Lacking motivation

For some odd reason, I am really lacking motivation to work today. There are so many things going on here, but my time is coming to an end. Others need to step up and take over most of the stuff I am working, but that isn't really my problem. My problem is getting the motivation to finish up my previous tasks.

This whole job switch has been interesting from the beginning. I originally started it with the intent to work for Apple. They are doing some cool things from an embedded technology standpoint (iPod and iPhone) and seem to be in a good position for growth. While in the process of submitting my resume to them, I figured it wouldn't hurt to submit it to Microsoft also. A friend of mine recommended me at Apple, but for Microsoft my resume was just submitted to a job listed on their careers website that matched my interests. It seemed likely that Apple would contact me, but with Microsoft it was probably one of many thousands of resumes submitted.

Apple got back to me and scheduled a phone interview. The surprise was that an email arrived from Microsoft requesting to set up a phone interview also. This all happened the week before we visited California. They both went well and requested that I fly out for on site interviews. As stated above, the first desire was to work for Apple, but I was open to both. The on sites were scheduled for the same week. My week went like this:

Sunday - Fly out to San Jose
Monday - Interviews at Apple (9:30 - 4:00 PM) Fly home in the evening
Tuesday - Work at Raytheon
Wednesday - work in the morning followed by a flight to Seattle in the evening
Thursday - Interviews at Microsoft (9:30 - 6:00 PM)
Friday - Fly back to Tucson in the morning

As you can imagine, it was a tiring week. The interviews seemed to go well. The companies take different approaches to their interviews, as one might expect.

Apple was not as focused on the technical questions. It seemed they are looking more for a fit. They don't let you see too much on the inside. All the interviews were conducted in an interview room that is accessed from the outside of their main building. The only real glimpse of the inside was lunch at the cafeteria. Even then, it is a walk through the lobby of the main building, out through the grassy quad area, and into the cafeteria. The job for which I interviewed was not in my main area of interest, embedded technology. They wanted me to work on the Towers and Servers team. Basically, this team is responsible for working hardware/software integration issues. If a problem comes up when they are trying to run their operating system on new hardware, this team comes in and tries to find the problem. I am sure there is much more to it, but that is the basic gist of the job.

To be honest, I didn't feel the vibe during the interviews. I have no doubt I could do the job, but it didn't feel like a fit for me. They ended up not making an offer, but to be honest, even if they did my answer was going to be no. That was a hard conclusion to arrive at because working for Apple was what I thought I wanted. They have interesting ways of doing things there. Very free thinking, lack of structure. They have built up a lot of brand capital at this point and are riding that momentum to huge growth. It will be interesting to see how they handle the changes that may be required as that growth continues.

Microsoft was different, but there isn't time for it now. I will continue this later for all those that might actually be interested.