I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at CIO (Santa Barbara, CA) in Sept 2017
Interview
Not formal, they test your problem-solving skills more than technical knowledge. Technical knowledge is a +. They also analyzed your personality traits to try to match the environment. They are a bit more formal than many other tech companies but not as formal as Raytheon. Just collar shirt with slacks should do it. Review some basic wireless networking structures, perhaps learn the basics of cloud architecture.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Do you know what an IP address is, and where can you find it?
This is going to be a little different. In all my years at CIO Solutions one thing remained constant - the annual review process.
After a year of busting my chops, working hard, rolling out projects smoothly with clients, managing a client load, etc., I would head into my annual review feeling good and under the impression that I'd done good work that year and that the bosses would see that.
And each year the annual review was really just a list management used specifying anything and everything I did sub-par that year. Basically justifying a minimal to no raise.
Very frustrating. I didn't know better for a long time as I hadn't worked many other places, especially as a mid to high level network engineer. But in hind sight I see it was possibly akin to greed by the owner, or even possibly bad books/business where he could not afford to pay more to a good employee.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Maybe the culture has changed now, but this is how it was for the 7+ years I was an employee. Very happy to have worked there all the same, but also very happy to have moved on.
