I worked at i2 last year as an intern
and it was a pretty good experience. My boss listened
to my suggestings even when it involved tossing out
old code and redesigning the system involved. They
also provided housing with all the utilities prepaid
which was also a cool bonus. My boss's boss has
called to ask when I'm coming back and my former
recruiter (the guy who originally interviewed me)
just promised me that I can get to work on whatever
project interests me (CORBA stuff and/or medium sized
C++ tasks included).
As for Microsoft, I'll be interviewing with the SQL
Server team next week (April 10th) for a position as
a Software Engineer In Test which sounds like an
uninteresting position. Unfortunately my absolute
lack of serious knowledge of Win32 and COM internals
makes me ineligible for a full developer position on
one of the teams that would interest me.
So my question now is this: I'm still going to
interview at MSFT (especially since everything from
the plane ticket to car rental and lodgings have been
paid for) and may still might be eventually offered a
position despite my lack of relevant knowledge. If
this is the case I would probably turn it down since
I've made verbal promises to the folks at i2 to
return this summer. Is this a wise decision, what
would you do?
PS: The deadline for accepting the i2 offer
was today or they would have had to hire someone
else.