End of interview week 1
Jun. 21st, 2002 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
progJust had my follow-up interview with the Harvard ICG folks, one of whom I had a phone interview with on Monday. It went fabulously.
My gut feeling is that I'll get an offer from them, and not from the HMS position, for which I interviewed on Tuesday. Of course, I wouldn't mind a bit if I got an offer from both. Both places say they'll make a decision early next week.
However, the HMS interview didn't fill me with confidence like this one did. I figured out, later that day, what bothered me: while several people interviewed me, they all did so separately and privately. This meant that I couldn't drive groupthink in my favor. I think I utterly failed to impress one of the four people (the DBA, who suddenly started quizzing me about database optimization procedures -- the hell?) though the project head thought I was cool enough to be among the final three candidates (of 150 applicants), and the sysadmin was all about me. We'll see, we'll see.
Mm. Also, the HMS person made a face and wrote in silence for a moment when I told him my salary expectations, while the ICG person sighed in relief. (My expectations actually aren't hugely huge; I'm asking for my old O'Reilly salary.)
What if I did have to choose between both? The ICG job has a better location (the Cambridge campus, walkable and on the Red Line, versus the Longwood campus, way out on the Green Line) but also a worse location (a Victorian house recast as office space, versus a modern, roomy research facility). The HMS job is probably worth significantly more cred and would open up a future career in biotech and bioinformatics. The ICG job, though, would likely be more laid-back and flexible, which is important given my extracirricular activity. (Scribble, scribble.)
Merf. Well, yes. The number of chickens is undefined, so.
My gut feeling is that I'll get an offer from them, and not from the HMS position, for which I interviewed on Tuesday. Of course, I wouldn't mind a bit if I got an offer from both. Both places say they'll make a decision early next week.
However, the HMS interview didn't fill me with confidence like this one did. I figured out, later that day, what bothered me: while several people interviewed me, they all did so separately and privately. This meant that I couldn't drive groupthink in my favor. I think I utterly failed to impress one of the four people (the DBA, who suddenly started quizzing me about database optimization procedures -- the hell?) though the project head thought I was cool enough to be among the final three candidates (of 150 applicants), and the sysadmin was all about me. We'll see, we'll see.
Mm. Also, the HMS person made a face and wrote in silence for a moment when I told him my salary expectations, while the ICG person sighed in relief. (My expectations actually aren't hugely huge; I'm asking for my old O'Reilly salary.)
What if I did have to choose between both? The ICG job has a better location (the Cambridge campus, walkable and on the Red Line, versus the Longwood campus, way out on the Green Line) but also a worse location (a Victorian house recast as office space, versus a modern, roomy research facility). The HMS job is probably worth significantly more cred and would open up a future career in biotech and bioinformatics. The ICG job, though, would likely be more laid-back and flexible, which is important given my extracirricular activity. (Scribble, scribble.)
Merf. Well, yes. The number of chickens is undefined, so.