I interviewed at Adzerk.

I interviewed at Adzerk. They serve reddit's and Stack Overflow's ads, among many others of course.

I saw a job opening on Stack Overflow. It was for a DevOps position, which is not for me, but it looked like an interesting startup in the area. Their website detailed a Software Engineer position, among others. It looked great.

I emailed them information about myself and expressed interest in talking with them, even if they weren't officially hiring for that position.

I got a response in one hour.

The next day I had a phone interview with the CTO, Nate. The call was about half an hour long and went great. He seemed to get that I was a very strong developer, having seen my portfolio online. I made it clear that I didn't have any real experience with the type of large-scale internet infrastructure that they use, but he assured me that it was no big deal as long as I am a quick learner. We even discussed salary ranges and when I could start. They scheduled me to come in for an in-person interview. I was very excited.

A couple weeks elapsed before the in-person interview due to scheduling conflicts. No big deal, but I was anxious to meet with them.

I came in on a Tuesday around 3pm. I was actually 20 minutes early, but we started as soon as I arrived. I met with Nate, Pat and Sean, all technical folks, together in the conference room.

I explained why I was looking for a job - my company was recently acquired and I either had to relocate to San Diego or find a new job. I also wanted to move on to something new (I'd been at my current job for five years) and Adzerk was working on interesting things that would really broaden my experience.

They only really asked me one semi-technical question. It was about infrastructure - load balancing, replication, sharding, etc. I thought I answered it okay. I wasn't trying to make it look like I had done things that I hadn't done before.

For the rest of the interview I showed off all sorts of things I had worked on, both in my spare time and at work. I figured this would make it clear how passionate I am about programming and highlight the range of skills that I possess, out-weighing any lack of experience in other areas.

After an hour and a half (longer than scheduled), I briefly met the rest of the team and then left.

A few days later, I received a rejection email from Nate. While I'm clearly very skilled, he said, I don't have enough experience in big data or big web to justify opening a position just for me.

Makes sense from a business perspective, I guess, except I had made this clear from the beginning. Maybe there was more to it that they weren't telling me. Or maybe Nate liked me but someone else didn't.

I wonder if they would have hired me had the position actually been open?

I wonder if they'll consider me if the position opens in the future?

It felt like a good cultural fit. They seemed to like me in general.

It still feels like a rejection.

A small blow to my ego is good. I need to be challenged. Some of my weaknesses have been revealed. I can work on them now.

http://www.michaelfogleman.com/