A prior coworker of mine has been trying to get me to come work for his company. He is sure I can help his project succeed. In fact, he went to bat for me, informing his managers that they need to hire me. Given my current uncertain future in my company, I arranged an interview with them.When I arrived at the company for the interview, I found it strange that their visitor parking lot was closed because it was full. WTF? I know I came late in the day. But you think they would have reserved some space for me. Luckily I plan for disasters like this, and was super early. So I parked nearby and walked to the building.
I met the manager I had spoken on the phone with. He escorted me to the cafeteria, which was strange. Then he left me with a director of the company. The director said he heard about my interest. He asked briefly about any skills I possessed other than C++ programming. So I told him I do stored procedures, specializing in Oracle PL/SQL. And I said I have done some UNIX development mainly with Korn shell scripts. It appeared his question was just some small talk. He really wanted to talk salary. When I told him the amount that I needed to may the switch, he said that did not fall in the range of his development budget. However he said he could match my current salary plus 3% to 4%. We discussed some other company benefits. And I told him that if he could arrange some critical benefits that I need, we could seal the deal. He said he would find out if that was possible and would get back with me.
After my meeting with the director, I was going to go home. But he said some developers wanted to talk with me regarding some work they were doing. Mind you this was not part of the interview. But they needed some help with something that they knew I had expertise in. Since I took the day off for the interview, I agreed. I spent about an hour doing some consulting with their development team. I saw that they were somewhat lacking in a business domain for which I am a guru. These guys were all excited that I was potentially joining their team. And I was happy that they said they were getting all the latest development tools. We shall see if this opportunity turns into the right job offer for me. It may be a win-win situation for all parties involved.
