AlanBarber.Org
Friday, June 24, 2005
A software engineer postion
I had an interview Monday for a Software Engineer position. I felt like the interview went very well. It’s this really awesome company and I’d love working there! They do mostly accounting systems that run on Linux. Well the backend server parts run on Linux but they use 4GL tools that let you run the front end on Windows, Linux/Unix, MacOS, etc.
It’s definitely my kind of place being very laid back and relaxed. They seem to run things very free flowing. You get to work directly with clients which I think I would like a lot. One of the problems many times is places put in so many levels of middle management and bureaucracy that the developers never communicate with clients. Some think this is a good thing because, well lets be honest, many developers don’t exactly have good people skills.
I’ve never done any major projects with clients so I don’t know how well it works but for the little freelance website design I do I like working directly with clients. Usually I get a lot of freedom to do as I see fit but its nice being able to just email or talk to a client and ask a question about how they want something. Then again doing website design you probably have to talk with a client more then if you are writing a new function for an accounting system. It’s probably more they ask for the system to do xyz and then you just go and crank out the new functionality.
Anyhoo, they said the plan is that they would finish up interviews this week and contact me sometime next week to tell me one way or the other.
If they call me to come back for a second interview it will be a coding test. They say to plan for it to take about four hours but it shouldn’t. Then based on that you could be called back for a third interview where you meet the HR, President, etc.
Funny thing, I actually like the idea of a coding test. Well, being honest, I’m a bit scared of the prospect but glad to see them do it. Not to bad mouth others but every other job interview I’ve had they’ve barely talked tech at all. Few questions to clarify what it says on my resume and that’s it. It sort of bothers me that a place doesn’t even take the time to see if a potential new hire actually has the ability to write code.
My mother used to rant about that all the time. When she would interview people at her place she would give them simple tests of their Excel knowledge because they used Excel all day long there. The test was nothing fancy, just basic stuff like doing simple equations, generating graphs, etc. The amount of people that would claim to know Excel but not be able to even do a sum total of a column was shocking!
Well, I hope they contact me early next week, I’m on my chairs edge with anticipation.
on 06/24/2005 at 08:49 PM
Best of luck, Dexter.