[Saturday: walmart route (7 miles?); Monday 3.4 miles]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has been interesting in my progress through the job-hunt. People will ask me questions in interviews and sometimes my own answers surprise me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had a telephone interview last week with two people in my technical area (not HR people). One of them asked about a job I had in the past and my immediate answer was probably the wrong one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He noticed that my route through college and my first job involved architecture. And he asked, I don’t remember the exact question, but he asked about what it was like to work for a big architectural firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My quick answer, said with a smile, is that architects are jerks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not sure where that came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first job out of college was with Skidmore Owings & Merrill, a big international architectural firm in Chicago. I worked on a software development project they were doing under contract with IBM. They were producing an updated version of their internal computer-aided-design system. There I learned how to program in C and edit with the ‘vi’ editor and do Unix things. That has pretty much been the foundation of my career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was there for a few months when I started getting calls from headhunters. One of them found me a position for more money, so I left. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I learned a lot about software development and I enjoyed most of the work. It was pretty intense. But the people were OK and the project was interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, how did I get “architects are jerks” from that? I’m not sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Architecture as I was taught it and as I saw it (mostly from the sidelines) at SOM, is a heroic thing. Some specific designer will set the tone for a big project. Big clients come for the big names as much as for the corporate competency. So there is a level of “popularity contest” going on, people jockeying for a part of the big project with the popular designer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I say these things even though I was not myself involved with them. I was in a side-show on the software project. So I didn’t rub elbows with famous designers or do any hob-knobing of any sort. My perception could be totally wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my college days, architecture was a course of frustration. I enjoyed and did well on the courses in structural analysis and architectural history. I did not do very well at anything involving artistic production whether it was free hand drawing or architectural studio. I think I did OK in mechanical drawing\/drafting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But even then there was an undercurrent of the fashionable designs, the current popular designers, the current ways of making presentations, that I just rebelled against and didn’t enjoy. At the time a lot of it was a mystery to me. I didn’t read Architectural Digest or know any architects. I’m not sure why I was even there except that it seemed less formal than Mechanical Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I was happy to move on from SOM and it turned out OK. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But his question had me revisit the idea. And I see how it would be like a dream to some folks to have landed their first job out of college at SOM where big-time architects were doing some big-time stuff. I probably should have appreciated it more when it was happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I haven’t heard back from that interview. I may have completely blown my chance at that opening, which sounded like an interesting gig. If I get an opportunity later I may talk to that guy some more about SOM and what I did there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probably the lesson to be learned is that a job interview is not a very opportune time for introspection or unusual responses.
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[Saturday: walmart route (7 miles?); Monday 3.4 miles] It has been interesting in my progress through the job-hunt. People will ask me questions in interviews and sometimes my own answers surprise me. I had a telephone interview last week with two people in my technical area (not HR people). One of them asked about a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7046"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7054,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046\/revisions\/7054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}