Today. After over a year of working as a temp, I finally got an interview.
It was with a company that is growing and expanding in our area, with a data center that is primarily AS400 based. New to me, but I’m a quick study.
I’m lucky. I know it. In addition to actually getting an interview, it turns out a former co-worker was on the interview team. A good friend, actually, who I had lost touch with. He was kidding and joking with me by the time things were winding down.
Wish me luck, Dopes. I should know within a week or two.
Thanks all. Friend told me he would keep his ears open, and if he heard good news, he would let me know.
I thought I was goign to throw up, I was so nervous. My last interview was almost 8 years ago, and even then it was sort of a walkthrough more than anything else…
I got a call from their HR department today. Apparently it’s between myself and another fellow. He is more skilled, but I am more personable, according to my friend.
Tomorrow (Thursday) I will be going in for a follow up interview. I meet with HR, and then with 2 of their computer operators to answer questions they may have.
My only fear? A complete lack of knowledge of AS400. Beyond that, I should be fine… hehehehe…
Good luck with your interview. I’ve worked years ago with AS/400s. Didn’t know anything about them before I got the job either. Did a few courses on the boss’s time and all went fine.
From what you describe they don’t mind either that you do not have previous knowledge. If you still want to know some basics about AS/400s, here goes (skip if you want to spend your last remaining free time in more enjoyable ways ). My experience dates from a couple of years back. I don’t know the current status, since I haven’t worked with them since 1999.
They’re simply mid-range computers with a rather dated interface (no good editing features, a very old-fashioned native programming language, RPG) and a peculiar command naming system. Everything is named in pairs of three letters: STRSBS is start subsystem, for example. The runtime was divided over a number of subsystems, which you could define yourself, including the relative priority each subsystem got. You had to run programs in one of these subsystems.
While to me they appeared somewhat slow given their raw processing power, they are very robust: I can’t remember us every having one of those things ‘hanging’. When I started (1995) they had CISC architecture, but around 1997 the whole system was transfered to a RISC architecture. Basically they became the same hardware as an RS/6000 (?), the IBM Unix machine.
You might ask whether programming is done on the native RPG editor, since that is rather cumbersome. There are ‘intelligent’ editors around that work as a kind of shell over your emulator; these would greatly speed up your work since they could detect simple spelling mistakes in command on the fly, without having to go through another compile/edit cycle.
Good luck! And even if they don’t hire you for this position, make sure that they know you are interested in working for them if something else comes up (which might if they are expanding).
Well, it would appear that my appeals for Doper intervention and such actually worked.
The fools… THEY HIRED ME!!! BWahahahahah!!!
Yes, in a short two weeks, I will be working at a new place. This is a good thing, as I will have medical/dental/eye insurance, and will start making more money.
This is a sad thing too, in that I do all my posting and such from work. So I may disappear for a few weeks. I’ll post more on that later.
But I just wanted to thank you all for your good thoughts and such. I really appreciated it.
I’m waiting to hear back from an interwiew I had last week…if all goes well, my days of making maps for The Man are over! It’ll be the fast-paced world of city planning & GIS management in the booming metropolis of Killeen, TX for me…
). My experience dates from a couple of years back. I don’t know the current status, since I haven’t worked with them since 1999.