Of Jobs and Apartments, Cabbages and Kings and Retweets
Well, I didn't get the job for which I went to the on-site interview on Tuesday. The verdict was I had good skills and knowledge but just not specifically what their project was looking for. It could be a blessing. I had some concerns about the software firm that I didn't share on that day but now that it's over, I guess I'm clear to write a little more. The first was the salary discussion, which I was surprised actually happened during the interview. I thought it was supposed to be done only after they make a hiring decision. They made a few attempts to bargain me down, saying, for example, that even PhDs at that company only made $95K or so and that some people started really low (below $60K) and got raises afterwards. So I was wondering if they even had the budget for an additional software engineer. The second thing I noticed was even though the company doesn't force anyone to work long hours (i.e. significantly beyond the usual 9 to 5), it looks bad if you don't. Again, it was somewhat odd that they felt the need to impress that on me during the interview. Overall though, the place was eerily similar to my old job. Same suburban-type office building. I think they even have the same office furniture, carpet, and cubicle suppliers. I would've been right at home arguing with management there. :)
Looking back at the last 14 years of my life, I came up with an analogy. A job is like an apartment. On day one, it's a blank slate. Full of promise and ready to be filled with your presence. Then after a while, the plaster starts peeling, the faucet starts leaking, the toilet becomes unreliable, and dealing with building maintenance becomes somewhat unpleasant. Yet, you stick on year after year because staying put is less of a pain than leaving, until you wake up one day and find that you absolutely loathe the place and would do anything to get out. Yes, the apartment was getting like that too. :) Which reminds me, I still need to ask the landlord at the end of the 21-day period if he'll be returning any of the security deposit.
Rainy day today so I stayed home and worked on code. I added support to TwitVim for the new Retweet API. (r68 thru r71) It's not complete yet because of a few things I noticed in the API documentation. First: retweets_of_me does not appear to return info on who did the retweeting. There'll be a significant cost in time and API quota if the client makes a separate query for that info for each retweet. And second: Retweets are stripped out of user_timeline and unlike friends_timeline/home_timeline, there is no alternative API method that returns the full timeline with retweets included. I checked the latest version of Tweetdeck and, even though it does support new-style retweets, it's missing retweets when you bring up a user's profile, confirming that issue. No matter. I just made do with what the API provides and I hope there'll eventually be API revisions or workarounds to address those two issues.
Looking back at the last 14 years of my life, I came up with an analogy. A job is like an apartment. On day one, it's a blank slate. Full of promise and ready to be filled with your presence. Then after a while, the plaster starts peeling, the faucet starts leaking, the toilet becomes unreliable, and dealing with building maintenance becomes somewhat unpleasant. Yet, you stick on year after year because staying put is less of a pain than leaving, until you wake up one day and find that you absolutely loathe the place and would do anything to get out. Yes, the apartment was getting like that too. :) Which reminds me, I still need to ask the landlord at the end of the 21-day period if he'll be returning any of the security deposit.
Rainy day today so I stayed home and worked on code. I added support to TwitVim for the new Retweet API. (r68 thru r71) It's not complete yet because of a few things I noticed in the API documentation. First: retweets_of_me does not appear to return info on who did the retweeting. There'll be a significant cost in time and API quota if the client makes a separate query for that info for each retweet. And second: Retweets are stripped out of user_timeline and unlike friends_timeline/home_timeline, there is no alternative API method that returns the full timeline with retweets included. I checked the latest version of Tweetdeck and, even though it does support new-style retweets, it's missing retweets when you bring up a user's profile, confirming that issue. No matter. I just made do with what the API provides and I hope there'll eventually be API revisions or workarounds to address those two issues.