Tomorrow I am going to the Edmonton area for an interview with a small
software company in the agri-business industry.  This is very much
the dream combination (IT+Agriculture) that I have been seeking since
getting out of school.  These guys are small (13 employees in all)
and are currently staffed with 3 developer/support people + the
position that I’m interviewing for.  They’re currently rebuilding
their existing application into a VB.Net/SQL Server 2000 combination
and very much like the combination of agriculture and VB/SQL skills
that I have.  Good things for me are that I would get a whack of
experience in .Net and they mention that the position would be
responsible for the majority of the reporting development (SQL 2k
Reporting Services?).

My last job started with a similarly small company that also was
re-technologizing the software (VB6 & SQL 2k) from the ground
up.  I did this experience and reaped all the rewards that in the
end were offered by burnout.  Although I did benefit greatly from
the technical and professional experience, there were many things that
the job did not offer.  One of those things, which turned out to
be a major point of contention between different employees, was the
lack of structure.  At the time, I felt that the horizontal
structure provided the company with the opportunity to quickly react to
new situations.  The thing that I didn’t see was that it also
opened the opportunity for people to reject accountability (no one to
report to) and compartmentalize thier reponsibilites, and work
environment, with only themselves in mind.

I know that it would be very premature and prejudicial of me to believe
that, this company that I am interviewing with, would either currently
or in the future will be in this situation.  I do suppose that the
purpose of the interview tomorrow is not only for them to get a read on
me, but also for me to aquire the ‘correct’ information on their
current situation.

Part of the reason that it is so difficult for me to go running, with
spread arms, to this company is that I have had some significant
interest from another.  The drawback with them is that thier
internal buraucracy has slowed the process of interviews/offers damn
near to a halt.  I first interviewed with them, via phone (their
HR is in Winnipeg and the department is in Saskatoon), on or about the
22nd of October.  Just this past Fiday (26th of November), they
called me back and the HR lady seemed very enthusiastic about having me
fly to Saskatoon for what she described as a meet and greet with the IT
Manager and to see if the city fit my needs.  I agreed that the
position was of great interest to me and that this would be a step I
would openly welcome.  Her response was that she would contact me
in a day or two with flight information for a day this week.  I
finally had to call them today to ensure that I wouldn’t double book
the days that they chose for a flight, and my conversation with her led
to the fact that they were reviewing budgeting and that it was holding
up the decision, but most likely I would hear something next week.

Now I have one company very interested (Edmonton) and looking to make
stuff happen at a reasonable pace, and another that appears interested,
but works at the speed of molasses in January.  All things about
these two jobs (salary, technology, ect) are very similar, the one big
difference is that the job in Saskatoon is more intellectually
interesting to me, and that company has the structure and procedure in
place that I would like to experience sooner in my career rather than
later.

I’m guessing that I will have to make the decision on the Edmonton
position middle to end of next week.  Hopefully the people in
Saskatoon get something together before then.