Me on software...

For the good part of the last semester during my Masters, when I was deciding whether I should be pursuing a doctoral degree or get into the job market, there was this awesome place I used to hang out a lot. Not for the great coffee or the stunning chicks, in fact it had none of these, but for the help it provided to make a decision towards the next step in my career. This place was the blog-site maintained by Joel Spolsky - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ Amongst various other interesting, humorous and arguably opinionated blogs, Joel writes an intriguing article titled The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing. The article is primarilly meant for interviewers and tries to describe a good candidate for a given position. The article in its 2nd version those days, helped me grade myself as a better candidate for a job position rather than further research. (If you are asking 'how?', read the article and if you still don't reach an answer, email me) With this decision made, I decided to enter the interviewing game yet again (after the great interview season earlier year for my internship). I was knocked out quite early (first round itself!) this time, with the company I had interned with, Beckman Coulter Inc. They offered me a full-time position as a Software Development Engineer (ofcourse after beating the h*** out of me in a day full of interviews). I accepted the generous offer and am continuing to enjoy the fruits of both these decisions. I wanted to start blogging after my job, but its been 4 months (!) since I started and finally the day has dawned. Thinking of it, I did not have a lot of time to do it, since there have been quite a few things happening, like buying a new car, shifting into a new room, dad flying over from India, NFL season kicking in etc. I had decided to thank Mr. Spolsky for his 'decisive' article, in the first blog after starting my job. I hope he accepts this blog as an expression of my gratitude. But as is the case with most of the things with me, I needed a reason to start this blog. And amongst various reasons that might have come across, the strongest hit me today. I am supposed to interview a few candidates for the Software Group I am working with and after reading various articles and other resources over the internet and talking to various people, have come to a decision about what I will ask them. The moment I realized I made this decision, I was reminded of the The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (that I read as an interviewer just a couple of days back).
I still don't think I am as qualified to have a blog about it as Mr. Spolsky is, and hey while he is doing a great job of it, I rather stay out of his way :D