Author: e.v.

Turtles

~ e.v. ~ 4 Comments

Last night’s dream: I remembered that I had a turtle a few years ago. Or at least something that looked a bit like a turtle. It was some kind of little green thing. Actually I don’t think it’s a real animal, but we’ll call him a turtle. I don’t know what happened to him. I used to let him wander around my bedroom but then I forgot about him for a few years, so one day I started wondering where he got to. He probably hasn’t died because surely I’d have noticed a terrible smell. So where is he? Is he hiding in my bedroom still or has he wandered off? I looked under my bed but I couldn’t see him, so he must have found his way out into the garden somewhere.

So anyway I declined the job yesterday by emailing the recruiter. I worked out that the extra hours actually equated to an extra month of work per year. I work 37.5 hours a week as opposed to 40, and I get 4 extra days of holiday. Add all that up and they wanted an extra 160 hours per year or 21.3 working days, or in other words, a full month. So I said to the recruiter that the money was fair and appropriate for stepping into a more senior role with more responsibility, but not for more responsibility AND an extra month of work. He wanted to go back and negotiate more with them but this was already offer number 2, so I said they’d already had plenty of time to put forward a realistic offer and they weren’t making me feel valued.

I’m starting to feel calmer again now. This is my Garmin stress of Wednesday versus today:

Though, even today is still high. When I’m properly content, it’ll be come down to 14-16ish.

I often get a big spike early morning which gradually comes down throughout the morning. I’m not sure why. I used to think it was recovery from running first thing, but it’s still there even if I don’t run.

False start

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

I’m sorry, readers, for the emotional rollercoaster, but I’m going to decline the job after all.

I got the formal offer through today and it turns out the working hours are longer and the holiday allowance is lower than my current job. Once you account for all that, the money per hour worked is only slightly higher than I’m on now, so it’s not really worth it.

I haven’t put all the details in here but yesterday was a bit of a mess. This job was originally advertised as working from home 4 days a week with a salary up to a certain number. I asked them about the working from home yesterday. They wouldn’t commit to anything other than being “flexible” but they’d expect me in the office a certain undefined amount of time. So, okay, I can probably work with that, but it felt like a bit of a bait and switch.

Then they came to me with an offer which was a lot lower than what I’d asked for (and, it turns out now, worse per hour than what I’m on now). They gave the excuse that they “hadn’t expected to find someone as senior as me” and hadn’t really budgeted for that much – but what I’d asked for was less than the upper number on the advert! So I just said no and felt a bit perplexed that they’d try to lowball me when I already have a job and can just say no.

A few hours later they came back with what I’d asked for, but it made me feel they probably wouldn’t be interested in keeping my salary at its market value in future.

I’m not disappointed though. Between all this and having a surprise second final interview, I feel like they’ve been messing me around so I’m a bit relieved to just give a hard no and make them go away.

OFFER?!

~ e.v. ~ 4 Comments

So in the end I did get an offer after all. It came via the agency and it’s only verbal at the moment but it should all be formalised in the next few days.

The technology confusion resolved itself fine (she was actually thinking of something else), so that pretty much took away my reservations.

It’s a good salary bump too so I’m happy. It’ll be a more senior role than I’m doing at the moment. Overall it’s feeling like a good career move and I’m not going to fish for a counter offer after all.

The never ending interview process

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

So after my final stage interview on Friday, I now have a really-final-I-promise stage interview tomorrow. According to the recruiter, I’m the only person to go through to this stage so he is cautiously optimistic they’re going to make me an offer, but who knows. I am not sure about this role, so I’m more on the side of cautiously pessimistic that they’re going to offer it to me.

The interview is with my potential manager and the non-technical officer who confused things on Friday. As we are now off-script I do wonder if they’ve decided internally that they don’t want to use the framework I have experience with, but they still want to hire me (which is a hard no from me). Or it may be that they realised they made a mess of it and want to convince me that my choice is fine. Or maybe they just don’t really know what they’re doing.

CHOICES!

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I have felt so tired this weekend! I don’t know if it’s just the stress of the interviews this week catching up with me. Probably.

Where I’ve got to with this is that I’m not really sure it’s the right move, but I’m also not sure that it’s the wrong move. My hesitancy comes from the interviewer on Friday throwing a curveball on the technology issue. They are obviously confused over this and they will resolve it between themselves. If they offer me the job then they have resolved it in my favour. If they resolve against my favour, then they won’t offer it to me. Well, assuming they behave rationally, which isn’t a given.

But at the moment I’m thinking that if they do make me an offer (and it’s attractive) then I’ll first see if I can get my current employer to match it.

I need to do better at not letting job seeking get on top of me. Yesterday the whole afternoon disappeared without me really doing anything, I think because I was just sitting around and subconsciously worrying about it. It’s not really a big deal.

Today I spent a little while playing a computer game (Oxygen Not Included) and felt so much better for it.

Maybe not?

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

The interview went…

I don’t know. I was interviewed by the chief technical officer, another chief non-technical officer, and the same person as last time. As soon as I mentioned my preferred framework the non-technical officer piped up that their outsourcing company had tried it and found it too limiting and she seemed reluctant to use it in future. Which would be fine if my preference for this framework was some big mystery I’d kept secret up until this point, but I’ve been pretty clear on my CV and in the first interview that this is what my experience is with and what I’m interested in! (also: it’s not limiting but that’s besides the point)

So I don’t get this at all. Possibilities:

  1. There is a communication issue between the manager and the non-technical officer
  2. They were expecting to offer me a job using technology I’ve never used before (and have expressed no interest in learning)
  3. They have no idea what they’re doing

I’ll have to wait until next week to see if it goes any further as they are interviewing someone else on Monday.

Update: I spoke to the recruiter again. He’s managed to speak to the company and apparently they feel I came across well, and what the non-technical officer said about not wanting to use the framework was not correct. Hmm hmm hmm. I’m confused. And, it seems, so are they.

Almost #2

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

The recruiter phoned me this morning to help prepare me for tomorrow and now I’m less confident. The main message from it was that they are going to discuss their timescales and future growth plans with me. The timescales are supposedly quite short and that influences their technology decision, but in my favour. So his advice was to push my experience. Which is really generic advice. I don’t think he has much idea what’s going on.

Their technology choice comes down to native vs cross-platform, and then into picking a particular cross platform framework. My analysis of their circumstances is that:

  1. If they go with native they’ll get a polished, working product, but it’ll take them probably 2-3x as long as what I’d do. I wouldn’t blame them for going down this route because the end result will be slightly better. But this doesn’t fit their timescale constraints at all.
  2. If they go with a cross platform approach which isn’t my preference, then they’ll probably get burnt. The other options are not as mature or not as well supported. This also means that anyone pitching them is either less experienced or a lot braver than me. They’ll also struggle to hire anyone else in future because these are just not widely available skillsets.

I don’t think they’ll get anyone much ‘better’ than me because the advertised salary range wouldn’t attract people who are significantly above my level. So I still think I’m ticking the most valuable boxes, but I’m not feeling as confident as I was.

Though I was feeling quite relaxed about it all until about 20 minutes ago when I got a LinkedIn ‘friend’ request. It’s from somebody I don’t know, but apparently he is working at my ex-employer. The one I prefer not to think about. I didn’t need to see that. I blocked him.

Almost?

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

Apparently the interview went well and I have a second interview on Friday. I was surprised to see the calendar invitation for this, because it’s with three people but it is only scheduled for 30 minutes. 30 minutes with three people, two of whom I haven’t met before? That sounds very positive to me. It sounds less like an interview and more like a formality.

Then the doubts creep in a bit and I thought “well, what if the duration is just set incorrectly and he actually meant to put an hour and 30 minutes”. And I don’t actually know that they’re not inviting anyone else for a second interview (I know they interviewed at least 3 people, including me).

So I don’t know, but it seems promising.

Also, I don’t usually do politics here, but freezing income tax thresholds until 2026? Yikes! That’s going to bite people.

Interview

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

I got quite stressed about this interivew and I’m not really sure why. I didn’t stress at all about the one last week, but I also felt quite indifferent about the job. This one I felt more attached to, which makes no sense because I knew going into it that there were a lot of unknowns. The interview itself went as well as it possibly could, which is to say that my experience isn’t really a 100% match. It’s a mobile developer role and I wouldn’t really describe myself professionally as a mobile developer – more just a developer who sometimes targets mobile. And actually I think they’re really looking for two different people/skillsets, though they haven’t accepted it yet. But I felt I performed well, and that’s confidence building.

I feel like I’m learning how to present myself better. In this case it clicked in my mind that they had broad requirements and wanted someone to take broad ownership so I really pushed my ability to do that based on my experience at my previous job. I guess interview technique isn’t just about how you present yourself, but also about picking up on what the other person is looking for and framing yourself for that.

There is a second stage interview (assuming I get that far), but my feelings at the moment are I’ll take it if offered, and if I’m not then, well, that’s OK too, it just means they found someone with deeper experience in what they’re looking for.

More movement

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

So the mobile developer vacancy is moving forwards after some high stakes drama today.

I spoke to the recruiter yesterday, he said I sounded like a good match. So he went off to the employer and the employer agrees I sound like a good match. He came back to me today and said “we think you’re a great match! The next stage is a video interview with me”. Like what are you smoking. I want to speak to the employer, you’ve just told me the employer wants to speak with me… so the next logical stage is… for me to have to speak to the recruiter… again?!

As my patience has been worn slightly thin this week, I sent him back an email saying that I don’t have much free time and didn’t see the value in interviewing with third parties so I wouldn’t be going any further. No more than a few minutes later I got back a very hurried response saying how about we just skip this stage and he puts me through to the employer. YES, what a good idea!

I’m still not sure about this one. It’s potentially interesting but only within a limited scope. This is the one where they are open to using different technologies, which is fine as long as their business requirements happen to coincide with my career requirements. In mobile development you have a million different options, and only one of those is really interesting to me.

The one I have used the most is to essentially create a web page and wrap it up into an app, so really the app is just a web browser showing you a website stored locally on your phone (but it doesn’t look like one). I like this because it’s all transferrable skills to and from general web software development. I can spend two years developing an app like this and then walk into almost any web development job afterwards. The risk is that you end up in a company that decides to use, say, Flutter, and then two or three years later potential employers are looking at you suspiciously because they’ve never heard of Flutter and you don’t have any recent experience in anything they use.

But the details of all this will become clearer after the interview, I suppose. At the moment I don’t know enough to say whether it’ll suit me or not.