For this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, Kendra Little asked us to share our interview patterns, anti-patterns, highs, and lows.
Several years ago, I was talking to a prospective employer via phone, and things were sounding really interesting. I made it past the first couple rounds of remote interviews, and they wanted me to come into the office for the final round.
The interview started with a tour of the offices, and things seemed alright enough at first until we got to the part of the building where the technical people worked.
We stepped into one room maybe 20′ x 20′, and it was completely packed with desks, classroom-style – and 15-16 employees. Each desk was maybe 3′ across – wide enough for a single monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse, and that’s it.
The desks were all next to each other, and I mean next to each other. Without leaning, each person could reach out their arms out sideways and tap both of their neighbors on the shoulder. Furthermore, each person could turn 90 degrees, and tap the monitors of the row ahead & behind them. I’m not even sure how one person could have taken a bathroom break without asking other people to move. Maybe they had to go at designated times. Maybe they weren’t allowed to go at all.
Dramatic recreation
As if on cue, the entire room turned to look at us, then turned right back to their monitors to continue working.
This was one of those times in my life where I really wish I had a photograph of my reaction. It must have been horrific, because as we walked to the next room, my guide said, “No no, don’t worry, you wouldn’t be working in that room. You’ll be in another area.”
That was it, though – I was shellshocked and done. I smiled and nodded my way through the rest of the interview.
Shortly thereafter, the recruiter called me back with the great news that I’d been offered the job. I turned it down. Sure, that wasn’t my office today, but if the company would do that to any of their team members, there was nothing stopping ’em from doing it to me later.
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[…] logged on to Twitter this morning, the first tweet I saw was for Brent Ozar’s (@BrentO) post The DBA Job I Turned Down. It was another great post from Brent, and I was inspired to write about a similar […]
[…] logged on to Twitter this morning, the first tweet I saw was for Brent Ozar’s (@BrentO) post The DBA Job I Turned Down. It was another great post from Brent, and I was inspired to write about a similar […]
Did you have Unifocus flashbacks? haha…
Hey, I had my own corner office there! That was pretty swank. I didn’t even live in Dallas and I had a really nice office.
I once worked at a temp gig where I could get deep discounts on things like deodorant and soap, and we STILL had way more personal space to do our work 🙂
HAHAHA
My First Contract (25 years ago) was in conditions exactly like that or worse, you could only just fit a PC and a mouse on the desk, we were literally Shoulder to Shoulder,
None of my colleagues could work out why I refused the contract extension I was offered.
I suppose they were happy being Sardines, I like to have room to think, let alone breath.
Just curious – do you know how this company is doing today? Is it still a sardine can?
What department / job function was in that room?
Alex & David – I don’t think it’d be wise for me to answer either of those, heh.
You were lucky. One position I accepted, all the interviews, and wonderful database work description, happened in conference rooms and such. When I showed up for Day One, I was ushered into such a room with cafeteria folding tables, two persons per. I felt like a dope.
[…] Ozar writes about “the DBA Job I Turned Down,” which encouraged an especially close relationship between some team […]
I recall interviewing at a predominantly Oracle shop once, for a sql server dba position. I did ok and finally they took me on a tour of the DC. All the oracle servers were sitting on racks, their lights twinkling and pristine clean. The lone two sql servers were in a dirty corner – I mean literally, dusty and perhaps hte most insignificant corner of the large room. And they said ‘those are the boxes you’d be managing..needs a little cleaning heh’. Sure, it did. I was offered and didn’t take the job. If my servers are treated that way I didnt think I’d be treated any better.
This story reminds me of a job that I had about 20 years ago. The company was very profitable and in the process of building a new facility when is was hired. Months later when we moved to the new facility, i asked the owner where the servers were going to be located, and he replied that he hadn’t even thought about it. After he spent millions on a brand new 30,000 sq ft facility, we placed the servers in vented supply closet out of necessity. I then started another job search, since it had become painfully obvious that he didn’t place much value on his IT resources.