I'm in the job market, and unlike in years past, I'm actually busy weeding thru e-mails, telephone calls and scheduling interview after interview.
What the hell is going on here?
And these interviews are going on for over 3 hours! Seriously, this is cutting into valuable nap time.
I was at an interview this morning for over 4, count'em, 4 hours. Unfortunately I won't get the position because they need someone with way more experience - but that's one marathon Q&A.
One of the interesting observations I've been able to make is what I don't know. You know the phrase - you don't know what you don't know? Well, you might think you're hot stuff until someone asks you about your skill level doing something you ain't never done, like localizing a website for 6 countries and replicating a database across continents.
Here's another observation - stage fright can kill you. They asked me (I think around hour 3.5) to write a simple function. By that time I was so tweaked I could barely spell, 'function'. My handwriting was so terrible I had to read my code aloud.
A final and incomplete observation - be very, very careful with recruiters. More on this later, but if anyone who actually reads this actually knows me you can guess where this is headed.
I just realized I probably have enough material to make my job search it's own blog category - hence the category title - On The Bench. Here's to staying up late and coding your own projects.
Epilogue - Even though I didn't quite have what this particular company wanted, I have to give credit to the interviewers for treating me so well as a person and as a developer. They definitely score high on the
Joel Test.