An embarrassment of riches

I had a good day today. First I went to the main/central branch of the Wellington City :-).Libraries. I was to have an interview at 2PM, but I went to Wellington with Sol, so I had a few hours to kill at the library.

I hadn't been seated for more than 30 minutes or so when I got a call from yesterday's interview. They couldn't wait til Monday for a decision. I had to make a decision today. I could understand their dilemma. They had another candidate waiting for their decision. If they were to wait til Monday for mine, I might not accept, and the other candidate might no longer be available. I was their preferred candidate, but they couldn't afford to let the second candidate escape unhired if I were not to be available.

I promised to give them my decision before the end of the day.

I then proceeded to read from some java books. I'd done the same the previous day, testing out some new things that were discussed in the books (and which I knew of only theoretically), new to me, anyway, who last worked in java sometime around version 1.1 or very early 1.2. That was good fun. Yesterday I wanted to borrow Java in a Nutshell. Should have grabbed it yesterday. Someone else grabbed it and now I'll have to wait a month for it :-).

The interview at 2PM went very well. It was surprisingly short. And they didn't ask me any technical questions. I think that's a mistake. Employers who are hiring developers should always ask technical questions, and maybe have the developer solve some programming problems. But maybe Catalyst's directors have been around so many developers they can tell who is faking. Likely too, my interviewers were comfortable with the fact that my wife works for Catalyst, is doing very well, and says good things about me.

When the interview ended, I went back to the library to read and play some more. I got a call soon after. Catalyst was offering me a job. The offer was for less money than the first offer, but I accepted anyway. I like how Catalyst does things, my wife enjoys it there, so I'm sure I will too. Sol and I will be able to sample the surrounding restaurants at lunch, and go to work and come home at the same time. It'll be great.

My new job is likely to be mostly Java though. I'm reading up, getting familiar again. I'll also practice some trivial test programs on Tomcat, to see just what that's like. Time to look at Spring too. I don't know what ORM they might be using, but I have a week to learn things ahead of time :-).