I was contacted by a recruiter from redbox about some newly opened software development positions on the client team. This particular team is responsible for all the software that runs on the actual redbox boxes across the country. During this time I was actively interviewing with other companies in various stages of interview processes and made the redbox recruiter aware of my time constraint considering I may be getting other offers soon. I was scheduled to do an on-site interview soon after.
To the interview I wore a suit although it became apparent after walking through the office to the interview destination that the office culture was extremely casual in terms of dress and, in hindsight, overall, which was extremely relieving to me as I'd just come from the stiff and formal financial sector culture of my previous position.
I first met with the VP of software who had me describe my previous projects in great detail, asking me to whiteboard their architecture, high level UML diagrams of workflow between systems. He then asked me some technical questions, mostly high level and related to RESTful web services. After I spoke with him, the two most senior members of the client team came in. They asked for a brief summary of my previous work and since I'd already outlined my most complicated project on the whiteboard in the interview with the VP that portion was brief. I was then asked to look at a printout of some C# code with LINQ, to walk through it line by line and note the values of variables as the code progressed. The only gotcha there was the nature of LINQs deferred evaluation. After the tech screen they asked me why I wanted to work there and why what made me an ideal candidate. I didn't name salary until the very end, in the interest of negotiation.
I felt the interview went well and sure enough on the drive home the recruiter called me and said that they were interested in hiring me, interested enough that they wanted to negotiate salary right now. I wont go into figures, but I will say that they were very accommodating to the upper limit of my range without much fuss at all. I verbally accepted the offer, was emailed the offer letter and benefits packaged, signed, and started 2 weeks later.
The day I started I was shown to my desk near the rest of the team, all of whom were happy to see me, they were very inviting. The team was small, 6-7 people, and communication was open, I really couldn't have asked for a better team, skill wise and also personality wise. Coming in to work in the morning never seemed like a drag, and the team communicated on a highly technical and also personally human level.
I received brand new hardware that very day by delivery. I wont go into the specs, but I will say they were maxed out were it counts for dev, brand new dual LCDs too. The company at the time was doing quite well in the market and they did seem grateful about it accomodating us with hardware, events, benefits and perks.
The system is complicated, it took a good 6 months to really feel comfortable with it and about a year to become expert.
Great company, my only real qualm was the amount of contractors they would hire and the turnaround rate for them. It made it so that the FTEs constantly had to train them, and once they'd become proficient they left and we had to retrain. I believe one of the senior management staff responsible for these decisions had recently left, so it may be better now in that respect.
