I took a day off (indistinguishable from most workdays these days) and went to a job interview yesterday. The company is in Ealing, West London, and produces software that runs their customers’ online businesses–some large retailers that most of you UKans would recognise are their customers.
I got to the area around 10am for an 11am interview, so took the opportunity to walk around the area; it’s quite interesting with some malls, retail, and a large South Asian population. Transport is really good, with two Tube lines, a mainline trainline station, and lots of buses laid on.
Took a breath mint, and then went up to the office, which was, well, very spare. Obviously they put their money in their people rather than in plush surroundings.
The woman who interviewed me was very matter of fact, but let me do most of the talking (on the theory, perhaps, that people who are allowed to do most of the talking end up hanging themselves). The position is titled “QA Manager”, and it would involve, initially, supervising two Test Managers and a large number of testers both in Ealing and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I’d be responsible for “quality”, whatever that is. We seemed to establish a rapport, especially when I talked about my Your Baby’s Ugly theory of bug reporting and how managers need to smooth the path for the people who work for them and make their jobs easier (something that few managers do, it seems). I also asked her two questions from the Chief Happiness Officer’s blog about happiness at work:
1) What
I’m not sure happiness is always possible, but some of any job worth doing should have peak moments and give you a sense of being needed by the people you’re working for.
Helped me think about the kinds of jobs I want and the kinds of signals for jobs I don’t want.