[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!