(no subject)
My last entry seemed to be fairly... final. Plans had been made.. movers paid, remote apartment aquired...everything was in line for me to make a quiet retreat from Californa back to Ohio.
Tuesday: I was fairly despondent.. Let's face it, I was two days away from having my belongings final-packed. Two days from leaving my friends, and closing a six year chapter of my life. I asked Reveille if his place was hiring; he was contracted through a recruiter, and that she was a crazy Indian woman. "Toss her your resume, and stand back." was a paraphrase of what Rev said.
+5 minutes after sending my resume, I get a phonecall from Anjali Nambiar... and she wanted to meet with me on Wednesday.
Wednesday: Meet with Anjali... and she's every bit a crazy Indian woman as Rev said.. and it's delightfully amusing. I interview VERY well with her, and she takes me back to intro me to her team.. something she says that she doesn't do unless she /really/ likes the candidate. I'd like to believe that... and perhaps I do. But I'm still a teeeeensy bit jaded from working for Headhunting firms for so long. Still, she really seemed earnest, and she IS fun to talk to.
+ 1hr 30mins later: Anja calls, wanting me to speak to a gentleman from VMWare. ...."VM-Ware.. as in.. VM-WARE?" Indeed it was..
+ 10 minutes later, Call comes in from VM-Ware for a phone interview. Tech questions were asked, and some were answered correctly: I'd warned him, and Anja had told him to expect my warning that my Linux-Foo was weak.. but that it could easily be learned. Interviewer must've liked what he heard well enough.. he wanted to speak to Anja about getting me in for a 9am interview face to face at the facility Thursday at 9am!
Thursday: 9am rolls around, and I'm SO there. Nice place.. you can see echos of the Boomtime culture. Nicely appointed snacks area.. I'm reasonably sure I saw a foosball table in there somewhere. And they have a WONDERFUL espresso machine..
First interview with the phone interview goes well. It was short; we'd done most of our talking before on the phone.
Second interview was with the gentleman who would be my boss. THAT interview evidently went EXTREMELY well, as he was rumored to be quite impressed, despite my lack of Linux-Foo. I have scads of networking experience.. but the problem with experience alone is that you sometimes lack the terminology to relay it properly. You know what it IS.. you know HOW to do it.. but the terms might be a bit lacking. He seemed to be looking more for enthusiasm and desire to learn than anything else. Um.. hello? This is VM-WARE. The company can be rough to get into.. and they're like DEEP into Linux. Oh yeah, I wanna learn. Update my windows skillz too.. but learn all I can about Linux, and their way of working.
Third interview was with my hopeful boss to be's boss. She's nice.. but sick. Had laryngitis.. and so she told me she might cut it short. We went into overtime! Surely, I was hoping.. that's a good sign! If she's sick, why would she struggle so hard to talk to someone who wasn't cutting it?
The fourth interview: Well, that didnt' go so good. At all. He was asking WEIRD questions.. and one detailed a windows problem that even HE had seen only once, and that I'd NEVER seen. So..yeah. Rar. And he did NOT give me the piece of information I'd asked for about one of his other problems. I specifically asked him if one of his 'example' computers had been hard-coded an IP or not.. and he said no. But when he said I got it wrong, and it was because the machin was hardcoded.... RAR. Seething, quiet, rar. Surely that planted the flag. Well.. .
So. Anyhow, I get walked out by Reveille and told him my concerns. The fourth interviewer turns out to be a bit of a .. 'puppy'.. I believe the phrase was, and that his opinion hardly matters at all. So, not to stress. Still, he'd keep his ears open. And 30 minutes later or so... Rev IM's me telling me the gent who would be my hopeful boss was very impressed. YAY!
60 minutes after /THAT/... This is probably somewhere in the early afternoon.. say, 1:30 or 2:00 or change... Anjali calls to tell me that... I got the job.
.
..
...
....
WOO-HOO!
Yes! I am now a contractor (Or will be, on the 19th of June) to VM-Ware! Assuming I can still learn, and that I don't bugger anything horrifically.. in five months time I'll be brought on full time.
This all happened so fast, my head's STILL spinning. But... it's a GOOD thing. I'm.. energized again. Not simply gutting out day after boring day. I've something new and interesting to learn, and look forward to! True,I'll still have to move... but I've got a fine roomate lined up (assuming he doesnt' get sick of me in the interim!) then I'll be moving closer to my work,a nd his. I'll be living with a fun guy to hang with.. I'll still be in Cali with my friends... and I'll be saving a metric ton on rent. And /IF/ I can finagle something... I might be able to do the backups at night for my old place, and be kept on a PT basis after-hours for emergencies. THAT'LL supplement things NICELY. But it WON'T be required.. which means the current job canNOT any longer rule my life. And that is a HUGE burden off my shoulders.
Forgive me for not posting this sooner, but I'll confess to being not entirely sure that I wasn't imagining this. But I'm not.. *grin* I'm not. I'm staying where I want to stay... learning what I want to learn.. and doing it in pretty much the way I predicted it might go! Starting back close to the beginning of things (Deployment Team) and /LEARNING/ as I /DO/. Perfect. Perfect.
Have I mentioned that I'm babbling, and that I'm looking forward to all this? *grin*
---Hinoki
Tuesday: I was fairly despondent.. Let's face it, I was two days away from having my belongings final-packed. Two days from leaving my friends, and closing a six year chapter of my life. I asked Reveille if his place was hiring; he was contracted through a recruiter, and that she was a crazy Indian woman. "Toss her your resume, and stand back." was a paraphrase of what Rev said.
+5 minutes after sending my resume, I get a phonecall from Anjali Nambiar... and she wanted to meet with me on Wednesday.
Wednesday: Meet with Anjali... and she's every bit a crazy Indian woman as Rev said.. and it's delightfully amusing. I interview VERY well with her, and she takes me back to intro me to her team.. something she says that she doesn't do unless she /really/ likes the candidate. I'd like to believe that... and perhaps I do. But I'm still a teeeeensy bit jaded from working for Headhunting firms for so long. Still, she really seemed earnest, and she IS fun to talk to.
+ 1hr 30mins later: Anja calls, wanting me to speak to a gentleman from VMWare. ...."VM-Ware.. as in.. VM-WARE?" Indeed it was..
+ 10 minutes later, Call comes in from VM-Ware for a phone interview. Tech questions were asked, and some were answered correctly: I'd warned him, and Anja had told him to expect my warning that my Linux-Foo was weak.. but that it could easily be learned. Interviewer must've liked what he heard well enough.. he wanted to speak to Anja about getting me in for a 9am interview face to face at the facility Thursday at 9am!
Thursday: 9am rolls around, and I'm SO there. Nice place.. you can see echos of the Boomtime culture. Nicely appointed snacks area.. I'm reasonably sure I saw a foosball table in there somewhere. And they have a WONDERFUL espresso machine..
First interview with the phone interview goes well. It was short; we'd done most of our talking before on the phone.
Second interview was with the gentleman who would be my boss. THAT interview evidently went EXTREMELY well, as he was rumored to be quite impressed, despite my lack of Linux-Foo. I have scads of networking experience.. but the problem with experience alone is that you sometimes lack the terminology to relay it properly. You know what it IS.. you know HOW to do it.. but the terms might be a bit lacking. He seemed to be looking more for enthusiasm and desire to learn than anything else. Um.. hello? This is VM-WARE. The company can be rough to get into.. and they're like DEEP into Linux. Oh yeah, I wanna learn. Update my windows skillz too.. but learn all I can about Linux, and their way of working.
Third interview was with my hopeful boss to be's boss. She's nice.. but sick. Had laryngitis.. and so she told me she might cut it short. We went into overtime! Surely, I was hoping.. that's a good sign! If she's sick, why would she struggle so hard to talk to someone who wasn't cutting it?
The fourth interview: Well, that didnt' go so good. At all. He was asking WEIRD questions.. and one detailed a windows problem that even HE had seen only once, and that I'd NEVER seen. So..yeah. Rar. And he did NOT give me the piece of information I'd asked for about one of his other problems. I specifically asked him if one of his 'example' computers had been hard-coded an IP or not.. and he said no. But when he said I got it wrong, and it was because the machin was hardcoded.... RAR. Seething, quiet, rar. Surely that planted the flag. Well.. .
So. Anyhow, I get walked out by Reveille and told him my concerns. The fourth interviewer turns out to be a bit of a .. 'puppy'.. I believe the phrase was, and that his opinion hardly matters at all. So, not to stress. Still, he'd keep his ears open. And 30 minutes later or so... Rev IM's me telling me the gent who would be my hopeful boss was very impressed. YAY!
60 minutes after /THAT/... This is probably somewhere in the early afternoon.. say, 1:30 or 2:00 or change... Anjali calls to tell me that... I got the job.
.
..
...
....
WOO-HOO!
Yes! I am now a contractor (Or will be, on the 19th of June) to VM-Ware! Assuming I can still learn, and that I don't bugger anything horrifically.. in five months time I'll be brought on full time.
This all happened so fast, my head's STILL spinning. But... it's a GOOD thing. I'm.. energized again. Not simply gutting out day after boring day. I've something new and interesting to learn, and look forward to! True,I'll still have to move... but I've got a fine roomate lined up (assuming he doesnt' get sick of me in the interim!) then I'll be moving closer to my work,a nd his. I'll be living with a fun guy to hang with.. I'll still be in Cali with my friends... and I'll be saving a metric ton on rent. And /IF/ I can finagle something... I might be able to do the backups at night for my old place, and be kept on a PT basis after-hours for emergencies. THAT'LL supplement things NICELY. But it WON'T be required.. which means the current job canNOT any longer rule my life. And that is a HUGE burden off my shoulders.
Forgive me for not posting this sooner, but I'll confess to being not entirely sure that I wasn't imagining this. But I'm not.. *grin* I'm not. I'm staying where I want to stay... learning what I want to learn.. and doing it in pretty much the way I predicted it might go! Starting back close to the beginning of things (Deployment Team) and /LEARNING/ as I /DO/. Perfect. Perfect.
Have I mentioned that I'm babbling, and that I'm looking forward to all this? *grin*
---Hinoki