There were a few preliminary phone calls. The hiring manager was one of the callers. The HR contact was decent but he was dry and terse ... at the interview he was worse. Much worse. His main question - “imagine all our engineers and testers were on busses on a trip. You were stuck on the bus with the testers. But the bus with the developers crashes. There are no survivors! Then a customer calls with an urgent bug that must be fixed right away. How do you identify the source of the bug and fix it?!” Me - errr there is a much bigger problem here. I would kindly let the customer know that we had a terrible accident. They would understand and the urgency level would find its rightful place. Then after calling all the employees families and finding out how to support them and going to weeks of funerals, I would start addressing the software issues. His response was that I was going about his question all wrong. Eventually he right out said! “The answer is to use Fiddler to find the problem. Have you ever heard of Fiddler!?” *sigh* Any manager who says that developers are “stuck” with testers doesn’t understand the relationship and bonds we share, and he shows a prejudice and an artificial pecking order. Also, his lack of quality for life itself was appalling. From what I’ve heard from former employees, it’s a part of Cherwell’s “culture”. My advice: don’t ride either of the busses they have to offer. Either you will be “stuck” or “dead”.

First interview was a personal interview, covering my career history and past experiences. Second interview was a technical interview, with a week to implement a solution in .NET before submitting and discussing my solution at the technical interview.