I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
Like the time I got a call rejecting my application because even though I interviewed well, someone else just pipped me at the post... except they'd never had me in for an interview.
Or the time I got offered a job and told "we're working on the paperwork" instead of a start date for three weeks until the company changed their mind.
My favourite, though, is a bit of a rambling story.
A company, let's call them FooCorp, where I already knew a bunch of employees. I give them my CV, and a few weeks later a friend asks me why I haven't applied. So I call them and they've never heard of me. I give them my CV again, and this time I get an interview. Good start, right?
The interview is in a building with kind of airlock door on the top floor of a tower block. I go through the first set, and then find that nobody's come to let me through the next set. I have no signal on my phone and there's no intercom. I try the exit and it's locked. So I'm now genuinely locked in.
It's ok, someone goes past a few minutes later and lets me in. I am escorted through many corridors until I'm completely lost and shown to a small interview room and asked to wait.
A management person comes in and I have a "general" interview. It goes OK. They leave and send an HR person in for a few questions. It goes OK. They leave and send in the technical interviewer.
His first question was about writing some kind of binary search. Pointless dross, if you ask me, that nobody is ever going to do in their job at FooCorp. I rattle something off so fast that he's surprised and asks me if I'd learnt it by rote.
"No", I tell him. "I'm reading the last applicant's solution off the whiteboard behind you."
His response to this was to give me a trickier problem, which I can't quite remember but I managed it (with a little prompting, admittedly, whatever it was wasn't to my strengths) and he seemed satisfied. He said he'd send HR back in, and he left.
45 minutes later I'm sitting looking out over the city wondering what's going on. I chat with friends on IM. I wait until it's an hour. Perhaps this is a different kind of test, to see what I do in odd situations?
I put my coat on and try to leave. The door isn't locked, but I don't know my way around so this is going to be fun. I walk for a couple of minutes in random directions because all the offices are empty and I have nobody to ask.
I emerge eventually into a large room where the whole company has congregated for a meeting, and I walk slowly through the middle of them while they stare at me. Someone asks, "who are you?"
They completely forgot about me. It's ok, one says, we'll get back to you tomorrow. I leave.
Two weeks later, I call them to ask what happened, and they don't remember me. It turns out their HR department all went on a jolly the day after my interview and nobody wrote anything down.
"So... is there any news?"
"Yeah, you didn't get the job."
Thanks, FooCorp.
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I've got loads of these.
Like the time I got a call rejecting my application because even though I interviewed well, someone else just pipped me at the post... except they'd never had me in for an interview.
Or the time I got offered a job and told "we're working on the paperwork" instead of a start date for three weeks until the company changed their mind.
My favourite, though, is a bit of a rambling story.
A company, let's call them FooCorp, where I already knew a bunch of employees. I give them my CV, and a few weeks later a friend asks me why I haven't applied. So I call them and they've never heard of me. I give them my CV again, and this time I get an interview. Good start, right?
The interview is in a building with kind of airlock door on the top floor of a tower block. I go through the first set, and then find that nobody's come to let me through the next set. I have no signal on my phone and there's no intercom. I try the exit and it's locked. So I'm now genuinely locked in.
It's ok, someone goes past a few minutes later and lets me in. I am escorted through many corridors until I'm completely lost and shown to a small interview room and asked to wait.
A management person comes in and I have a "general" interview. It goes OK. They leave and send an HR person in for a few questions. It goes OK. They leave and send in the technical interviewer.
His first question was about writing some kind of binary search. Pointless dross, if you ask me, that nobody is ever going to do in their job at FooCorp. I rattle something off so fast that he's surprised and asks me if I'd learnt it by rote.
"No", I tell him. "I'm reading the last applicant's solution off the whiteboard behind you."
His response to this was to give me a trickier problem, which I can't quite remember but I managed it (with a little prompting, admittedly, whatever it was wasn't to my strengths) and he seemed satisfied. He said he'd send HR back in, and he left.
45 minutes later I'm sitting looking out over the city wondering what's going on. I chat with friends on IM. I wait until it's an hour. Perhaps this is a different kind of test, to see what I do in odd situations?
I put my coat on and try to leave. The door isn't locked, but I don't know my way around so this is going to be fun. I walk for a couple of minutes in random directions because all the offices are empty and I have nobody to ask.
I emerge eventually into a large room where the whole company has congregated for a meeting, and I walk slowly through the middle of them while they stare at me. Someone asks, "who are you?"
They completely forgot about me. It's ok, one says, we'll get back to you tomorrow. I leave.
Two weeks later, I call them to ask what happened, and they don't remember me. It turns out their HR department all went on a jolly the day after my interview and nobody wrote anything down.
"So... is there any news?"
"Yeah, you didn't get the job."
Thanks, FooCorp.