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I was over in London yesterday for some interviews with a Web company. It was a long day, getting up at 4am and arriving home after 1am, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I got into the city at 10am and the interviews didn't start until noon so I had some time to wander around and relax. I took a stroll through the park in front of Buckingham Palace, and smiled like a loon upon seeing a squirrel. Then I discovered that the park is pretty much full of them, so it became less of a novelty. But still, squirrels!

I walked for about an hour, ending up at the houses of parliament. I thought of looking for the phone box beside Big Ben that my brother has the number for in his phonebook, so I could ring it and it would look like Big Ben was ringing him. Unfortunately I didn't think I had time, being an hours walk from the place I had to be in an hour's time.

Of course the walk back took about 15 minutes.

The interviews were great. I had four, each of them just one-to-one with one of the software engineers. They asked me some technical questions, a few (very few) sort of general interviewy type questions—none of this "do you have any weaknesses?" or "give me an example of a time you showed leadership" crap—and they each gave me a coding or related problem to solve on the whiteboard. All of them were really friendly and enthusiastic. I was surprisingly comfortable right from the start, and once I started doing well I just lost any hint of nervousness and got really into the swing of it.

A few people had suggested that a good question to ask an interviewer is what they like about the job. You wouldn't believe how psyched everyone in this company is to work there. They all got so animated about it, it was really encouraging.

I got an email this morning saying that I should hear about the interviewers' feedback tomorrow. I don't want to sound too cocky, but I am very confident. Soylent Red might soon have a little disclaimer that the opinions here aren't the opinions of my employer. :)

Oh, and in case you haven't been paying attention, the company in question is Google.

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