire up.
I have been at my job for 7 years and still waiting for my boss to find out my real ability…lol. Good luck