Rob the Fiddler

Ive done an interview already. I had planned to take a month off, but this was a pretty interesting sounding job and the interview window was closing quick on the offered job so I jumped. The HR person told me it was a technical interview so be prepared.

Still I didn’t see any reason to not brush up on a few things. I have a pathological fear of being under prepared for these kind of things. When I googled “Technical interview questions” I found a wealth of du jour offbeat questions. The forums were filled with people asking “what do interviewers ask?” from candidates. Sadly, they were also filled with questions from potential interviewers asking what sort of questions should they be asking.

The most reasonable questions were the ones that test basic knowledge. I agree with those. If you have SQL on your resume, be prepared to write out a few simple statements. If you have JAVA, be prepared to write a simple class. Patterns and UML…better be able to write a diagram and at least know how to code a singleton on the whiteboard. I prepared for that stuff. It took time but it all was review or at most reviewing what the latest jargon was describing the stuff I already know.

Since I know everything I put on my resume I felt pretty confident.
(although…I might take PHP off because it is apparently a bit more involved that the stuff Ive done so far).

My technical interview went really well. I felt I nailed it, but they had somebody they liked better. I guess my vacation will go as planned.

An ex-coworker told me of an interview he did that had 7+ interviewers including the CTO . Then they asked him to come in the next day so that the CEO could do more stuff. (including those stupid riddles that self absorbed executives like to ask so they feel like they are smarter than the “talent”).

Finally after about 6 hours into the interview process he said “Make an offer”. It was for half his old salarly and one week vacation. He laughed and left.

One thing I did notice about my Swing knowledge was that even though I have been using it for almost a decade, there is a ton of stuff to learn. Java makes it so easy to pick up what you need. The APIs are all on line. You tell me what you want and I can research and code it. But after the interview and looking at all those questions it seemed like I needed to be a bit more proactive.

off to NERDBOOKS!

If you have not been to nerdbooks…you gotta go. (If your into technical books I mean) Its an internet bookstore in Richardson. They really are just an internet store, but you can visit the warehouse and browse the shelves. You have to follow a few rules.

1. You gotta like Dogs! There are 3 huge dogs that have the run of the place. They are more important than walkins. If you dont like dogs…tough…use the internet. Walk-ins are a privilage. The dogs have the rights!

2. No Small children. See 1.

3. You still have to order online. They have terminals inside. Weird huh? You enter your credit card and hand the guy the books. He looks em over and hands them back to you.

4. There are a ton of books and a crazy ordering system that you will not understand. If you cant
find a book, and you often will not…ask for it. Dont even try.

5. Its ALWAYS Chirstmas. Or..well…they just dont see any reason to take down the Christmas tree.

Its a really neat place. The books are cheaper than Borders and they have free soda. The dogs are actually very well behaved. I try and get my books there whenever possible.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.