Even though I don't even have a degree yet, I sort-of got a job offer this week.

Last Friday I was invited at the office of a large geo-IT company. One of the lead managers there saw that I'd won the Esri contest and he invited me over for coffee. As I had expected, it was a thinly-veiled job interview, but it went much better than I would've expected. He was interested in what I had done with my project and he was genuinely interested in how I want to develop / grow over the next years. I explained him what I'm doing right now and what I want to do on the topic of self-driving cars. His interest in me seemed very genuine (unlike most job talk I've done so far).

Instead of the one hour planned for the conversation, we ended up talking more than two hours. By the end we were talking about ways in which I could perhaps work for them. Nothing's set in stone but I have another conversation in two weeks. We decided that I'm gonna figure out if I can combine working part-time and doing my masters degree, and he's gonna see if I can do something with their transportation / technology department.

It might be too much work for but I'm gonna try if I can. Regardless of how this plays out, I'm really excited. Anyone got any tips on how to talk serious business (read: salary)?