On 29/08/2012 12:08 PM, Invisible wrote:
> OK, so last week I had a call about a possible job in Oxford. That's a
> bit of a long way, but it's shorter than my current commute.

Actually, it turns out it's only 5 miles shorter. On the other hand, I 
tried driving over there to see if I could find the place, and even at 
3pm almost all of the roads along the route were absolutely wedged 
solid. And this isn't even rush hour. It took almost 2 hours to get 
there - twice my current commute time. Oh, and once you get there, there 
is NO parking anywhere. The ONLY way to park is to use the lame-ass 
"park and ride" system.

Clearly I will not be looking at any further jobs in Oxford. The journey 
is just insane. I got stuck at one singe junction for 20 minute 
straight. This is at 3pm on a Friday afternoon. I hate to imagine what 
rush hour is like. (!)

> On Friday, I got a call to say that first I have to pass a test. On
> VB.Net, of all things. So, uh, yeah... That's totally going to work out
> then! :-P

OK, well, the job spec clearly says they're looking for a VB programmer. 
I have never done any VB coding (as a cursory glance at my CV will 
readily confirm).

Firstly, this raises the interesting question "why the hell are they 
even interviewing me?" Especially given how badly I did with the test 
they sent. Presumably the purpose of a test is to weed out the people 
who are completely unsuitable, so they can concentrate on the people who 
show at least a minimal aptitude for the work.

An equally valid question - and one which I fully expect that they will 
ask me - is why the /hell/ I'm applying for a VB job when I know nothing 
about VB. (!)

The truthful answer, obviously, is that I went through the jobs list and 
applied for almost every single job in sight, without really paying much 
attention to the action specification. I took this approach under the 
(perfectly reasonable and subsequently confirmed) assumption that almost 
nobody I applied to would even bother to reply to me. I applied for this 
job thinking "what's the worst that can happen?" It turns out, the worst 
that can happen is that you get interviewed for a job you're not really 
interested in, and not skilled for.

(If this were C#, I would be interested. I can probably learn that 
fairly easily. Hell, I've already started. But VB is just a bit too 
crappy for my taste...)

None of this is stuff you want to say in a formal interview. So the 
question is... what the heck am I going to tell these guys? They're 
offering a job that's almost impossible to commute to, coding in a 
language I dislike. So why the heck did I apply?

Sometimes I think maybe I'm not really cut out to be a sentient human 
being...

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