Tales from a web developer (hired and quit on the spot)
After reading two articles (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/secret-life-games-programmer and https://medium.com/@evnowandforever/f-you-i-quit-hiring-is-broken-bb8f3a48d324) regarding life experiences as developers, I felt compelled to write a story of my own. I don’t believe I will be able to summarize it in just one post, so this will probably will be a series of posts.
I will try not to embellish much but it’s in my nature as a story-teller (wannabe) to exaggerate a bit for the story’s sake.
After much thought, this probably came as a winner for the first story.
Some years ago, I was still in school and looking for projects to work on. So I went to a conference about Adobe Flash and the impact on SEO. After the conference, for some reason I started talking to a couple. They looked 40ish but very business like. So they gave me their business card and asked me if I would be interested in interviewing with them. I don’t remember the name of the guy, but let’s call the woman Ana. I agreed and we setup an appointment. The day of the interview, to my demise, traffic was just awful and I got there about 30 minutes late. I did call ahead stating that I would be late, but it was no excuse. I was late and it was because of no one’s fault but my own. When I got there, the sweet lady I had met a few days earlier was really really pissed off. No sugar of any kind. And the conversation started out something like:
— Are you into a habit of being late for everything? I mean, is that how you handle yourself professionally?
Surprisingly, I was very calm, so I didn’t take the comment as something personal. I was, after all, late. So I apologized (again) for being late and reassured her that it was a one time thing. So the rest of the interview went fairly well. They liked my profile. A very amusing part of the interview is that since I state in my CV to know some French, she asked me to say something in French. So I did. And she retorted with something like
— I don’t speak French, but I understand it.
Yeah, sure. But anyway, even though they paid less than I expected I agreed to work for them. So they asked me to stay and start that very same day and for an ID to make the contract. So I obliged and while they were typing out the contract, I was left with their chief engineer. Just casually talking, he asked for my email address, so I gave him a business card from a training center I teach at. He suddenly became very tense and asked me if I worked for that company. I said I sometimes help them out with small projects and I do teach some courses every now and then. This is when it all started to go south. He said I would have to tell Ana about this arrangement. So whenever Ana came back, I told her about it. She was pissed off again.
— Do you work for them?
— Occasionally I help them with small projects.
— Well, I don’t want you working elsewhere while you work with us.
I got a little offended, but I kept my cool.
— While I’m here, at this office, in your time, I will NEVER work on a side project. It’s unethical and just plain wrong. But what I do in my spare time, while I’m at home, well, that’s my business.
And that’s when she started yelling at me.
— Well, you’re never going to grow professionally if you keep poking around here and there.
And that’s when I did lose it.
— Who are you to tell me that I won’t grow professionally? Who do you think you are?
We started yelling at each other. Made quite the commotion. Then this guy told me to calm down, and asks me what was wrong.
— Nothing, I’m just waiting for them to give me my ID back so I can leave.
After a while, and an awkward tense moment between the four of us, some office boy finally came back with my ID. And I took it and was just about to leave, but Ana asked to talk to me in private. So we both went into a conference room. And then she uttered something that deep within it (but very very deep) seemed like an attempt to apologize.
— Ok, I think we both lost it over there for a minute.
— I didn’t. I did not insult you or were disrespectful to you in any way.
— You did yell at me.
— You yelled at me first and claimed I would never grow professionally.
— I did not say that. I said you will never grow professionally if you keep on working in several places at the same time. But that’s beside the point. I think we should both calm down and make a decision with a clear head. The position is still yours if you want it. Please think about it.
— I will.
I said my goodbyes and left. The thing that got me the most was that she did not apologize for yelling at me. She did have a point, even if that point did not apply directly to me, but she was free to express her opinion. What I do not take from people is yelling or insults, and the fact of the matter is her apology was more of a justification than an apology. If she had apologized, I probably would have seriously thought about working for them. But I also thought about the fact that we had a confrontation on my very first day of work. I would not want to work in a place like that, because we probably would have have more and more arguments. So I sent them an email and thanked them for the opportunity but I have decided to wait for other job offers.
In the end, I was recruited by another company that paid 40% more, but absorbed all of my time (but that’s another story for another post).
You don’t normally see karma working in your favor, which is why I don’t really believe in it. But this time, it did act on my behalf and it did give me an opportunity to tell Ana again to go fuck herself. A few days into my new job, her chief engineer called me to see if I wanted to work as a freelance on a project for them. I declined, stating that I was fully committed to my new job.
Admittedly, it was not the best way to go professionally, because it was somewhat of a revenge, even if it was a small one, it was still an action with some grudge beneath it. And, in this line of business, you never know when you are going bump into someone again (I actually was working on a project that indirectly bound me to Ana again).
