Interview process was ok. Had one conference call and one on site interview. The onsite they carted me quickly to a conference room and quickly out of the building. No tour, no introduction to other employees. It was like they didn't really want me there very long. I interviewed with the same folks both times and was asked the exact same questions both times. They asked a lot of irrelevant technical questions and expected you to know the exact syntax of a command. One guy kept wanting to 'role play', it was kinda weird to me.
I was offered the position but declined for two reasons.
First I have been in the industry for 22 years. I was working at be time for a very forward thinking company that has all of their senior salaried employees and above on a flexible PTO plan, which means you have unlimited PTO at the discretion of your manager. Even if I had been on the accrued plan I would have 24 days of vacation. ABC offered a competitive salary and good benefits but expected me to start over with vacation days since I had no tenure with their company. So for the first 4 or 5 years I would have been at 15 days of vacation. Their max vacation was 20 days. I asked to be brought in at 20 days, which still meant I would be losing days but that was the highest plan. They would not even consider it and after the amount of time and effort put into the hiring process they were willing to let me walk away over 5 days of vacation. So I walked away.
This increased my concern of a lot of the reviews on this site that seemed to indicate that they worked a tremendous amount of overtime. A lot of folks have posted as such and all of the replies from the company seem to simply say - yep, we work a lot of overtime. I inquired about this and while I was never give a direct answer, I was repeatedly told 'we work hard and take care of our customers'. Working hard and taking care of customers is something we ALL do, but if you have people working extensive overtime week after week, more concern may need to be given for your employees. Something is wrong.
I applied to this job because I wanted to move back to the Little Rock area. I turned it down because I had no desire to go back to the benefit level of a college graduate. I have since accepted a position with another very employee similar to the one I work for and I am moving back to the Little Rock area. Pay is excellent and vacation time is unlimited at the discretion of my manager.
Senior employees with 20 years of experience generally do not want to start over the benefits of college graduates.