Being the luddite that I am, I got home last Thursday after work and
didn’t bother checking my voice mail. What programmer really expects to
have a voice mail waiting on their personal phone? A better question
is, Who leaves a personal voice mail for a programmer? It’s not like
we’ve made a name for ourselves as outgoing social animals.

For some reason this morning, I decided to check my voice mail. Sure
enough the dial tone was intermittant. Check the message and low and
behold, I have one more company interested in my services. This is a
group that I had long ago written off. I did a phone interview with
them around the middle of October and figured that I had completely
blown it. During the interview the HR lady seemed to have her knickers
all in a bunch and was definitely not interested in enjoying the
process. Between that, and second guessing the answers that I gave for
the technical questions, I figured I was doomed.

I called the same HR lady back today and had a very pleasant and
cordial conversation with her. On more than one occasion I had her
laughing. She wanted to talk about salary expectations and the benefit
package. The most amazing thing, this group not being a government
entity, is that they are looking for Analysts/Programmers to fill a
postition that pays overtime, has a retirement plan and a number of
other small benifits that together sound very much like a union job at
the local plant. Please realize that this is a huge shock for someone
who has worked in an environment with no OT, limited holidays, no
retirement plan, and the need to put in 60+ hrs a week….every week.

By the end of the conversation we had rectified our differences in
salary, and I am now waiting for a call back to tell me when I get to
fly to the beautiful city of Saskatoon. The way the HR lady spoke, it
almost sounds like a formality that I have to see the office and city.

Hopefully I haven’t gotten my hopes up, only to see them get crushed once again.