I did not get the rose

So today was yet another interview with another small(ish) consulting firm.  I'd passed the screening interview and this was my first f2f (face to face) with that company.  No, this is not the same company I interviewed f2f on Friday, but a different one.  The HR rep reached out to me from my resume posted on DICE.COM.  From him, I learned about his company and what they do and I was actually very excited about it.  It seemed right up my alley and he was enthusiastic about my background.  We spoke for over an hour, had a barrel of laughs.

I walked into their office area a bit early.  Traffic in Seattle is so horrible and this place is also located on the Eastside so bridges are involved and I don't want to "take a chance" of getting stuck, so if I'm 30 minutes early, I just wait in the car.  But anyways, I sat down and

obviously did not impress.

The person I interviewed with asked me if I did data analysis with Hadoop, and only Hadoop, and nothing but Hadoop.  uhm...  

what

the 

fuck

It was a thirty minute conversation for which I'd paid $5+ in toll fees.  I was fine with that, what I was not fine with was the disillusionment.  That hurt.  There was zero interest in my telecom background, the amount of background I had with various technologies such as LTE, UMTS, VoLTE, etc.  He did suggest I consider an internship in data analysis, so I could "learn what data analysis" was about.  yeah, he really hadn't looked at my resume and I really needed a job description.  Okay, I might have challenged him on what he meant by "big data," - structured, unstructured, all data is on its way to being structured so it could be analyzed.  The idea of using query language to do the analysis is not new to me, it's just a different language.  That said, I also made two boffo points which raised his eyebrows.  When I had my "V-8" moment on the drive home, I specifically addressed them both in my "Thank you" note.  Sheesh.  I'm an idiot, but that's okay.

And everyone talks about Hadoop as though that is the language with which you do the querying.  It isn't.  It's Hive.  You set up your "database" with Hadoop.  But whatevah... I'm going to abandon the idea of Python in place of Hadoop / Hive.  This guy wants MapReduce... yeah, sure, he wants that for marketing data and search string / grep replacements, not for performance analysis.  I'm all bitch.  bitch. bitch. now.   But that's the point of this blog.  Things do not always turn out the way you want and that is okay.  Again, this is a dating game.  Iterate failure as fast as you can so you can get past it is my motto.  

There was a job with a "slot" for which I didn't get a description and that was pretty much it.  I thought it was an open ended job description.  What do I know.  Nufink!!  That said, the HR guy who called me and asked me to come in was brilliant and brought to my attention some truly interesting work.  Now to go figure out how to write my presentation for the "other guys."

*********************IN OTHER NEWS ****************************************

In further updates - I'm still waiting for responses from the other two interviews.  I'm not positing either way on them.

My next steps:

1)  gonna go write another cover letter for that gaming company I find so cool.  This time with a focus on my wireless background.
2)  Found another company dealing with IoT (internet of things)...
3)  Gonna go on a scooter ride this morning with Dave.  Then we're gonna walk around some other Seattle neighborhoods.

And yeah, I know about the 5% across the board reductions.  I've heard it a couple of times now.  So listen up folks:  Start updating your LinkedIn profiles and making connections and ASK FOR REFERENCES.  It hurts.  It sometimes feels humiliating, but it is necessary and you will survive.

But what you can do for each other which will make someone else feel better is to give references to each other during this time of stress.  Post those references on LinkedIn as well as send in email.  Make sure your references have a contact email address and phone number as well as your title.  This is the best thing you can do to help your friends out during this stressful time.  Be kind to each other and gratuitously just say "Thank you" and write a reference for someone whose work you appreciate.