Job Hunting

I visited Berlin for job interview for a Product Manager position for a very interesting product about a month ago. I had interview with the head of the department, the team lead, senior product manager and with HR.

The head of the department was mostly interested on my views on how the development should ideally be organized for example what are my views on utilizing subcontracting or what to do when the amount of work from incoming requirements exceeds the capacity of the team. The interview with the head was mostly ok, not good, but not bad either.

As the role had a strong "hands-on" element as part of the job, the team lead wanted to cover my technical expertise. I have to admit that I wasn't really on my best form. He asked me about few technical problems and how would I go about on solving those. He also showed me a crash he had encountered and asked me to take a look and tell what was happening. Unfortunately, I had no idea what was wrong. The debugger showed a pointer to an object in a container, and when object was accessed the program crashed. In the following day I realized what had probably happened. It was a question of dangling pointer. Somebody had already deleted the object. Such an obvious thing I really should have realized at the interview. I was not happy with how the technical talks with the team lead went, but even though it did not go well I do not think that it was a total disaster either.

With the senior product manager we talked about my experience with similar products, about managing the requirements and my view on what the product should be. I think we got along well and that he appreciated my insights on the vision about the product.

Finally with the HR person we talked about my motivation for the job, my past experience, and practicalities in relocating if I get the job. They told me that they were going to interview another candidate later and that they will tell me afterwards which way they will go.

After the trip, I felt that I was good enough for the job, but it just depended on how good the other candidates were.

Last week I heard the result. I did not get the job. The reason they said was that hiring was put on hold. If they get new positions later they may come talking to me again. Even though this did not end the way I wanted I feel quite positive about the whole experience. It was nice to visit the site in Berlin and to meet the people. Based on the interview the position was pretty close to what I thought it was.

Next I'm going to continue my job hunt. I'm looking for positions where I feel that I can contribute in deciding what the products are and/or organizing how they are being made.