Thursday, February 23, 2006

Waves of Relief.

After hours of angst, and talking to shmoo, who was great and supportive the whole time, I cracked and called my mama! She was great and supportive too, and after I stressed out on her and started crying, she said, "Let me talk to [shmoo]!" (It really upsets mom when I cry, so now that is her new thing, talking to shmoo while I am upset. They agree on things, and then I can relax and know that the important people in my life agree I am not making a huge mistake by following my instincts instead of my ingrained Responsible Gene.)

So I made the decision to decline. When I called this morning, the interviewer (who was great btw..) asked if I minded telling him why, and I said no, and I did. I told him I thought that there was no clear definition of what the position is and everyone on the Executive Committee seems to have a different vision. I told him I didn't like being pressured to commit to programming on software I had never seen, and that I felt like my integrity was questioned. I also told him he may want to check on the tech consultant with another tech consultant, or at least tell him to password their open wireless. And then I said, knowing what I knew about their network, and then being questioned by this man, like I was lying about my skill base was very upsetting. He said he more than understood, and he had been thinking about it last night as well, and thought I would lean towards the decision I made. He also said that he was embarrassed about the way things were handled yesterday. That made me feel better, like I wasn't imagining things or being overly sensitive.

It's a shame really, the guy that interviewed me was a really nice guy. He loves his job, and the company, and he is willing to invest in the people already working there instead of just replacing them out of hand. That was something I really liked. Traits like that aren't easily found these days.

But I have to say, after having made the call, and speaking calmly about why I have come to my decision, I feel SO MUCH BETTER! Clean! Happy! Relieved!

Thank you all for your words of advice and encouragement. It helped tremendously.

3 comments:

Amie said...

I'm proud of you, and I hope you're proud of yourself.

It's hard to be looking for something and find something that's so close, then turn it down because it's not exactly right. It's hard, but it's seldom wrong.

Hang in there.

DoryO said...

I saw you stopped by at my blog today so I'm paying you a visit back.

A fellow programmer! But I'm a self-employed renegade.

If your gut tells you "no" before you even take the job then you've made the right decision. You're supposed to be giddy with excitement in a new job...and after 6 months realize that every company has it's flaws. At 12 months be bored and at 2 years imagine how a tragic accident might allow you some paid time off. :-)

It was pretty hard not to jump into one of those hip dot-com companies 7 yrs ago like everyone else. But I always got the creeps talking to the interviewers. Shifty. Glad I didn't get on that train to nowhere.

There's nothing wrong with saying "No thanks." Hang in there!

DoryO said...

Oh...and good on you for not saying to the guy:

"You're networking method sucks!"