i had my first interview for an nz job tonight. i spoke with the chief technology officer of company e – a small company in hamilton that makes network monitoring products. the call went very well – after a few questions about my background and what i was looking we spent most of the time talking about the company and hamilton. they are doing very well and growing rapidly and need to expand their software development management skills. like most companies they think they want someone who can manage the team and also provide technical and architectural leadership. i’m convinced that this is like wanting your physician to also be your dentist. both are important and both require enough focus and specialized skills that you just can’t do both well. so i decided over 10 years ago to be a professional manager and provide software development leadership to the team and let others provide technical and architectural leadership. after we talked about it for a while stuart agreed that the real challenge was growing the engineering team from 8 to 30 and that would require someone focused on the engineering management.
in the “the internets bring everyone closer” category, when we were talking about hamilton and smaller town life i mentioned that we had a cabin in vermont that we had just returned from and how much we like the pace of life up there. the cto asked where and i said that we lived on dorset hill in tiny east dorset, pop. 187. we talked about vermont for a few minutes and then he asked “so you’re on dorset hill road? anywhere near uphill lane or squirrel hollow?” holy moly. turns out that while we were talking he was using google earth to check out the neighborhood.
wrapping up the cto indicated that the next step would be something face to face. he said that he was meeting with the management team tomorrow in auckland where he could review his feedback from our interview.
as i mentioned i think the call went well and larry-my-recruiter-says-craig-the-recruiter-says-the-pa(secretary-)says-the-cto “really-liked-me.” either that or that he wanted a ham sandwich for lunch. who knows after it has passed through that many hands. they indicated that he was meeting with his boss, the ceo, tomorrow and they would discuss next steps.