Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

This week was a very exciting week for me. I had my first interview in going on three years. I had an interview this past Tuesday with a potential client of a consulting company to see if I was a good fit. I sat through about an hour long interview with the client manager going over high-level tech questions, and my background experiences. At the same time I was going through the interview process I was also being observed by the VP of sales for the actual consulting company. It was a two-for-one interview with my having to answer questions for a client, and be graded by my actual consultant employer.

It went very well. There were some aspects of the interview I could have done better. It’s really hard to express a persons background, key applications that were developed, and do so juggling the don’t share to much stigma from past employers day-to-day workings. I’d would like to have thrown out names of companies I’ve worked with, but you really have to be discreet while still displaying a solid background they can feel excited about.

The end result of that first interview is that the client said I’d answered more questions correctly than anyone else they’ve previously interviewed. Talk about an ego booster. That opened up the door for phase two, which would be another interview done by the whole development team I’d be working with. That particular interview took place today, and if I can say I think it went rather well.

Somehow during the process the interview started to take a turn from grilling me with questions to just a room full of like minded individuals (geeks) talking about really neat new technologies and processes. The conversation ranged from projects I’d worked on, tools I’ve used, frameworks I like, and a general overview of my background. I was asked to debate with one of the developers on my take on a nullable boolean data type. Whether I felt it was ever necessary to have a bool value that was anything other than just true or false, or why I felt a three-state supporting bool should ever be used.

During the entire interview the only question I could not answer was what a closure was. I told them I’d probably used one, but I couldn’t at that point in time think of what it was. I came home to find I have in fact used closures, but if you asked me right now I still don’t think I could explain what they are short of similar to anonymous delegates. Yeah, I agree that if you can’t explain it to a seven year old then you probably don’t know what it is yourself.

At the end of the interview one of the developers told me that I was the first person that has ever actually explained correctly the difference between a custom control and a server control. The best part was in my follow-up questions about the development environment a developer simply said that the company was suffering from “premature Ajaxilation.” I think I about laughed myself out of the chair right there. What a fantastic group of developers. I’m sure it won’t all be as nice an experience as this has been, but the journey into independent consulting definitely has been a fun trip so far.