Fiery Fred

I got a phone call from an old work colleague who said that someone was looking for me and wanted to offer me a job and would it be ok if they called me. It sounded interesting and so I said that yes. So I get this phone call from one of the directors of asking if I would like to come down to see them and talk about the possibility of me doing some work for them. The company makes mass spectrometers which is where I originally started coding and I have often thought of going back to the mass spec world. Anyway I took my last day of holiday and went down to see the company. The trip itself took about 5 1/2 hours and involved four trains, or it would have done if the last train hadn’t been cancelled. After a quick phone call the company aranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me to the factory.

The meeting I had there went really well and we seemed to be in agreement about me going to work there. I have to admit it felt good learning that they had been looking for me for about a year. It was also good to be able to go into a discussion about being employed knowing that I didn’t need a new job.

After another 5 1/2 hour trip home I was still pretty fired up and expected to receive an offer of employment quite soon. The offer arrived on Wednesday last week and I then spent a few days wondering whether to take it. In the end I decided not to. The main reason being the distance between where I’m living and the factory. The initial bit of software that needed writing was the calculations routine which could easily be done remotely. The later bits would involve doing instrument control and for that you can’t beat having an instrument easily available. Its bad enough trying to bug fix software on an instrument that you are not next to; I didn’t fancy trying to develop software the same way.

So I didn’t take on the chance to do something that I would really like to do. Hopefully there could still be a job there for me if I need it, but at the moment I don’t. Fortunately!

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