  Hello all I know that it has been a while since I have written anything on this blog, and the archive no matter how much I wish it will bear this out. The reason is simple: I've been busy running in circles, or more like playing chutes and ladders and ending up in the same place every time. I had a couple of interviews with Fidelity, and it netted little more than a good airing out of my business suit. I guess I will talk about that first. I often have dreams where I go back in time to an interview that didn't work out, or to a boss of a job I end up quitting and knowing the history and that I end up in a safe place, let them have it instead of in the real life past when all I did was play it safe. These interviews will be dreamed about.
I was up for two positions (three before scheduling conflicts caused one to be filled before I was allowed to interview). In the first interview the people I was interviewing with were late, but after a call to my contact at Fidelity Human Resources they came to the door. They were hostile, to put it bluntly. Not only was I asked simple Java questions a child could answer "What is a class' access modifier when it's not explicitly stated? ", I was attacked about how I could both program and manage the technical aspects of the project at General Electric. Obviously the person didn't understand what it is like at GE, or else he would understand that you work ten hour days and often stay the night to get things done, but he wouldn't believe it, asking me three times the same "percentage" question over and over again... "How much was management, and how much as coding?
" "I would say 40% management and 60% programming" "Portals are a big deal, there's no way" "It was all integrated, we build modules to plug in, and the portal was already there" "Besides code reviews.... what was the percentage? " "Still 40% management / 60% programming.� �That�s hard to believe� Then he frowned... biofeedback during an interview is as professional as coming to work in your underwear, which he didn't seem beyond doing. I know many people have had to answer these questions, and a word to the clueless interviewers: You can't tell the difference! It's 100% / 100%. Everyone in that position knows the project deliverables and the code that plugs into what, you don't have to be a superman to read a UML diagram and figure out what�s next. Also, what is the separation between code reviews and writing code?
It�s definitely the same part of the brain, using the same knowledge. They asked me to subtract X from X and were shocked when I came up with X again! It was at this point that I felt like the Angry Coder, and knew that this interview was a washout. I even tried to turn the conversation to the good stuff, J2EE, XML. I talked about how I wrote parsing crap using JAXP, how I wrote a regular expression matching program to parse HL7 medical formats. NOTE: Before 1.4 obviously.... which now has Perl like REGEXP matching.
Blah! Perl relied too much on "magic"... I would like to see a better REGEXP implementation, but there probably isn't one. Truth is this Java REGEXP thing might just put a nail in Python's coffin, which is nothing more than OO Perl. No matter what I brought up, I they were lost..... Another question, "How do you catch exceptions in Java? " Good grief!
Then started the connection URL string question.... "What is the URL to connect to an Oracle 8 database? " Answer: LOOK IT UP! Like programmers can actively state the platform dependent nonsense they write once and keep in a params class for platform independence. If you even have to write connection strings enough to remember them... you�re not programming right! I did point out the fact that if you are using a J2EE implementation it's all managed inside a container since that is much better than using bean managed persistence because you can move it between platforms.... "Explain what a container is" was their next question. This is the time when a techie knows he's teaching and not answering.
(Sigh). To make it worse, my iPaq pen fell out of my computer while I was outside calling the Fidelity HR person. So I was out a job and an iPaq pen, and given their performance I was more worried about the pen. Of course there was interview two still! The second interview is always better! Except this time.
I am a Java programmer and a sometime technical project manager (read: I can explain geeky stuff to business people who pay for it). Why I was scheduled to talk to a Microsoft C++ programmer I have no clue. We basically talked about Paris.... and that was it. There were no questions, none could really be asked, and we parted ways. Two weeks later I heard both were looking for other candidates.... big surprise! At least this was better than the first time I had a run in with Fidelity, when they left me outside waiting for an hour because the interview wasn't scheduled and the HR person and the manger were out.
At least I got four solid interviews this time.... which was fun, if eventually disappointing. And then there was silence..... no calls, no responses to postings, GDP at 1.6 % and falling.... looks like tech workers fell down the chute to October again after climbing the ladder in April - June. So be it.... life is nothing but chutes and ladders, as I learned during my liberal arts education. Now for other stuff: Since we're back in the decline of jobs, I have found myself actually going out and doing things instead of staying inside thinking that I should be actively looking for a job 24 hours a day to appear "non-bum" like. Last week Brad and I drove up to Columbus to see DC United play the Columbus Crew. It was a good game... and nice to go to a stadium NOT used for other sports (I hate thinking of player's positions in regard to yard lines).
I bought a soccer ball and a foamy finger.... at this point being a soccer fan is like eating caviar, you flaunt it cause no one gets it. I use to live in Columbus, OH six years ago when I went to Ohio State and lived in a frat house on 14th St. Unfortunately Columbus has went very much down hill since then... even my favorite coffee shop where all my memories reside, Basso Bean, closed and a Deli is quickly coming to take it's place. There was nothing to do downtown, so we went to the mall. I drove to OSU before the game... it was dead because it was summer... but the campus hasn't expanded that much... and slums still exist in the nether regions of High St. between downtown and OSU. In comparison, University of Cincinnati looks like an active post-modern art-deco science project gone haywire... with new odd shaped buildings in blue and green appearing everywhere every few months... even the navigation signs have metal blue trees on top of them.... why no one knows.... it's the essence of post-modern.. "weird for weird's sake".
That's the update so far, I'm now updating the site for August.... and I'm going to write about the directionless void of technology in August... remember when you knew where Java and Microsoft were going? Now Microsoft is doing Mobile Phones and Java has been stuck in the server farm being the bitch of IBM.... but adoption of .Net is slow and unproven.... what do we learn? I'll also take you back to 1996 with CNET webpages to show you how full of direction we were then.... which will highlight how we're so lost now. Stay tuned! 
