Eat, Shop, and... Code?

I think that I'm turning into an interview whore of some sort. Today, I had another in-person interview.

This one was with a better funded start up located in the county just to the north of mine. I submitted an application in response to an ad being plugged on our local newspaper's website. My wife had noticed it and thought it might be interesting, so I threw my name in just to see if I would get a bite.

Sure enough, I got some interest, and I did a phone interview with them in the middle of last week. That went well enough to move me to the in-person technical interview.

The interview ran a little over an hour, with three people present. They presented me with two programming questions and a design question. The first question was very easy. The second was a little more computer sciencey, but I got my way through it, and they said that I managed to avoid the pitfalls that usually trap others. In the third question, they presented me with an existing object model, and I was supposed to propose changes for improvements.

After the interview completed, the three interviewers retreated to another room to make a decision. Several minutes passed, and the lead interviewer returned to ask me whether I thought it went well. I said that I tend to get a gut feeling that I could have thought my way through a problem more efficiently, but I thought it went okay. He said, "Actually, you did really well."

That won me about a half an hour with their CTO, who asked me some questions about what I had been doing and what my aspirations were. Then he told me about the company's structure and answered some questions I had about the company's direction.

I have a feeling that they're going to make me an offer.

Upsides... Sounds like the stuff they have in mind for me will be challenging for me, valuable for them, and horizon broadening for my skill set. They appear to be well funded, so the pay will be somewhat better. Downsides... Eight more miles of commuting through a stretch that is notorious for congestion. No 401(k) (haven't had that since my last job) at least for another year.

The big irony? The startup's offices are located in a new upscale "lifestyle center" mall, replete with... you guessed it... restaurants and retail. If they had a hospice, we'd have ourselves a trifecta. Alas, some ironies are too rich for reality.