Baseline the Project Plan
Everyone mocks engineers for technobabble, but the product guy's email asking us to "baseline the project plan and milestone dates" left me wondering: we need to WHAT? Now I know how the managers feel.
Topic
work
A collection of 56 posts
Follow-Up with the Fruit Company
A more technical interview with the fruit company: TCP versus UDP, congestion control, hash tables. The TCP questions were fortuitously timed, since my latest project has me implementing a TCP-like protocol over UDP. I even got to name-drop Karn's algorithm.
My Favorite "Fruit Company"
My favorite "fruit company" emailed me about a job that was the stuff of dreams years ago. The HR phone screen reminded me how out of practice I am: ideal job, ideal release cycle, rate your familiarity on a scale of 1-to-10. At least there were no ink blot tests. Yet.
Programmer Discrimination
Half a dozen new hires, all Indian, in an office where everyone else is also Indian. A person inclined to conspiracy might wonder. I sometimes wonder if I was hired to be the token white guy. Not that I'm complaining; being the office authority on English plays well with my ego.
Work and Words
I work with many Indians whose English varies widely, and I've never once understood the questions some of them ask me. "I have no idea what you just said," I reply, and they leave content. Plus a list of tech words to retire, starting with "let's continue this offline."
Phone Interview Part 2
I nailed the second phone interview, no complexity analysis questions, and my solution to the lone algorithm problem was both exact and unique enough that the interviewer hadn't seen it before. Next a manager calls, then maybe a fourth interview out in San Francisco. We'll see.
Step One
Did the phone interview tonight. Short, under twenty minutes, just technical. I admitted I'd fail the complexity analysis problems and he asked them anyway, probably to make me feel bad, but then I nailed both problem solving questions and fixed my ego right up. On to step two.
Interview
A recruiter from a top five social networking site called, and unlike most job calls, this person was well spoken and intelligent. Full-time in San Francisco, neither ideal, but far more interesting than the daily parade of J2EE pitches. So I have a weed-out interview tomorrow.
Two Weeks Later
Two weeks into this project and there isn't a single defined feature or a single piece of data to work with. Most projects at least have the decency to start out well before floundering. Not this one. It skipped straight to floundering. Shoot me now.
Burrito Bars Sans Tortillas
We had a burrito bar at work for lunch. They forgot the tortillas. As the office manager told the restaurant, it sort of makes our burrito bar useless. So: burrito components, with nachos.