Just keep plugging away. You have all our support.
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Job Hunt Thread, Incarnation The Third
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Hey Bob, how is the job hunt coming along?
__________________ Into terror!, Into valour! Charge ahead! No! Never turn Yes, it's into the fire we fly And the devil will burn! - Scarlett Pimpernell 
Seven active leads still, one of which I think is very interested in me. Need to check on a couple as they've not been in touch with me for a while.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
I had a surprise phone interview this morning, and then that employer and another both asked for my availability for face-to-face interviews in the next week or so.
Current open and active leads: 9 -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
*crosses fingers for Bob*
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.'' -- James Nicoll
I now have one f2f interview on Monday morning. I'm arranging a second for that afternoon, if all goes well.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Arranged the second one for 2:30 that afternoon. Gonna have a nice long lunch in between. And better yet, both are within a couple blocks of Penn Station, so no running for the subway to make my appointments.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Woot. Good luck!
-- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
I think this is a really good sign. The last few times I got hired, it was with two or more employers interested in me at the same time. I hope the pattern continues...
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
And as your search is, hopefully, coming to an end, mine starts up. Thankfully Ottawa's a pretty good place for high tech, I've already got an application in at a company that's building a lunar rover for the CSA.
Anyway, hope things went well for you Bob, and good luck.
Thanks. I leave in about 75 minutes...
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
I have to do something about my anxiety attacks.
The first interview and the first half of the second interview today both went well. But the second half of the second interview was a tech evaluation, and after a weekend of rotating panic attacks about the day, I went blank again and utterly humiliated myself. I've just gotten back, and I'm not happy. ETA: Oh, and Firvulag, my apologies for not wishing you the best of luck earlier. That company sounds unspeakably cool. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Don't worry about it, you've got some rather important things on your mind.
I'm glad the first interview went well, and sorry to hear about the second. But, you are getting interviews, that's important. -- Typing "make" in a directory of fresh C++ code is just like playing Quake. Specifically, it's like the part in Quake where you pick up the Super Nailgun and aim it at your face. - Kevin Buhr in asr 
That's what happened to me when I was doing job interviews.
Including the one for my current job.
Thanks for the encouragement. I'm still rather upset about it all, though.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Note to potential employers, if you post a job advertisement claiming the job is located in Toronto and does not involve travel, you should not be surprised that the applicant is a little less enthusiastic when you call him and inform him that the job is actually at "various locations in the southern US" and not in Toronto at all.
On the other hand the recruiting agency that called about an hour earlier was at least interested in me for a position with CAE in Montreal. -- A species willing to implement RFC1149 has already proven itself without shame. - David Cameron Staples
Oh yeah, I've come across those. Wal-Mart in particular has been running ads for the longest time that claim to be for jobs in Manhattan, but when you open them, the first line of text says, "This job is in Arkansas." Uh, no. Click and close. And you're not making me likely to even open the job that's really in NYC when and if you actually have one.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Well, had a brief phone interview this week with a company that has a job that is actually in Toronto this week. That lead to a programming skill test, which I almost bombed because I spent too much time learning SQL and managed to miss the part where I was supposed to do all the hard work in Perl until near the end. Sadly the articles I'd read on how to do efficient querying in SQL did not predispose me to doing large numbers of unnecessary queries.
I know that SQL ability isn't what they were testing, but the part of me that learned programming on 8 bit micro-controllers with severely limited memory was crying quietly inside at the waste. I hope that the comments I included to the tune of "Here's the 10 lines of Perl to do what you want, and here's an SQL SELECT statement that does the same thing without having to return every row in a 10,000,000 row table to me." will not come across as too frustrated. -- "Speaking of sleep, last night I had my first stress dream of my current job. It was almost like old times!" -- Malcolm Ray
@Firvulag its actually better to do more processing in PERL than with a "perfect" SQL query sometimes.
For mysql, creating a large temporary table on disk can slow things down until you get a query backlog (which is usually followed by a crash in short order). That is something I see a lot in my line of work.
That's interesting, and useful to know, thank you. However, I'd like to think that SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_name is going to be slightly more efficient than pulling over 10 million plus rows just to count them (and nothing else) in Perl. And having gotten word back from the company, yes the above counts as 'complex' SQL.
-- Having a rod of silence means never having to say you're sorry. - John Kovalic, Dork Tower,"Everything I Needed to Know I Learned From Gaming"
Y'know, I'm exceedingly happy I'm a storage/backup/hardware/VM admin and not a programmer, listenening to y'all.
There's very little tests for proficiency in my specialty, especially in this day and age. It's more being able to come up with procedures, plans, and best practices. Oh, and a lot of schmoozing (sp?) with vendors.
They must have a really weird definition of 'complex' then. I only learned SQL about 2 years ago, and SELECT COUNT(*) was one of the first things I learned how to do. And yes, that is a hell of a lot more efficient. Byte size of row x 10 million+ rows is a lot of network traffic for a single operation.
Whoooo. I was out of the house yesterday running errands for my mom (and my cell phone has finally broken beyond repair, so I was mostly off the grid during that). When I get home there's a phone message and an email from a company in New York City that saw my resume on Monster and wanted to talk to me. I finally got back in touch with them mid-morning today, and despite objecting that I don't have some of the requirements for the position they insisted they want to see me. I now have an interview on Tuesday near Wall Street. And not just a half-hour-to-hour first-round interview -- this is going to run all afternoon, with five half-hour subinterviews starting with the recruiter who contacted me and going up the ranks until I end up talking to the VP of IT. And they've sent me a copy of the application to fill out in advance so I don't waste any time doing that there.
I don't know whether to be stoked or terrified. The last time I had an interview this intensive was the one last month where I had that anxiety attack. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
If you've already filled out the application, then relax and take the weekend off - go do something fun.
Double-check the application on Monday. When you're rested and you're reasonably sure that you've got everything down on the application, then you'll be ready to go impress the VP of IT... -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 |
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