Economy

Post by **Troy** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:05 am

Marketing and advertising for a a Bio tech firm that makes kits for RNA/DNA isolation.

They didn't hire me on my science skills, luckily.

Post by **GORDON** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:32 pm

Used to work for a marketing firm. They referred to themselves as a "trinkets and trash" business.

Post by **TheCatt** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 2:44 pm

Sigh. 2nd interview with start-up didn't work out.

I was their "runner-up"

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:50 pm

TheCatt wrote:Sigh. 2nd interview with start-up didn't work out.

I was their "runner-up"

You should begin your next interview w\ the phrase, "I know where you bury the bodies."

Post by **TheCatt** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:09 pm

So I had a tech interview that was half C#, and half Oracle. I got everything right on the Oracle section, and did OK on the C#. I figured I still had a shot at interview, but chance of not...

I got this response from my recruiter today

I appreciate your prompt follow up about the tech screen, as well. I wanted to pass along some great feedback-you did the best out of all the tech screens scheduled!! They said you passed with flying colors and are a front runner right now.

Either the other people looking for work really suck, or I did pretty well after all.

Post by **Vince** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 7:44 pm

I keep a good thought for you.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:40 pm

Woot!

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:06 pm

TheCatt wrote:So I had a tech interview that was half C#, and half Oracle. I got everything right on the Oracle section, and did OK on the C#. I figured I still had a shot at interview, but chance of not...

I got this response from my recruiter today
I appreciate your prompt follow up about the tech screen, as well. I wanted to pass along some great feedback-you did the best out of all the tech screens scheduled!! They said you passed with flying colors and are a front runner right now.
Either the other people looking for work really suck, or I did pretty well after all.

Rock. What sort of C# questions were they throwing around? Both the worthless & challenging categories, if you would.

Post by **TheCatt** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 1:14 pm

I dont have all of them written down, but here's a sample:
What is a delegate? What is a multicast delegate?
How do you do event registration?
What is recursion? What happens if you fail to exit?
What are bitwise operators?
How would you access data from a DB? (what objects, calls, etc)
What is reflection? why would you use it?
He created a scenario in which the answer was basically about using derived classes instead of complex switch statements to do things.
What is polymorphism? why is it good/bad?
What are anonymous methods?
Name some collections in the System.Generics namespace
Why do you have to use the var keyword in LINQ?
What are differences between value types and reference types?

What is a hashset?
If you use a custom object for the key of a generic dictionary, what interface do you need to implement to make sure it will function correctly?

I missed those last two. Oh, and I got the stuff about bitwise operators about half-right, cuz I haven't done those since c++ days.

I expected some stuff about patterns, but he never touched on it.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 9:13 pm

I would probably fail that.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 2:10 am

thibodeaux wrote:I would probably fail that.

When I was looking for a job, most of the tech-specific questions were excessively brutal. I think it's cos the managers in charge now remember some of the morons they used to work w\ when they were grunts.

Post by **Vince** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:20 am

This irony struck me a couple of days ago: some of the same people that insist that only evolution be taught in schools don't believe in Darwinism in the market place.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 pm

Vince wrote:This irony struck me a couple of days ago: some of the same people that insist that only evolution be taught in schools don't believe in Darwinism in the market place.

That's cos nature does all the work for evolution automatically. It takes effort for people to apply it to artificial constructs.

Post by **GORDON** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:44 pm

If we want to be technical, "evolution" does not equal "survival of the fittest." Technically, evolution = a change in a population over time. One business succeeding where another fails is more survival of the fittest.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:17 pm

This appears to be more an example of natural selection rather than evolution.

Post by **Vince** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:30 pm

Malcolm wrote:This appears to be more an example of natural selection rather than evolution.

Actually, natural selection is being thwarted with bailouts.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 9:54 pm

Vince wrote:
Malcolm wrote:This appears to be more an example of natural selection rather than evolution.
Actually, natural selection is being thwarted with bailouts.

Natural selection works. It takes quite a bit of energy to make sure the worthless fall thru the cracks. We obviously aren't willing to output that much effort.

Post by **TheCatt** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:00 pm

So..... I still haven't heard anything back about that job. My job ended 3/31.

But I've started my own company, and have a little bit of consulting work to keep me busy. But need more.

Post by **TPRJones** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:05 pm

It takes no energy at all for natural selection to work. Leave the system alone, and the worthless will wither and die.

The effort comes in when you try to thwart that process.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:21 pm

TPRJones wrote:The effort comes in when you try to thwart that process.

Process been being fucked w\ for years. Lots of stored up "fuck up-edness" to disperse harmlessly. An unsupervised collapse isn't an option anymore. A controlled one is preferable.