So yep, I had my interview with Modular Mining Systems today and it was interesting… There are parts that I’m not sure what to make of, but as a whole, I think the choice is clear. Modular isn’t the company I’m supposed to be working for. This also means that (since I was going between Tucson and Phoenix), that Phoenix IS the place I’m supposed to be in and therefore Adjoined is the company I should be working for. However, there are oddities in that now too, but I’ll talk about that in a bit.
First though, the interview. I ALMOST got there late, but it turns out that I was right on time. However, the guy I was supposed to interview with was not there. He was at a lunch meeting with a bunch of other people and had never been informed that I was coming to have an interview. I’m not even sure if he knew who I was at all. But we had the interview anyway (once he got back that is) and it did go pretty well.
However, the job itself is not what I was thinking it was. Modular makes management systems for mines and the primary piece of their sales is hardware they install into the dump trucks, shovels, water trucks, bulldozers, etc, etc… that keeps track of where everything is, what it’s doing and the MOST efficent use of that vehicle. It then allows operators in the main building to assign tasks to each vehicle that are displayed on a touch-screen displayed installed in the vehicle.
The job that I interviewed for consists of two parts. First would be setting everything up for the mine after they purchase it (mostly open-pit mines, but some underground ones too). This includes installing the hardware on the vehicles, setting up the wireless network around the mine (imagine, 802.11b wireless on your laptop in the middle of an open-pit mine… that’s what Modular works off of, kinda cool) and also the servers that run everything.
This of course requires traveling and the official line is that it’s about 25% travel (I’d say it’s more than that from what they said, but I might be wrong). However, the travel is four to six weeks at a time to a mine in some part of the world. Of course, mining towns are not known to be very nice places generally and so that much time in a place like that might not be great for me (considering some of the problems I’ve had in the past).
The other part of the job is doing customizations for the customer and solving any problems they might have while I’m not on-site. That sort of thing would be rather fun I’d think and something I could do well with. But the real problem is that it comes back to the travel. I was expecting something like one week out of the month instead of four to six weeks at a time and so it wasn’t what I was thinking. Anyway, that much travel has not been good for me in the past and so I think it’s just not the job that I should take.
Which leaves Adjoined in Phoenix. So, I called them today to let them know what’s going on and my thoughts and from talking to them, I’m not sure what’s really going on… Apparently they are being purchased by Kanbay, who is a much larger (public) company that does a lot of financial and health-care consulting. I’m not sure what that means for the position I would have had at Adjoined since they may not need somebody any longer (if Kanbay has somebody that does that sort of thing already) or if Adjoined is even allowed to hire anybody right now. Either way, this new um… wrinkle has made things more interesting.
So, Adjoined said they’d call me later tonight (around 7pm my time) with more information and let me know what they’re thinking and hopefully if they even CAN offer me the position still. I never knew that this purchase was a possibility however, so it’s a change for sure. Guess we’ll see where it goes from here!
Anyway, that’s the updates on jobs for now. Thanks for everybody’s prayers and I’ll post more once I find out more.