Counter-intuitive interviews - Paul Burz

00:00

Knowing the people that interviewed me and talking to them after the interview, after I arrived at [Accessa 00:00:07], I think they were a bit scared or just unprepared for the interview because I was answering all the questions correctly and they weren't expecting that. And they just took the stakes higher and higher to see what's the breaking point.

00:23

Maybe a good place to start is how would you describe your relationship with work itself?

00:31

I think I'm very fortunate because I don't see coding or programming as work. I see it as a challenge and I do it on my own time sometimes just to figure out something. I recently came out with a quote that we will put on our website. 'I want to learn all the mysteries of programming'. This is just a journey for me, and I'm doing it because I love it, and it's not forced because when I was at the university, you have to learn a lot of stuff because you just have to. They don't explain why, or what's the meaning of it or what's the usefulness of those things you learn, which programming is very different because if you have a problem, and then you search for the solution. It's the other way around. You don't learn stuff and then apply them, you have a problem and then learn stuff. Ideally, you can learn a lot of things mechanically, but ideally you should have a problem before you can search for the answer.

01:35

How have you gone about deciding what problems you want to work on in your working life? I mean, great examples would be at [Dot White and excessive. 00:01:47] How did you... Maybe at dot white, how did you make that call to work on that project? And then how did that develop over time?

01:53

That was just chance. I was... My first company was a medical software company. They were doing their own products, but we had a very small team for people on the development side. And two of us were on the website. We were tasked to bring basically the desktop apps to the web and mobile, but unfortunately they didn't make a wise decision and hire two junior developers to do that. It's very difficult to basically go, they weren't investors, let's say. And it's very difficult for me to be in a context in which I have to develop some software that medical people and doctors use on a daily basis. And my only, I don't know... Reviewer was Google. Okay, do I do this this way? Do I have a list declaring this way? And that's very... It put myself in a position in which I was very uncomfortable coding because I was never sure of... Okay, is it okay? It works, but that's not a very high benchmark. And I decided to leave to find a mentor at Dot White. But unfortunately as I don't know, maybe it worked, maybe it didn't... In outsourcing companies, projects changed a lot, clients changed a lot, and unfortunately at Dot White it was the same experience. The client didn't want to continue the project maybe one month after I arrived. And I was tasked to do a desktop app. Anyway, it's a windows app. I did it for nine months. And then again, the calling to learn new stuff. Okay, this is not what I wanted to do because I wanted to be in the cloud, I wanted to be in the web design, website business, and I was doing desktop apps. And for me, two years doing desktop apps in a three year career was just a, death sentence to do desktop apps for the rest of the career.

And I made a decision to leave again. And at Accessa I finally found what I was looking for.

03:59

What was it?

04:02

Mainly what I wanted to do from the beginning of my career back end, front end, and now cloud. I want to be proficient in all three because modern problems required you to know all of these things. So maybe a tweak in the cloud infrastructure just solves a lot of time, because let's say you have a problem, you can solve it with three developers in three weeks, or maybe you can solve it with [DevOps 00:04:26] in just tweaking some resources in the cloud and it's way cheaper. Maybe you don't need those resources for a long time. You need it, I don't know, for a black Friday or something, and you don't have to spend hundreds of developer hours to solve an issue. You just have to know, you can tweak something in the infrastructure or you can source something [inaudible 00:04:45] sales manager or something like that.

04:46

How did you get the job at Accessa?

04:51

At Accessa...The funny thing is after... When I left the first company, I was interviewing at Accessa and Dot White, and Accessa offered me a job and Dot White the same job Accessa was offering a higher salary, but I refused because I... Accessa is like five... Was like 500 to 600 employees right back then, and I was really scared about big companies because... I don't know why. It wasn't an irrational fear. And then I came back Accessa, but because they knew me and I interviewed them and they were... They took a liking to me, I didn't have to interview again. And they were like, "Okay, we have this project. Do you like it? Okay, come".

05:32

Interesting. Did you consider any other companies at that point?

05:35

No. It was sort of, I have to do this with Accessa because if I jump hop again and refuse Accessa or something, I wouldn't get a job with them again... Ever again, sorry. I did have a few other interviews, but those ones were forced. Meaning, some HR people wrote to me on LinkedIn and said, "Okay, can you come to an interview?" I have... I had several offers, but I preferred Accessa.

06:04

Okay. How did you... When you were considering dot white and Accessa, it's really interesting how you've actually ended up joining both of those companies from that one period of time. How... You said that you had a... Almost an irrational fear of that slightly larger company. Was there anything else that went into your decision making and what was it?

06:30

I think the interview process, mainly. besides the fear of big companies) At Accessa, they were very aggressive in the interview phase, meaning I went to the interview, I wasn't prepared... I was prepared on my own stuff, but I wasn't prepared to have two interviewees in the process. One was the back end, one was the front end, then they asked me a lot of questions. The interview took... The technical interview took about two and a half hours, and they were pumping questions and... Okay, trolling, can you answer this? Can you answer this? And my only pause was when I was drinking water, so, that was quite aggressive for me. And that scared me a bit because... If they do this in the interview phase, what else do they do after you are employed? And Dot White was more of a Western style approach, meaning they basically went into a room with a computer. They gave me a keyboard. Code this, code this, tell me what you're writing about, and what I was impressed with, and I'm still impressed with) going forward interviewers that help you find the answer. Maybe you don't know the correct technical term, or the perfect definition for that particular area, but they help you figure out the answer because you're not stupid if you don't remember the correct definition of something, you're just, I don't know, have a... You don't remember that thing, but that doesn't mean you don't know how to code, or yeah.

07:59

It doesn't sound like a... It doesn't sound like a coincidence that you decided to join the company that mentored you through the interview process when you wanted to join a company that would provide you with more mentorship.

08:14

Exactly. I was looking for a mentor and maybe subconsciously Dot White was providing that from an interview phase, they helped me.

08:25

Okay. So was it a mistake?

08:31

Yeah, definitely because I basically arrived at the same project at the same company with the same team, just nine months later.

08:41

What would you do differently during that decision making process, now?

08:47

I think I would picked Accessa right away because I develop more profoundly on certain areas than others at Accessa than at Dot White, because the glamor can from the outside, the company can be glamorous and see, this is something, this is a startup. They have interesting people, an interesting CEO or something. But then when you arrive and you see the internal politics and see the internal drive, you can't expect that. And maybe in the Western part of the world, America or from France, England, you have Glassdoor and some other sites that they can tell you exactly what's going on inside the company, but in Romania, we do not use those sites very often. And you have no clue. You have to go to the company or maybe know someone from the company to really tell how it's... How well will your period there be.

09:45

Is there anything else that you think you could have observed during that interview process with Dot White? I'm conscious that it... We are all susceptible to our biases and the things that we are looking out for. And it sounds like in that moment, you were looking out for that mentorship and all, if you're getting slammed with questions for Accessa, it's like, how... Is there anything else that you would look at in that moment where you think you could have noticed different signs or interpreted different behaviors is during that process in a different way?

10:18

Yeah. I was... I had nine months of experience, but what neither of the interviewers knew was I had nine months working eight hours, but after those eight hours, I worked four to six, maybe every day, in the weekends, on my off time, just to become better. And now looking back at it, maybe they were scared because I was... This was a child, one year experience, and he was answering questions that maybe medium experience developers could know. And now knowing the people that interviewed me and talking to them after the interview, after I arrived at Accessa, I think they were a bit scared or just unprepared for the interview because I was answering all the questions correctly and they weren't expecting that. And they just took the stakes higher and higher to see what's the breaking point.

11:15

Right. Interesting. Okay. So, it was almost like at Accessa, though you perceived it in that moment as kind of not aggression, but them just slamming you with questions,) actually, they're almost panicking because they don't have and they need to all think of more and more questions to ask in that moment.

11:30

Exactly. Because they were entering the interview with, this child has one year. Maybe he might as well apply for an internship, not a real job. And I was like, what's [solid Paul. 00:11:41] Well, how can you develop a [webpa? 00:11:43] How can? And they were like, okay, that's cool, I guess. How did you learn that by yourself? And at some point, there was a point in interview in which one looked at the other and said, "Do you have any more questions? No." And they just stood there for like two minutes, and then they came up with other questions.

12:04

Through your journey so far, have you got any closer to finding your own definition of what doing your best work means to you?

12:12

No. I think that's just an idea you run towards to, and never find the answer, but that's just life, I guess. Yeah.

12:24

Tell me about it. Loved hearing your story, Paul. It's very rare that I talk to someone who's interviewed at two different companies and at the same time, then end up working for both in one way or another. And I'll wish you all the best of luck with your next project.