I recently switched jobs after just shy of 5 years. Over those past 4+ years I have interviewed dozens of people for a job and learned a lot about the process.

The 2 way street

For starters, it helped me be relaxed during the interview process. I always tried to make sure it was a 2 way street. If a candidate doesn’t feel comfortable with me, it probably wouldn’t be a good fit. Therefore I liked to structure interviews as a conversation. The candidate would get to ask questions as they have them instead of just firing them off at the end. With my past experience, I was able to maintain that sort of things while I was being interviewed for a position.

Keeping with that idea, I had one interview where I knew it wasn’t going to be a good fit. We were already 2 or 3 in, so they bring in another member of the team to talk with and it just sort of died there. I am certainly grateful I was employed and didn’t have to take the first offer, otherwise if it came with this company, I imagine I wouldn’t be happy.

Sharing your test on Github…

You know who knows my Github username? My employer. If they see these random repositories popping up at night that are quite specific, it’s probably safe to assume they understand I am interviewing elsewhere. Now I don’t know if my employer at the time visited my Github to see what I was up to, but it definitely made me think of what I should name the repos.

What I believe is a better approach would be to keep them private and invite the interviewer or their team to review it. Github does have private repositories now.

$ Cha-Ching

The money aspect is always the weirdest. I told my wife on a few occasions that I didn’t know if I want to proceed with the ‘test’ because there was no salary range listed. If I spent 4+ hours on this test and what I need was outside what they were willing to pay it was a huge waste of time. In one instance, I knew I was talking to one of the guys at the top so I mentioned my concern before doing the test. If you are a negotiator, the downside here is you may have to throw out the number first.

While I didn’t make the job postings at my former job, it did instill in me just how frustrating it is for candidates not to know the salary range before hand.

My favorite question

If there is one thing you could change, what would it be?

Some people will give you really good answers. Sometimes it’s awkward if their boss is on the phone. My favorite time was when both the guy interviewing me answered and his boss separately answered. I really look for 2 different things when hearing the answers. I try to hear if it’s a genuine answer vs a b.s. answer and what it is. A fellow developer might be roadblocked by some process, whereas the CTO/COO wants to change a bigger picture thing.

This question also tends to lead the interviewers into rambling about their company culture. Often not trying to backpedal on their answer but just talking, and thinking about the different things they have experienced.

While I looked on and off for a while, Monday I start the new gig and I think it will be a great one. The personalities of the owners remind me of my last job where we got along quite well. While I am no longer working at a SaaS, the new company sells stuff that I needed. On Tuesday it arrives as I placed an order as a regular customer without my dev goggles on and I don’t think the fulfillment team knows who I am. It’s like Undercover Boss without the boss part.

Having a family definitely slows down the long nights going through an online course and digesting everything. Back in the bachelor life I could spend the entire weekend going through some course.

Now though, the kids are doing things, I am spending time with my wife, lawn care has to happen. All of this takes up time that in my single life would have been used for online learning. This means the courses take a lot longer to complete.

There is an upside to it that though. By doing a course spread of weeks instead of days, it re-enforces the concepts you learn. In this particular case, I am going through a Ruby on Rails course. By not being able to burn through it, it’s easier to retain the Ruby language and concepts of Rails.

It reminds me of when I learned to SCUBA dive. If you go on a nice Caribbean vacation, you can find places that will teach you to SCUBA dive in a weekend. If you take an 8 week course, you are much more comfortable putting the gear together as you have done it week after week. The weekend places, you do it 2 maybe 3 times, but come 6 months from now when you go diving again, that uncertainty of not remembering just how everything goes.

So in a few more weeks, when I am able to finish this course, I hope to be able to retain most of what I learned and start working on Ruby projects comfortably. The hard part of learning a new programming language is it’s so much faster to just use the language I am already proficient it.

Over the years we have jumped cell phone carriers mostly switching between Sprint and it’s MVNOs. For the past few years we have been on Ting and so far it’s a win for us.

Ting allows you to pick between CDMA and GSM. With CDMA you are on Sprint’s network while GSM you are on T-Mobile’s network. This time around we went with T-Mobile and GSM phones. The main reason we switched though is to lower our monthly bill. Starting on Sprint we were paying about $128 per month for 2 lines, then when to Boost Mobile which dropped it down to $80 then Virgin Mobile to get it down to $64 and as of late Ting, averaging around $45.

Ting has no plans. You pay for what you use. We still have a home phone (Ooma, check them out too), and are constantly on Wifi either at home, work, the store or wherever. By using the home phone when we are going to do lengthy calls, and being on Wifi we tend to stay in their small and medium tiers.

If you have ever moved a far distance there are ‘odd’ things that popup you did not expect. When we moved to Colorado the bugs were a lot less than in Michigan. Now that we are in Florida, the bugs have come back with a vengeance.

The other day as I was leaving the development a Florida softshell turtle was trying to cross the road. I tried to assist but it was having nothing to do with me. After I got back in my car, it turned around and started going back the way it came.

A few hours later and a neighbor is telling me they got a 6 foot alligator out of the pond. Then they went for a bigger, estimated 12 foot alligator but unfortunately left before they got it.

Florida… it’s a weird place. Working at COLaunch in Titusville, I see dolphins, or manatees almost daily from my desk.

Finding a place to rent can be stressful. Growing up I heard in movies and from others about “slumlords”. These are basically landlords that let their properties go to waste while tenants are still renting them. When I first moved out of my parents house I was concerned about this. Are all landlords slumlords? How do I know what place I should rent. I wasn’t sure. I ended up renting a one bedroom apartment in a nice quiet area and it turned out to be great. In the three years I lived there, I only had one issue and it was fixed that day.

Before I moved out to Colorado we got a list of places to look at during our scouting trip. The first one we were going to look at was promising and I figured that would be the place. The week before we flew out to Colorado there was a shooting in the parking lot. We skipped past that one. It could happen anywhere, but since we didn’t know the area we weren’t going to risk it. It turns out we didn’t look at any of the properties we planned on viewing. Instead we found 4 other ones on the south side of Aurora. The place we settled on was a big complex with 20 something buildings, a pool, gym, etc. Like the previous place we only had one issue. After a trip back to Michigan we noticed our kitchen faucet was leaking just a little bit. I submitted a work order online even stating it was a minor drip and not an emergency. Within 2 hours it was being fixed.

Now we are up in Loveland. So far we have had two issues. The first one was last September when the Big Thompson (and other rivers) flooded. Our basement ended up with several feet of water in it. He hopped on it pretty quick draining the water and getting a crew in to do the cleanup, replace the drywall, hot water heater, furnace, etc. Overall we spent 2 – 2 ^1/2 weeks away. Fast-forward to this week and we had a second issue. Our washer decided to dump water everywhere earlier in the day. I called him in the evening and about 7:45 the next morning here was over working on it. Before he left I apologized for getting him over here so early and he had been up and waiting for a few hours already. That made me feel kind of bad because I had been up that long. There is also some concern that the runoff from the mountains will cause the river to flood again. We will be watching that for the next few weeks. Driving by one of the smaller rivers you can see that it looking a bit full as is.

Having rented 3 place now I am at ease of finding a “slumlord”. The issue in Loveland is that places go fast as the rental industry seems to be booming. We are hoping the next time we move it will be into a house we own.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net