From the files of "You can't make this stuff up!"

This was so strange that I had to share it.  And I swear that I did not make it up.

While I was working for one company, I started to look for alternative employment with another.  It just so happens that I had an interview with a company to be a technical lead on their Java team.  I interviewed for several hours, talking to individual contributors, architects, and managers. In the end they passed on me; according to them, I was not a good fit.  Now mind you, this was after I had been writing Java web applications for decade and I was running my own development team of about 30 people.

A few months later a new position with that same company came up and I was contacted by a local recruiter.  I informed him that I was already bypassed for the first position, but he still wanted to try.  He returned to me with feedback from the company that they were not going to pursue an interview with me due the last interview I had.  Nice!

At about that same time, my manager's manager came to me with a request to help one of his colleagues.  It seems that his friend was getting ready build a new development team, and since I had managed a very large team with disparate technologies my Mgr's mgr thought that I would be a good mentor for this person.  I said yes without even thinking to check out who this person was.  It turns out that this friend in need was the manager that passed on me (twice) from that other company.

So, I went ahead with the mentoring session with this guy.  All the while I was wondering if he knew who I was, and if he did know why was he still asking my advice after he passed on me (Did I say twice, yet).  He finally let on that he did know who I was, and that is where it got even stranger.  He still wanted my help, and he still thought I was not a good fit in his organization.  So, even though I did not fit into his "new" organization, I was helping him design it.  I could not make this up.