Should’ve Known Better

I had a job interview the other day.

I’m not really looking, but I had a request from LinkedIn, I had interviewed with them in the past, so I figured, why not. The requestor is a pretty well known network security shop, after all.

Indeed.

I found out though since the same damn thing happened last time I bothered with these people.

Back in 2004, I was desperate to get away from the hell hole company I found myself in after being laid off. I was going for a tier 1 support job. Pretty much up my aisle. I had a great interview with the hiring manager before they sent me to an escalation engineer for the technical part of the interview.

I’ve met types like this in the past. They revel in being way smarter than everyone else and can be exceptionally cruel. He asked question after question of which byte did this or that. Nothing to do with using the product. Nothing to do with troubleshooting the product, nor very much at all about best practices and maybe a scenario on how I’d do this or that.

I think my response was something along the lines of “Dude, I’m not designing the thing, I’m helping techs who call in to get it working.”

So I went back to the hiring manager who told me the engineer said I wasn’t a fit.

That was OK. The interview lapsed into nothing but entertainment value fifteen minutes prior. Now, time for fun.

I told him that’s OK. I wasn’t real keen on the extra half hour to my commute to support a product which I’d given up on five years ago as feeble compared to their competition. Matter of fact, the next three architectures I built after managing a network with their product, I diligently avoided them. It wasn’t sour grapes. After schlepping all the way out there, I nearly called and cancelled the thing before walking in the building.

This time, it was all entertainment value.

It was a zoom call. Homey lit the meeting up and couldn’t get his audio working. Once we got moving, I’m staring at a George Costanza gamma schlub wearing a t-shirt. Fine. Remote worker, I get it. But directors at my company make an effort and normally dress business casual if they are going to be seen.

So I go through my experience. He asks to see some of my work, which I share with him. Then he describes how the department is structured and what the position was, which was something I have zero interest in doing. You see, my title is the product of a huge corporation that has severely structured buckets to stuff people in. They don’t have a title for what I do, which is half what my title says, and the other half the doesn’t exist in my department. Matter of fact, I think I’m one of the few in the whole country that does what I do. Most are in Europe.

Then he starts complaining about my CV.

Well, You don’t really do what we need and you have a lot of two and three year jobs. Note, I’ve been in the same position through a merger and a purchase. My title changed as did the name of the company each time. But I’ve been doing what I do for fifteen years. And I explained why I left the last two jobs – one was a layoff, I had no choice, and one was a sweatshop, I had no choice.

Then he flips and says he wants to send me some info so I can do a scenario so we can move forward. A bit of a test to see what I can do. Wut?

Same as last time. The entertainment value bell was rung like minutes into the interview.

Now, time for fun.

I told him he missed what I said about my history, my title doesn’t match what is described on my CV, and that job sounded like pure hell to me and I want nothing to do with it let along carving out the time to do a test. Thanks anyway.

Dude was surprised. Don’t know why.

Got me to thinking how useless LinkedIn has been for me. I’ve been on it since it’s inception. It used to have decent business links and information, but it’s turned into a yet another useless social media platform with feeds replete with inane content from industrial content farms. The only reason I still have it is to repost social blasts from my company. Something I’ve yet to do.

I’ll have to rethink this, since it’s only one of two social media accounts I have.