January 25, 2007 – One Job Interview Down

Originally posted on LiveJournal.

So I decided to give some interviews a shot. The idea of being unemployed for a while is great, but looking into what else is out there won’t hurt, and hopefully with as many side projects out of the way as possible, I’ll be able to do more development at home later on whether I’m working or not. Today started the first interview at Caxiam Group a few blocks from Rollins College. I’ve been around Winter Park a lot, but hadn’t realized what a lively place it was at night! I went in for an 8pm interview (apparently the guys were working 2pm-midnight that day) at their office on the park at Winter Park. Tons of great restaurants around there too, although parking seems to be a problem. Interesting place, that’s for sure. Looks like just 2 CF developers and 3 designers but they get so much stuff done with that little team. I mean they’re doing work for lots of big companies I know of — and not little projects; their entire sites! Some of the tasks are a little daunting, and I’m a little concerned about their lack of an in depth development environment (no qa; only one person can work on code at a time, homegrown frameworks used across sites, sourcesafe for version control). They look like they treat their people very well though, with each programmer getting his own office, 22″/19″ dual screen with dual core systems. Looks like any new person would be traveling around, meeting with clients around the US and surrounding islands countries in person to collect requirements – real professional stuff. I’m most impressed with just how much work that team gets done though, which makes me wonder just how much overtime they pull. Looks like I’ll be interviewing at Westgate Resorts next Tuesday which should pose some competition. From what I know they have a 14 person team, SVN, CF with java backend and a manager who I’ve heard give presentations at multiple Coldfusion conferences — not to mention 3 of my friends work there who used to work at FCE. I actually heard the guy who is interviewing me give a presentation about their interview process at CFUnited last year, which may help out. 🙂 Should be interesting, and I look forward to being humbled by the talent I already know is there. Looking forward to it; I enjoy interviewing and this should be the most professional one yet.