[Whostheboss]

During this past summer, i did a lot of work for my company and for my little pet projects.

I'm a Software engineer. At my current company, i'm fully responsible for designing and programming the user interface/interaction for a next generation Medical life support ventilator and partially responsible for programming the internal components.
Every year, my company goes on various trade shows and exhibits our future projects.

I also have other little pet projects i work on and i post them on my resume including LinkedIn.

So last month, out of nowhere, i received a phone call from Apple, the lady she said she saw my work at exhibits and online, she was very impressed she wants to offer me a possible job offer at Apple computer, i was very excited and she setup an interview for me with an Apple engineer.
A few days later, I get another call, this time from Google. They were impressed with my online resume and wanted to setup an interview with me and a Google engineer.
The next day, I got another call from an Amazon recruiter, she wanted to me bring me to Seattle for an interview.
Then a week later, I got another phone call from a local recruiter here in Connecticut about a job in Norwalk.

All these job interviews were to take place within days of each other. I spent weeks studying and brushing up on my programming and algorithm skills and other core engineering, mathematics and science expertise.

First came the Apple interview, it was a live phone/internet interview where I type out algorithms online and the interviewer can see it as I type. I was given lots of very difficult algorithms. Some I did well. others I didn’t do so well.

Then came the Google interview, it was a horrible experience, I barely understood what the guy was saying. He had a very strong Indian accent plus he put me on speakerphone which made it even worse. I continually told him that I couldn’t hear him but he didn’t give a shit. His voice tone seemed like someone who is tired and just wants to quit his job or end his life. It was a 45-min interview with two very tough questions. He spent the first 30min asking me the first question.
(The questions where: How would you sort through a data base of user search criteria containing x data to be retrieved within x amount of time?)
Each time I gave him a response he will come up with a different scenario with the same question and I had to answer all of them in different scenarios.
He really wasted 30min asking me this question. After I finally got all scenarios correct. He now switched to question #2 which involves high level coding of how to figure out mathematical algorithms to program a various Chess pieces to find the shortest move on an 8x8 chess board. Dude are you freaking kidding me?, there’s barely 10mins remaining and you want me to type the code?
Anyway, I started hacking at it and he said time was running out so I did the best I can.

Then came the interview here in Connecticut, I went in and talked with them. It was a startup company looking for engineers to work on their website. I wasn’t too sure if I wanted this company because they didn’t look stable especially when compared to my current job where we sign multi-million dollar contracts each year with hundreds of hospitals worldwide.

So last week the results start pouring in. I didn’t get the Apple job because they wanted a Guru, an Alpha and Omega, a creator and an almighty Dalai Lama programmer which clearly was not me.

Google called me saying I failed the interview. The guy who called me was very cool, we spoke briefly and he sent me a link where I can try for other possible Google jobs.

I never heard back from Amazon, so I emailed the lady who I initially spoke with. She replied saying that after they carefully reviewed my resume, they have decided to go with other candidates. (The typical "we don’t want you" response). Really? I never even applied, so why the heck did you guys call me in the first place and then loose interest?

And then to top it all off, the startup company emailed me that they regret to inform me that I won’t get the job. Oh well, I was a little skeptical about working there.

So within a matter of 7 days, I got rejected from 4 job offers! Getting a chance like this is very rare, not a lot of people receive a chance to interview with big Software companies. I felt completely demoralized but I pray to God and I wake up every morning feeling positive about myself. My mother has always told me that everything happens for a reason. And coming to think of it, every job interview that I never got in the past HAS ALWAYS ended up as a good thing (either the company went out of business or it turned out that working there is too stressful).
I like my current job now, it’s completely stress less, everyone is very professional, the pay is OK, I just wish I can make more. Google and Apple were offering in the upwards of $140K salary.

Oh well life continues. I’m working on some projects now that I’ll soon release to the public in the future and I hope to God that my projects/business goes well.

Thanks for reading.