An offer

[cjsmith]

Companies T, X, MP: resume submitted, never a peep. Probably not a fit.
Company G: wants a phone call early next week but has not yet scheduled it.
Company Z: usually does two interviews. I've had one and then took off for the East Coast for a week. May be interested in seeing me again or may think I rate somewhat lower than boogers.
Company V: interview tomorrow.

And job offer number one of the 2006 Job Search Season is at company M, a place so small and so deep in stealth mode that their web page has nothing on it but a logo. It's verbal so far, by which I mean spoken, and I don't think they're even going to bother checking references before putting it on paper. They want an answer from me ABSOLUTELY RIGHT NOW, as in "start Monday".

I pushed back on answering before tomorrow afternoon's interview at Company V. That one had already been scheduled and I didn't feel at all right about:
- saying yes to Company M and ditching the V interview last minute
- saying yes to Company M and going to the V interview, wasting their time
- saying no to Company M without any time to think
or, honestly, simply being pushed to decide so fast.

So I'm now expected to call as soon as I get out of V's building and tell M what I have decided. Deep breath. I hate being rushed, but it does look appealing...

If I say yes, I break things off with V quite suddenly, and I cancel the call I'm supposed to have with Company G early next week (marking the second time their process has simply been too slow to catch me, thus probably blacklisting me forever in their eyes), and I tell everyone else (including some recruiters) I'm out of the running.

If I say no I... well, what is this, do I want a job or don't I? I mean, they want me, and they want me to write code, and for this they will pay me a salary. What am I looking for, flowers and a serenade?

Time to sleep on it a bit.

Comments

[dpolicar]

(grin) My other favorite story of that period was stumbling into my boss's office at some time around 3pm one day to see if he wanted to grab food, 'cuz I needed to take a break.

He said sure and we went to Harvard Square and it was PACKED.

And I looked around incredulously and said "It's 3pm! Don't these people have JOBS?"

And my boss looked at me sadly and said "Dave... it's Sunday."

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

BWAHAHAA! That is excellent! And man, it's so "startup". The world of the small startup has its own mythos, its own stories and stumbling blocks and underlying patterns repeated, and that one fits squarely into it. :-) (The other thing that sorta fits is that even though you wrote 3pm, the first time I read it I got "3am". I had to reread when I didn't know why Harvard Square would be packed on a Sunday night.)