Last Wednesday, I went to Leiden for an interview with the startup that tempted me. The guy who interviewed me was the Chief Technology Officer and it was a nice surprise that he was an American guy who came from New York City. So basically, it was a free-flowing conversation and he asked me mostly about my previous background in classic ASP trying mostly asking about “how” I made things. The office was situated at the city centrum (see photo), surrounded by market stalls, a canal, and shops but it was extremely quiet (insulated) inside the office. The office is in the 3rd floor of a historical building. He said that the rest of the staff come in like 2-3 times a week and work at home the rest of the week. The company also sends the whole staff twice a year for a general meeting to their Manhattan office (not bad!).
Well, to say the least I was quite hyped about it and got very enthusiastic about working for them that I agreed verbally to work on a trial-basis at the beginning, however, as soon as I got back home things started to sink in. As expected, he also asked me for my salary expectations.When I got home I soon remembered some points which I forgot to bring up. It was bound to happen but I could still e-mail my questions anyways. The main questions that were leftover were for example :
- What would be the possible future responsibilities of this position?
- Plans to upgrade to the latest technologies and such.
In my e-mail, (after thanking him of course) I emphasized that I am now in a permanent position now and in order for me to be able to give that up, I need either an attractive freelance contract or a solid employment offer. My current contract has a one month notice so in order to join their firm full time on the 1st of April, I’d have to resign before the end of February. However I also told them that I am eager to take on new opportunities and leave behind my current job. I perfectly understand that, as a startup company, they need to be sure about the staff they hire as well. I then proposed the following possibilities:
- the company offers me an employment contract starting 1st of April after successfully completing the trial assignment or..
- we agree on a 2 month free lance contract with a market conform rate. After this contract, they can choose not to continue or offer me a regular employment contract or continue with the freelance situation.
The next day I received a reply by e-mail and the answer something like this: They are motivated in hiring the right person but they continue to interview at the moment. They do expect a decision in the next 7-10 days. He also confirmed that this is indeed a software development position, with programming as primary responsibility. They also expect to transition to C# gradually but at least the projection is that in 2 years 100% of the code will be .NET. And this year they will be using the latest version available for the database server. He said, he thinks the sample project is a great start and he would be sending it the same day.
About 4 pm same day I received the programming assignment. It was only a small function but it would show him my coding style and how well I implement the solution to his problem. At around 6:30pm I have turned it in. After that time, I have received no reply yet. Oh well, I guess it’s fine whatever happens. In the meantime, in my day-off my colleagues from my department called me and told me they needed some data sent. However, my VPN does not work. I called our so-called network guys and the only thing he asked me was to reboot (!) and to reinstall my policy. Nothing worked. I am not surprised anyways.. This is one of the main things that leave me disgruntled about my job is that our network guys are so unreliable and our infrastructure is not working half the time.
It was good that my colleague was able to send me copies of my code and since I have a client installed on my machine I could at least see if it compiles. I sent him new code to handle the request and the code to create the job. It was finished in no time. Thanks to him!
But anyways, let’s see what happens.
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1 Married Couple As Business Partners in an IT Business | Back to the Philippines // Apr 13, 2008 at 8:21 am
[...] We both did that already. I think it’s about time we do it for ourselves. In my other article Interview with a Startup, the American guy also served as an inspiration to me that the time is really [...]
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