Chan's Personal Blog

About this time last year, I had applied to Carmanah Technologies for a job. The company specializes in manufacturing solar powered lights in Victoria. I originally applied to them because they were listed as one of the top 100 tech companies to work for in BC. I also remembered seeing some positive news coverage about the company's innovative products.

I submitted my resume for a web developer position, and I promptly landed an interview. When I got to the office for the interview, I observed the people working there, and it was a bit of a turn off. Everyone was dressed up in business clothes, and it seemed very office-like, and not so much a tech company (in the computer high-tech sense).

I met with two of the guys who were maintaining all of their web applications in-house, and I wasn't too impressed. One guy was a self-taught programmer, and the other guy did some computer stuff in community college. The technologies they were using for their web applications were a huge turnoff as it was a Microsoft technology stack. The problems they were trying to solve were quite unappealing as well, because they focused most of their time working on a content management system. This is a fairly boring problem space because I consider this to be a "solved" problem, and there are plenty of free open source content management systems out there. There's no sense in trying to write one from scratch and reinventing the wheel.

I asked the other interviewers what other interesting web applications could I expect to write. One of the guys said, oh, if you're advanced enough, you can help write an online calculator. Unfortunately for me, a calculator definitely falls under the "solved" problem category as well. It's a fairly trivial problem, and it didn't even come close to the type of complex work I was working on before.

The biggest turn off in the interview was that they never got me to write a single line of code on a white board, or solve any technical problems. As a rule of thumb, I never accept jobs from companies that don't do a proper technical interview (including writing code). This is because from experience, my former teams have hired some terrible programmers before, because in the interview a candidate could talk a big game, but we discovered later on that they couldn't program properly. Talking to a programmer about their technical skills in an interview isn't a great way to figure out their coding abilities. As a result, we forced every candidate to write some simple code to prove they can code competently. So, if a company interviews me, and doesn't get me to write code I won't join them. I'm too scared because there's a good chance that they have some awful programmers. A single bad programmer in a team can be a huge drag on the team.

Anyway, in hindsight, I'm quite glad I didn't accept Carmanah's job. Myron just sent me a link that says Carmanah was closing their Victoria branch due to cost-cutting. In addition, their stock has been doing absolutely horrible in the last year.

Thank God I didn't take that job.

The other day I received quite an odd security notice from the company. Apparently car thieves have been working our parking lots on our campus. The surprising thing is that they're after catalytic converters, which are used for emission controls. These converters are valuable because they contain precious metals such as platinum.

So this is how the hit goes down. Some dude enters our parking lot with a backpack, and he looks for SUVs because there's enough room for him to sneak under the vehicle. He then goes under the vehicle and goes to work, cutting out the catalytic converter with an electric saw. Once the converter is out, he slips it in his bag, and discretely leaves the parking lot. Apparently there's been four of these incidents in the past, and it's quite an unpleasant thing to discover if you're the car owner.

To get it fixed, you need a new catalytic converter, and a new tail pipe. You're probably looking at a $600-$800 trip to the car mechanic.

Anyway, this is the first I've ever heard of such crimes. I continue to be astounded.

I saw this piece on 60 Minutes entitled, "The Millennials Are Coming." It talks about individuals born between 1980-1995 who are now entering the workforce, and companies must deal with this new generation.