Thank You For Your Interest In This Position

By Noel Hansen

The buildings on the block were so tall, they blocked out the sky. Marna noticed that it easily felt 10 degrees cooler in their shade. It was unlikely that the street ever got any direct sunlight at all. Strange plants were growing in cracks along the sidewalk, plants she had never seen in the area before. As she walked down the street, she idly speculated to herself that they might be more adapted to caves or forest floors than the city.

She paused in front of a building halfway down the block. It was all glass and metal, all reflective. One couldn’t tell where different floors began or look inside. The building itself was unlabeled except for the address on the side. It matched the one in the email she had received for the interview appointment. She had thought it strange that a company she had never heard of, but that was somehow enormous and well-established in various vague industries, would require something so old-fashioned as an in-person interview, but she agreed to it regardless. Marna thought to herself about how much she hated her existing job, how her co-workers treated her, her boss, how she felt like she wasn’t respected and didn’t belong, and then walked inside the faceless building and up to the reception desk without hesitation.

The receptionist looked up as she walked in. “How can I help you, miss?”, he said, sounding bored.

“Hey, I am Marna Flores, I am here for an interview. I was told to speak to reception?”, she inquires, trying to keep the confidence levels high.

“Hmm, let me check here… Ah, found it. Yep, looks like they are already on their way, just wait a moment”, the receptionist replies.

Marna stands back, a bit astonished at the expediency, then notices the doors to the elevators at the other end of the lobby emit a loud “ding” noise. Out steps a man in a white suit. Over his left breast pocket, he appears to have a strange symbol stamped. If it's a reference to some television show or book series, Marna doesn’t get it.

The man looks at her, turns and waves with a big, wide grin on his face, then walks up to her, maintaining that grin the entire time.

“Hey, so nice to meet you! Marna, wasn’t it? I assume you are here for the interview”, he says.

“Yes, that's right”, Marna replies.

“Excellent! Just follow me this way, I will take you up to the room”, he turns and waves to her, that big grin still plastered across his face, then walks over to the elevator. Marna follows, a little startled by the man's demeanor. His grin has not relaxed, it has not even shifted the entire time. She can’t understand how, maintaining a smile that wide for so long seems like it would get painful.

She follows him into the elevator. They get out on a floor that resembles a maze; it appears to be all empty meeting rooms. As they walk past the rooms, Marna spies writing on the various whiteboards, undoubtedly the result of various other meetings and interviews happening the same week. Still curious about exactly how the company makes its money, she tries to see what information about the company she can glean from these glances, but comes away empty handed. Most of the whiteboards seem to just contain strange symbols, and she cannot tell if they are in another language or just in the usual sloppy longhand of professional software developers. The few times she is able to make out words tie her stomach in knots; words like “daemon”, “servants and masters”, “command”, “shadow”, “clone”, and “dimensions” are not unusual to see bandied about in the tech industry she knows, but something about the way those words were being used on those whiteboards chills her.

After about 10 minutes of walking through the labyrinthine meeting floor, the man leading Marna stops and motions to a door. Marna walks through the door into a meeting room. The setup is fairly typical, two whiteboards, one on each wall, with a small table and four chairs in the middle of the room.

“Sit down and relax! The interviewers will be with you shortly”, the man says before bowing and departing.

Marna sets her purse down in one chair and sits in another. She barely has time to adjust her clothes when the interviewers step into the room. The two of them are dressed like the man that led her here, both in all white suits with a small symbol on their pocket, both with a painfully wide grin plastered on their faces.

“Marna, pleasure to meet you! My name is Janice and this is my colleague Eustace. We will be your first interview today, I will conduct the interview while Eustace observes”, one of the interviewers says as she holds out her hand. Marna gives her a firm shake, and then all three of them sit down at the table.

The conversations are very cordial, very formal. There are five interviews, each about an hour long with a 10 minute break in between, though they do not leave time at the end of each interview to ask questions like Marna is used to. Multiple interviewers come in each time, always one talking and one observing without taking notes, always wearing the same white suit and the same wide grin.

They ask Marna about her experience at her current job, then ask her about various scenarios and reactions to them, then ask her a number of technical problem solving questions to work through. Their questions continually set her on edge; Marna is used to the typical banal interview fare, having had to take and conduct a few during her years in her career, but these questions are different.

They ask Marna “What would she do if one of her co-workers disappeared from the job without prior warning, and she had to take up all their work”. They ask Marna “How would you react if you were asked to work on something that you strongly believe in, but would cause anger and controversy among your friends and family if they found out about it”. They ask Marna to “Describe an instance, if applicable, where you were willing to sacrifice something to complete your task”. They ask her to “assume you are working with a database system that isn’t bound by the traditional limitations of linear time” and in the question after that to “remember that these computer systems can hold multiple true states at once”. They even end up asking a question about using “unlimited resources and data to calculate the solutions to certain heretofore unsolvable problems”. They are bizarre, they are esoteric, and the things they imply about the company’s business practice and its work culture are not positive.

Finally, at the end of the interview as the interviewers are about to go, Marna asks the interviewers to stay for a moment. They oblige and sit back down.

“Hey, I have some questions about the company, if you don’t mind answering. What exactly do you all do here, how does the company make money? The recruiter didn’t say, and I couldn’t find anything specific online”, Marna asks.

“Does it matter?”, replies one of the interviewers.

“It matters somewhat to me”, Marna replies, “If only to satisfy my own curiosity”.

“We are in the business of the future”, the interview says, while the silent one nods. “We are building the future, one system at a time. We work with many powerful players and interests on a variety of projects that we and they think will shape the future of technology and the planet”.

“So, the company is a consultancy firm?”, Marna says, turning her head to the side.

The interviewers both laugh at that. Marna notes that that is the first time she had heard the silent one of an interviewer pair make a sound.

“Oh no, nothing so droll”, the interview replies. “We work with them because we have what they want. They come to us for the services and technology we provide them. I can assure you, it is a lucrative business.”.

Marna thanks them for their time and departs after this. Exhausted, she falls into her couch and barely moves the rest of the night. She keeps the lights on all evening and double checks the door is locked when she goes to bed that night.

Six weeks pass, and the interview fades into the back of Marnas mind. She can barely believe it was real, it feels like a dream. She is not sad that there is no reply from the recruiter about the results. She is glad to move on.

On the 6th day of the 6th week, Marna receives a letter in the mail from the company she interviewed at. She opens it up to find it is an offer letter. The salary alone is nearly triple what she currently makes.