SEASONS

Life in a Bubble

Eat, sleep, study, research, interview, work out, play, buy.

No time to update my weblog. No time to read Universal Principles of Design (I bought a book, wow!). No time to read about web design. No time to design. No time to stay up-to-date on the going-ons outside.

But I'll try anyway.

Interview #7: Eureka Technology

Took place Thursday, October 21.

Between then and now, I've had seven on-campus interviews (with three more coming up next week). Out of the seven so far, my interview with Eureka is my favorite. It wasn't the typical technical or behavioral interview. Simon, the interviewer, asked me about things that I've always wanted to write about. It didn't feel like an interview; it felt like I was writing a weblog entry.

After a botched question on transmission lines—transmission lines not being one of the topics I want to write about—Simon looked over my resumé and transcript and asked questions about them. And when I say "looked over", I really mean looked over. He was the only interviewer so far to notice that I entered UCB in 2000 (a year earlier than my fellow seniors). Heh, he even asked me about my B+ in CS 61C.

Of all my interviews, this was the only one that didn't feel like a pre-screening interview. He asked me a lot of non-standard questions. He was the only interviewer to ask about web design. When I told him that I do web design to relax, he followed up by bringing up the topic of play and work. (paraphrasing) You do engineering for work and design to relax. Isn't that a problem? Conventional wisdom says that if you enjoy your job, you never really have to work. But work is still work; play is still play. I told him that everyone should have something else they do to relax. In another lifetime, I might have been a designer. Then I wouldn't be able to design to relax. Customers breathing down my neck; deadlines looming. In that case, I'd probably program to relax.

But my design skills do come in handy. We could use you on our web team. I quickly added that I could be a liaison between engineering teams and the intranet team.

All in all, I feel that the interview went really well. I still don't graduate until May, so this is as far into the selection process as I'll get for now. But he did tell me to email him in the spring so we could talk again.