[ethan]

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I'm just not sure what I should be trying to get from them.


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As much as you can get.

Being willing to walk away is key.

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So, the trick here is...I'm more than willing to act like I'm willing to walk away. And in truth, I _am_ willing to walk away. But I'm also tempted by having a sure thing in this job. I haven't done anything in my field in the last year or so - at least, nothing I could put on my resume. I've done some programming, and kept up with the state of the art in the particular branch of applied math I was doing at UCLA, but I've been paying my bills with the aforementioned p***r.

I think I can pull off a plausible job of acting like I don't need them despite the fact that they'd be pretty good for me. I interview well, and I'm fairly bright.

If this job doesn't work out, I have a number of friends in the industry who can recommend me for jobs at their respective companies. I'm just not sure how well I'm going to be able to explain away the fact that I haven't had a "real job" in awhile, and a year or so at this particular company would get my resume back on track. I wasn't sure how difficult it would be for me to get an offer, and this is the first company to which I've applied after my...hiatus. If I take this job, I think I'll be there for about a year and I'm then transferring to someplace that'll both pay me better and give me something more difficult to do.