Software Build and Release Specialist

I haven’t been posting for a couple of weeks now; I’ve actually been on an interview binge.  I have been unhappy with the current company due to various reasons–I will discuss these in future postings.   I was bombarded with requests for interviews as soon as I opened the floodgate to recruiters and headhunters.  I did narrowed it down to three and went on to interview with them; ultimately ended up with all three very good offers.  One of which was higher risk than the other two due to it being a startup, but the prospects are good and they do have the best offer of the 3.

The other two that I turned down were Apple and Palm.  I know what some of you might be thinking in your head now; probably somewhere along the line of, “what the heck is wrong with you?  why did you turned down Apple?”  Well, reputable and exciting as that company maybe, the HR department or at least the recruiter (and maybe to a lesser extent the hiring manager) who worked with me were highly unprofessional.   Lets just say during the negotiation process, she revealed certain comments about me to justify “in lowering my value” made by the hiring manager in which she really shouldn’t have.   When I made it known to her that I had competing offers and one of them being Palm, she promptly replied and said “…Palm has reached its apex whereas Apple has not…”  I found that hilarious because if she actually look back in history she would recall that Apple was near rock bottom before bouncing back with its iMacs and iPods.   In tech industry, you never EVER count any one company out for the count!

That and Apple’s way of salary negotiation is to give you 3 prong offers [base salary, sign-on bonus, and options] then subsequent counteroffers they adjust 1 or 2 of the 3 prongs to make the other (the one you’re trying to negotiate on) appear higher.  Say their original offer was [900, 100, 200], to make the base higher their subsequent offer would look like this [1000, 0, 50].  I wonder what type of negotiation classes they’re sending their HR recruiters to…

The other one I turned down was Palm.  Supposedly this company is on its way back to prime time after having their asses handed to them by competitors such as RIM (maker of Blackberries) and Apple (maker  of iPhone).   The offer wasn’t what I originally expected it to be in that I went to the interview for a full-time position but instead they came back and offered me a contract-to-hire offer.  Even though the contracting rate was quite good and competitive, it wasn’t what I wanted.

I ended up choosing and will be accepting the third offer–I will actually be keeping the name of this startup company from this post and may decide to reveal it in future postings.  These two weeks have been taxing with all the phone and face-to-face 5-6 hours multiple rounds interviews.  I’m just glad its over and I have choices available, its a very empowering and free feeling…