Entertaining Wednesday

So as most of you already know, I am planning on moving back to Minnesota this year. I miss family, friends, the area, and everything else that goes along with those things, and it's just time for me to move back.

Part of the problem with moving back is what to do about a job. I may be able to work remote for REAL Software (Joe and Mars already do it), but then again, I may not. So instead of banking on Geoff letting me work remote, I've started searching for a job here in Minnesota. This may also be a chance for me to make some more money, since I've yet to get a pay raise since starting work three years ago.

So I put in an application at the company that Adam works for, OSI. They're a small (about 100 employees) company based out of Plymouth, MN (about an hour away from Sartell). They create software for the utilities market (power plants and such), and are looking for someone who can work on Windows and Linux, as well as do low level work (networking, serial, etc) as well as higher level (GUI and C#). So after hearing about the company from Adam, I decidede to put in an application. Well, they gave me a phone interview a few days before I flew home to MN, and I got together for a face-to-face interview this morning.

I drove down to Plymouth this morning (got up at 6:30am! Yeesh!) for the 9:30am interview. The drive down was really pretty due to a hoar frost from the night before -- everything was covered in white. I made it down to the offices alright, and strolled on in.

The first part of the interview was a technical one. This was the shakiest part of the interview, oddly enough. The interiewer tended to focus more on the EE and hardware level side of things when it came down to general programming knowledge. I wasn't expecting this -- I've only written networking code from an application-level, never from the datalink directly! So I stumbled my way through the technical interview, which took about an hour. It wasn't fun. ;-) But I think I did alright with it. I was able to answer the programming questions, and the math question fairly easily. The technical interview ended with some logic and physics questions which I pretty well bombed.

The second part of the interview was a tour of OSI. The tour went smoothly, and I learned a lot more about what the work environment is like there. I saw the staging area where they do a lot of the testing using actual hardware, as well as various other parts of the offices. It took about 30 minutes to tour the place, and was an easy part of the process.

The third (and final) part of the interview was with the VP of Engineering, and I thought went rather well. He wanted to know more information about my background as well as my future plans and stuff along those lines. It was a friendly interview, and I feel very good about it.

So all-in-all, I think the interview went alright. There were some spots that I could have done better, as well as some where I think I did quite well. But as I have learned in the past -- you never know how well the interview went until you find out whether you got the job. :-)

I just finished writing my thank you note to OSI and mailing it off. They said they'll contact me within a week or two to let me know whether I have the job or not. So keep your fingers and toes crossed for me. If this doesn't work out for me, there's still no need to fret. I can still try to get Geoff to let me work remote, or find another job with a different company. OSI just happens to be the first company I put a resume in with. Lucky me that they also wanted to do some interviewing! :-)