Quite some time ago a good friend of mine told me there were open developer roles at the company where he worked. A well-known company — in fact, I’m sure, the best-known in the country. I had no desire to take part in the “casting,” and the event on the eve wasn’t exactly pleasant either, but my friend insisted — and I agreed. Fine, I thought: it commits me to nothing anyway.
Their hunters wrote to me and suggested a date. I tried to push it further out, but they said they had deadlines: hiring had to be arranged urgently. All right, I agreed. With the mind I have now, I would never agree to that. If a company’s processes matter more than an employee’s opinion, that company and I are definitely not on the same path.
And the far-from-simple event on the eve of the interview was shoulder-joint surgery, after which I have to spare that arm for life: I am, so to speak, a Terminator with screws in the joint and muscles sewn back on. Now it’s fine, I’ve gotten used to it, but back then that event had me seriously worried.
I came back from the operation, and literally a week later — the interview. July outside, scorching heat; I’m learning to poke at the keyboard with my left hand, the right one strapped up. A hunter writes and asks whether I’m ready for the interview. I answer honestly that I’m not and want to reschedule. She says that’s impossible — apparently some processes won’t let them move it — and adds: “What matters to us is that you’re comfortable” — and, without waiting for my reply, moves on. She probably figured that if I compromised and lied that yes, I was comfortable, then by formal criteria I’d be cleared for the interview. It somehow reminded me of the ad with smiling Alpine cows giving happy milk for Alpen Gold chocolate. The cows probably don’t realize that the moment they stop giving milk, they’ll be granted maximum — and, I’d say, terminal — comfort.
From the hunter I heard more than once that what mattered to the company was that I be comfortable: after all, I was expected to solve timed problems, while I was typing one character at a time on the keyboard, and two keys at once were beyond me. I failed the coding part of the interview. Before that came the architecture round — that went a bit better — but I never got any feedback from them anyway. They all just vanished.
Why am I even writing this? What’s the point of swinging fists after the fight? I’m writing so that the reader won’t be the sucker I was at that moment, and will value their own comfort above the processes of people who want to make cash off them.