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Took a pass on the interview thing

[Today’s run: 3.5 miles]

I think I had mentioned that I did an online programming quiz.  Then they wanted me to do an interview over a skype-like connection using my computer.  And I was good with that idea.

But then I put some more thought into it.  They are a recruiting firm for places in San Francisco and New York only.  So they are looking to feed the hopper of programmers for the Silicon Valley operations.

It would take a whale of a lot of money to get me to move to either place and I’m not that good of a programmer.  I already knew it was kind of a lark.  But I got to thinking about it and decided that doing a 1-2 hour thing with them on a Saturday morning was just wasting the guy’s time.

I did do a little bit of Python programming in preparation:  they recommended building a Minesweeper type game as a warmup and I did that.  I’ve been needing to learn a little bit about Python.  So it was good for me.

And, I got into some web pages about the big shops in Silicon Valley and what they are looking for in programmers, etc.  And this one guy recommended doing a review of an algorithms class that is free online from Princeton via Coursera.org.  So I signed up for that and watched the first sessions and did the first week’s homework.  That was interesting.  Nothing amazingly new so far, but a good review.  And they will probably eventually do something that I haven’t seen before since my own college days were 30+ years ago.  They use Java and I kind of hacked my way through the week 1 assignment by following the examples they gave.  So I may be in over my head with the programming language, we shall see.  (I had done  a little bit with Java years ago.  So I at least know that I don’t know anything…)

Anyway,  I sent the interview/quiz people a note saying I was cancelling my interview.  They acknowledged my note and that was that.  But it must have set me back to the pre-interview stage in their contact list because I am already getting emails about how I’ve done well on the quiz, now I should sign up for an interview!

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