Yesterday was a fun-filled day out in Natick, MA. My all-day interview started out well, but it sort of went downhill in the afternoon. The company is small - around 1,600 employees - and it seems to take care of its employees very well. Example: to celebrate the company's 15 year anniversary, the co-founders flew everyone (around 500 employees at the time) to the Bahamas. !! For the 20 year anniversary, the destination was Disneyland. Craziness. They also have some other cute perks that usually only small, private companies offer: free breakfast on Wednesdays, free cookies on Friday afternoons, free coffee/tea/soda (I didn't think this was a "perk" until I started working in the world of government and their contractors and had to pay 40¢ per cup of coffee), and a on-site gym open 24 hours.

At the beginning of the day, with all the introductions, overviews, and HR interviews, it seemed like this would be a really neat place to work. I would get a lot of experience using the company's products as tech support personnel, and the other half of my time would be spent working on projects that would improve the software, create demos for customers, or create tools for a particular company's application.

I had my technical interview in the afternoon though, and that made my enthusiasm for this job wane a little. The interview lasted about two hours, and we covered the same types of material as in my phone interview: basic algebra/calculus, programming concepts, C programming, this company's software, and control theory. I already didn't feel like I did well over the phone, and this time everything was covered much more in-depth. After that part of the interview, I was mentally exhausted. All I wanted to do was lie down and close my eyes.

That wasn't the only thing that squashed my enthusiasm. At the end of the day, a couple of former members of the group that we all were interviewing for talked to us about the projects they've been working on since they left the group. Granted, their interests weren't along quite the same lines as mine, but I still wasn't overly excited about the types of things they were doing.

I went into this interview thinking it would be a really good experience for me because I haven't had any technical interviews before, even though I wasn't considering the company really seriously because of the location. But then when I learned more, it seemed like it would be a pretty neat place to work, so I was really trying to make it known that I was interested in their Washington, D.C. field office. But then as I learned even more, I'm feeling more like this job wouldn't be a great fit for me. Too much controls, too little aerospace.

I'm supposed to find out from them on Monday or Tuesday whether they want to make me an offer. I'm not very optimistic about my chances, and I'm not terribly excited about working there anymore, but I don't think either of those will make the rejection phone call any easier.