Guest #1 July 28, 2004 Hey all, Just a quick note about an interview I had today...UGH Got a call from a small tech company last week in North Puget Sound. Not Everett, but not Seattle - betweenies...heh So an interview is set up. No big deal - me Harju. Me BMOI (Big Man On Interview) - I can dig this - no problem...Arrr! Trouble is - it's a *small* so-called "IT Solutions Provider" (read: leech company) based in the area. I reckon that this interview is gonna be a bust, but I tell the staffer, ya sure, I'll be there Tuesday at 2pm. So I show up at the office...eeek...small place in one of those stupid office complexes adjacent to the Interstate - you know, the ones they bulldozed the parks for..."Novell Solutions Provider" and other corporate plaques line the walls...double eeek......this isn't looking good. It appears that I've been culled from the herd (MOO!) based on my Novell experience...yet, these people have Novell plaques dating from LAST YEAR. Wonder if they know that Novell bought Suse... As I sit there, it's starting to look like The Night of the Living Dead. That is, this company has its head stuck up Novell's arse so deep that they aren't able to see the writing on the wall (mene, mene, tekel, upharsin!), and of all the things, I swear to goad - they're here in Bill Gates' front yard, touting themselves as a "Novell Soltutions Provider"...ha-ha, it is to laugh. But it gets better. I'm greeted and seated, and after a few, I'm introduced to a fellow who will be interviewing me. I'm in my pressed Dockers khaki trousers and carefully-ironed blue Oxford shirt, Webley tie, polished loafers, not a hair out of place, etc. This unkempt dude is wearing a pair of K-Mart slacks and a rumpled white shirt. Alarm bells start going off. And the sounds they're making are most peculiar. They don't make noises like your run-of-the-mill car alarm does when a kid playing ball bumps the Hyundai on the street in your subdivision. They're making funky sounds, the way Scooby-Doo does when some deep Doo is imminent, like "Ruh-Roh! Ruh Roh!" So anyway, I sit down with this rumpled guy and we get started with the interview. He starts out with "So, tell me about yourself." Eeek. I'm a little taken aback. I'm pretty certain that he doesn't want to hear about my childhood or my skydiving career, so I set the Wayback Machine for approx 1992, when I transitioned from bench electronics to Information Technology. As I continue, I can see he's getting impatient, so I wrap it up with a flourish about how I'm a career technician. Humph. The next part of the interview concerns what I'm doing now. I remark that I'm working pro bono at a place that refurbishes donated PCs for low income citizens in the community, but I can see (and hear) that he's getting impatient again, so I wrap it up. Now we browse to my last paying gig - Boeing, and what I did there. I spend about 90 seconds explaining what I was doing for the company, when he again cuts me off. Hmmm...methinks. This has officially gone from bad to worse. He jumps immediately to a point-blank question - "How much do you want to make at this job?" I try to soft-peddle it, and try to say that it's a little early to discuss my rates - we haven't yet established my level of technical know-how...that is, there haven't been any "Stump the Dummy" questions that address my proficiency...wait - he's talking lucre already?! So the soft-sell door is shut. I talk about previous employers. "Shoreline paid me $65 per hour," I said. "Boeing wasn't anywhere near as generous, but--" I didn't get to finish the sentence. I wanted to remark that Jah, I made the big bux during the tech boom, but that was then and this was now, yadda, yadda - but I never got the chance. The interviewer (for that is the polite term - heh) cut me off. "I don't care how much you made then. What I want to know is how much you you want to get for this job." F*** This is getting worse by the second, I thought. Oh well. He's pushing me, so wtf, I'll gladly push back. "$25 an hour." I declared. I can see where this is headed, but I call his bluff. Shite, I'm darn well worth it. I've got TWELVE YEARS of IT experience, and certifications out the yin-yang. If that doesn't qualify me, I don't know what will. "How much is that per year?" He asks. I pull a number out of thin air. "$52,800," I reply. The interviewer's rumpled shirt is very evident now. "I'm offering $33,000". That was it. How much abuse is a professional expected to take? This rumpled piece of shit has the gall to mau-mau me. "I get more for unemployment," was my reply. "Okay." he said, closing his portfolio. "Okay." said I, closing mine. I got into my pickup, started the engine and drove away. As I was leaving the lot, I passed the office windows. When I did, I gave him the finger. mh ."The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AggieDave 6 #2 July 28, 2004 Next time just show up wearing FF pants, a boogie shirt and bring a 6-pack. Fuckit, if you've got to put up with it, you might as well have some fun too.--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest #3 July 28, 2004 QuoteNext time just show up wearing FF pants, a boogie shirt and bring a 6-pack. Fuckit, if you've got to put up with it, you might as well have some fun too. Dave, I gotta tell ya, I was so sure this interview was a bust from the get-go that I was just going to show up in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt...seriously! These people were shite - they really were! Talk about a clash of cultures - me big corporate & gov IT guy, them -- piece of shite in a rumpled shirt - heck! I would gladly have sent one of my students to work there, so that they would have a very good experience of WHO NOT TO WORK FOR...heheheh mh ."The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stacy 0 #4 July 28, 2004 I did an interview last summer with some similar results. I knew there was something odd about the place, but couldn't put my finger on it. Went through with the interview, met the very creepy "boss-to-be." they called, offered me the position. the salary wasn't so bad, but when I asked about benefits, like the 401K. etc the woman stated that NO one gets a 401K these days. I informed here that I did, and had since I started work, and as lovely as their company may be, some day I'd like to retire. That was that. __ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Spy38W 0 #5 July 28, 2004 Way to be an Arrogant Bastard.. -- Hook high, flare on time Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest #6 July 28, 2004 Stacy, There is a Creep Factor in interviews, and it appears to be inversely logarithmic based upon the size of the company. That is, the bigger a company is, the less weirdness or warp one experiences in the interview. The smaller, the freakier. mh ."The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest #7 July 28, 2004 QuoteWay to be an Arrogant Bastard.. hehehe mh ."The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Icon134 0 #8 July 28, 2004 Quote There is a Creep Factor in interviews, and it appears to be inversely logarithmic based upon the size of the company. I've noticed the Creep Factor larger companies too... I interviewed for an engineering position at Emerson They are a very large company... and by the end of the interview I knew that it wasn't the place for me... it probably didn't help that they were located in middle of no where Ohio/Kentuky. Scott Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mattjw916 2 #9 July 28, 2004 Being a govt/corp IT consultant also I totally relate to this story on SO many levels... recently I was directed to interview with some Sandia Natl Labs IT folks that needed some "help" and since I had previously requested to be relocated from southern NM I happily drove to Albuquerque. Long story short, I was more qualified to conduct the interview than the people that needed the "help". It turns out that they were looking for a "desktop support" lackey in the $75/hr range and my company usually bills $130-$200/hr for my time. (too bad I don't make nearly that much ) Needless to say they thought I was a "little" overqualified. P.S. The interviewers were like throw-backs from the 70s UNIX-era that had never seen daylight and had been spending the last 15 years dialed in to text-based BBSs and barely knew what "teh intarw3b" is. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
