Looking for something new

Around 2006-ish, I was living near Savannah, Georgia working for a contractor at Gulfstream Aerospace. I had decided to make a job move and I applied for a job at an interesting company in Seattle.
I participated in several phone screens and was excited to continue the process with them. The job would be working in Perl helping support their build system. They had scheduled an onsite interview and I had received my tickets for the trip. I was really excited about the prospect of working for them and I loved the Seattle area.

Bring the family

We (my spouse and I) decide to all travel together to Seattle with our 3yr old daughter. Since I would be in Seattle, I thought it would be a good opportunity to visit a high-school friend of mine. Considering that the next step would hopefully be house hunting and a move, we could also spend a little bit of time after my interviews looking around the area and scout out some temporary housing options.

A few days before we were all scheduled to fly, the company informed me that the position had been filled, but they had another opening doing C++ development if I was interested.

At the time, I had listed Perl as my strongest language and C++ as my second. I had been answering tons of Perl questions along the way and felt pretty prepared for whatever they could ask me in Perl… However I hadn’t really left much time to refresh my C++ memory… (How hard could it be right?) I chose to proceed with the scheduled trip. If I bailed out now, I wouldn’t get much out of the ticket we had already purchased and I would have to explain to my Seattle friend that I wasn’t quite prepared for this one.

Two days before the travel date, my daughter started getting cranky and feverish. We hustled her off to the doctor and were told that she had an ear infection. Realizing our jeopardy, we got our daughter on antibiotics and they even prescribed some ear drops that would help with air travel. She perked back up quickly and was looking pretty good on the day before our flight. However, an early morning hustle to the airport had darkened her mood considerably. As soon as we got up in the air, our lovely offspring began to holler with abandon. It was a very horrible cross country flight for us as well as every one in the row ahead of us and behind us.

Parents & Kids on planes

My heart goes out to the parents on planes that are handling children that are obviously not happy. My experience on our cross country flight was a defining moment for me. I’ve visited that particular rung of hell. I know roughly what they are feeling and I would do almost anything to help them get through the flight. Try to distract them, make googly eyes, whatever. I’m game.

On a recent cross country early morning flight, the last person to sprint through the gate and onto the plane was a very pale and exhausted women with a child in a carrier on her front, a backpack on her back and a diaper bag. She popped down in the window seat next to me. I notice she was breathing hard and figured it was the sprint to make it to the gate but in retrospect it may not have been. As we were taking off her breathing became more erratic. As airplane is lifting off, she deftly and blindly reaches down past her child, into the diaper bag. She grabs a plastic bag. Turns to me and and apologizes. Then pops open the plastic back and throws up into it at least five or six times. All the while her young daughter is cooing and giggling at me. The only thing I could think to do was make googly eyes at the baby and offer to hold the bag while she cleaned herself up.

She looked at me like I was crazy but obliged.

Worst Interview Evarr

My wife, daughter and I arrived at SeaTac airport late. We got our rental car even later. Drove up to Seattle and into downtown late. We found the wrong hotel and got directions to the the right hotel. After getting parked, checked in and getting our daughter down to sleep I think it was about 4am the day of my interview.

Up at my alarm, in my suit and tie. Walking to the interview… realizing that I hadn’t eaten anything since the day before. I got checked for my interviews, met my first round of interviewers and got in the groove answering behavioral and architecture related questions. Then another set of interviewers with questions about my background and experiences. A new set of interviewers and then this request pops up: “Can you build a stack for us in C++?” My first response didn’t cut it. I said: “Well, I’ve used stacks many times. If I were to do that for production, I’d use a STL Deque.” Their response was gentle but firm, “Yeah that would work, but could you write one of those up for us on the whiteboard right now?”

groan

Obviously I was not prepared for that particular question. Well, I had every intention of reviewing my C++ knowledge prior to flight time. I have no excuse. I’m caught flat footed. I hadn’t exercised this part of my brain recently and it seized up on me. I got the pointers wrong, I got the add method wrong. I completely failed. I could tell from the look of pity in the interviewers eyes that my day was done. I went out to lunch with the hiring manager and I tried really hard to perk up and save myself, but my mojo was gone.

Two days after returning I got the rejection call.

Next time…

I have no one else to blame but myself. I could have done much better on that part of the interview. I just need to prioritize the time to refresh and prepare well in advance of an interview that I know is going to cover something that I have listed as fresh on my resume. I vowed from that point forward to try much harder to always be ready for that or other related data structure questions at any time. What ever two languages I have current on my resume, always refresh on stack, tree, recursion, etc.

I think it all turned out for the best in the long run. Perhaps that Seattle company is where it is today because they didn’t waste their time on my unprepared self. I’ve heard that they’ve done some pretty wonderful things since then.