So, yesterday was a first for me. I had an online interview scheduled at 8PM (yes, PM because the interviewer was based in the UK), so had my dinner, got all dressed up (ie, put on a business shirt on top of shorts), turned on all the lights in my room (a rare occurrence since I prefer dim or natural lighting), and dialled in. And waited. And waited. And no one turned up. The interviewer was a no-show. An hour later, I received an apology text from their HR and they asked if I was free to do the interview. At 9:30PM? After being stood up already? Uh...no. They rescheduled it for today evening instead. I mulled over it and figured this was a bad omen, a sign of things to come if I were to proceed further, so this morning I declined and withdrew my application.
On the positive side, I got a job offer from my old old workplace. On one hand, it feels nice to be sought out and knowing that my old company still thinks of me, and if I were to accept the offer, the job is almost guaranteed to be in the bag; on the other hand, it's my old old company and some of the reasons I left are still valid (like the cringy corporate culture). On one hand, it's a different role to what I did previously, this one is an actual engineering role where I get to design and play with new toys and not deal with BAU stuff; but on the other it's not the dream Linux job I've been after... guess I'll have to go with whatever pays the bills, again.