interview today
Posted by mcummings
I had an interview today (oh, yeah, I'm still here, made a ton of commits to the tests for g-cpan today, yada yada yada). I'm pretty sure I bombed it - I had problems putting into words a concept, and when I tried to give specifics I completely fizzled and sounded like a moron.
Scary part?
That interview was the most fun I've had in a while. Get the job or not doesn't matter - it was actually fun.
Yes, I think that might qualify me for warped if not completely doomed. Still the best hour+ interview I ever got to do 
Resume hint and other tidbits
Posted by mcummings
Figured it had been a while since I had posted anything, might as well do something now while I have a free minute. I won't say the job hunt is going fabulous, but then again I'm not putting the effort into it that it would need to be productive. It's not that I'm not interested in moving on, I'm just in a position right now where I can afford to be picky about the whole thing. That and if I hold out until June 14, I'll have been "in service" for three years, which means that if I leave, I can come back to the overall system (not just the place I work at) later on and retain the amount of leave I earn per payperiod, etc. (I realize that's a bit obfuscated, but if it makes sense it makes sense, and if not, to heck with ya).
Which takes me to my first point: when you're writing your resume, for Pete's sake, don't fluff experience you don't have. Don't list anything you might have seen once in an office you were walking through on your way to the snack machines. I bring this up, not because of my own resume, but because in my current job I'm still actively hiring new folks for my team. We had a guy come in a week or so ago who claimed to have both SunOne webserver knowledge as well as Gentoo experience. We don't run Gentoo at the office except in a few rare instances, but since he was bold enough to put it down I asked him some questions. Throughout the interview he defended he'd used Gentoo, but when I asked even the simplest of questions, "How do you install a package in Gentoo?" his answer was so off target I can't even begin to describe it. I would have accepted/anticipated an answer involving any of the current package manager replacements, expected him to say something along the lines of emerge at the very least - but the answer he gave was some weird amalgam of debian and redhat answers as to be completely unintelligible. Needless to say, his SunOne experience was less than evident. I'm not bringing this up to make fun of the guy, but to remind my fellow job seekers, if you put it down, be ready to actually defend your knowledge of it. Don't listen to the placement folks when they say put down anything you might have seen - as someone who does hiring, I can tell you, if you list it as a skill and its something we're in need of, we're going to ask you detailed questions about it. Best to keep to the, OMG, truth.
Speaking of work, because we're more than a bit understaffed right now I've been working 11 hour days. If you're wondering when I'll be on irc, look for me on the weekends, I've been trying to at least pop on for a few when I'm not taking care of things around the house or with the kids. I'm still answering bug reports when I have the chance (which generally, right now, is centered on the weekends), and I am definitely still working on g-cpan-0.16 every chance I get (coding time is easier to come by than bug fixing time right now since coding I can pick up and drop quickly, whereas bug fixing usually requires/deserves an hour or more dedicated).
And that's life with mcummings right now. Still here, still kicking, same as I ever was. Just quieter