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you're not vegan are you?
Thursday, March 6 2025
Late this morning I had a job interview that took me about fourteen miles from home down US Route 209 past Marbletown. There's a company down there somewhere that builds [REDACTED] equipment, and they needed a C# developer. They'd already interviewed me on the phone and decided I was a solid enough candidate to interview in person. I was a little early of course, which gave me enough time to park behind a nearby business called [REDACTED], where I pissed in the scrubland in back and then noticed the presence of several chargers for electric vehicles.
When I got tot the business that would be doing the interviewing, I was ushered into a conference room, where I first met with a young software developer. I asked him how long he'd worked for the company and his answer was 2.5 years. It later turned out that this was his first job, though his title was already "Senior Developer." Three others eventually joined us, including the CEO and the Director of Operations, and I immediately launched into the long tale of how I became a software developer. I'm a funny, personable person, and generally people like me in settings like this. I tend to be a little self-deprecating and disarming while also advocating for myself and highlighting the things a business should like about me professionally. I'm also good at giving eye contact. Fortunately, there was no quizzing me on the arcana of software development, which might well have caused the wheels of the interview to fall off. Everyone seemed to accept that I was the developer my resume claimed me to be, and since everyone liked me, the interview went great. Hilariously, everyone kept saying I resembled another guy on staff named Kevin. At one point the CEO asked, "You're not vegan, are you?" Usually I keep that fact about me a secret, but since it had been brought up, I said that indeed I was. It turned out Kevin is also a vegan. And he drives an electric car and has an elaborate solar electric setup at his house that he built himself. Kevin has been working for the company for something like 30 years and everyone there loves him, and with everyone thinking I was basically another Kevin, I had them all eating out of my hand.
After the young developer headed off to deal with some plumbing issue back home, the CEO asked what my salary requirments are, and I quickly answered $110,000. He hemmed and hawed and said that this wasn't unreasonable but that, and here he obviously lied, he had other candidates he was interviewing and would have to see what he could do. Then he and the Director of Operations discussed benefits, which weren't great but weren't terrible either. (There is no matching for the 401K at this time, for example.)
After that, a project manager who hadn't spoken much gave me a tour of the whole facility, including the upstairs cubicle farm where the nine or so software developers work. He then took me to a manufacturing area where the blue collar guys assemble a very specific kind of sensor [REDACTED]. We then looked at a test [REDACTED]. They make everything related to this niche product, and it seemed like an interesting place to work. But if I got the job, I'd mostly have to go to the office.
On the drive home, I felt the kind of elation one feels when a job interview goes well. I also felt a little like I'd dodged a bullet, since I hadn't actually received a technical interview.
Back home in Hurley, I told Gretchen the good news about the interview, and she was very happy for me. Meanwhile she'd been writing a letter to send to our tenant in the 1L apartment at the brick mansion on Downs Street. This tenant had promised to pay her rent on time and be better at communicating, but less than two weeks later she hadn't paid her March rent on time and was back to completely ghosting us. So the letter was to tell the tenant that she was to vacate her apartment by May 1st, something she'd agreed to do in writing if she failed to live up to her terms of our recent agreement. Of course, as a tenant under Kingston's highly pro-tenant legal regime, she can probably stay as much as 90 days, but maybe we can shame her into leaving earlier, since she is clearly a terrible tenant and she's obviously not living up to the terms of an agreement that isn't even a month old.
Gretchen and I ended up driving into Kingston via Hurley to send a letter to the tenant via certified mail and to also post a letter on her door. (Along the way, we stopped at the Hurley vet so Charlotte could receive a second leptospirosis shot.) At Downs Street, the tenant's Lexus was gone and she wasn't there, but had she been there we would've banged on her door in an effort to communicate with her directly.
Back at the house, I had news from the recruiter I'd been working with that I'd soon be offered a job by that company I'd interviewed at earlier today. In celebration, I began to drink, starting with an imperial hazy IPA and then graduating to a cocktail of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and gin, which drank while walking Charlotte in the loop I like to do up the Farm Road and then back home atop the escarpment to its west. Eventually I took a half of a one milligram xanax to see if that was enough to knock me out and cut my drinking short. It seemed to work, which was great. (Gretchen recently told me that only a quarter of a xanax, or 250 micrograms, is enough to get to sleep.)
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?250306 feedback
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