Saturday, January 21, 2012

My Struggle With Reality

I've been putting off writing this post for some time...

I have been floating through the past few months in a daze; letting life pass by (and wash over me). I've struggled to come to grips with everything that happened in 2011.

I've been correcting the course of our finances and focusing on paying down our credit cards as quickly as possible. I've finally fixed most of my teeth which were in quite a state of disrepair after ignoring regular dental checkups all through college and for the first couple years in "the real world". Inevitably I needed some major restorative work (read: 3 root canals with crowns) and unfortunately I paid for this work with credit. I hope to never repeat that experience. So we've worked hard to cut out all major purchasing without proper planning and saving and we're doing good. Of course, I've always been a poor juggler and so my general health took a backseat to my career and home-life so I managed to put on all the weight I had lost. One step forward and two steps back.

But that's not what has been holding me back and it's not what this post was supposed to be about; I'm stalling.

In one year I managed to interview (and somehow flub up) with ALL of my dream companies. Really, in less than 9 months. I interviewed with Industrial Light & Magic, Pixar, Rackspace, and Google. I was flown to San Francisco three times for onsite interviews. Yet somehow I've messed up each time. Some of the interviews made my flaws painfully obvious (lacking a mastering of some of the core Python standard library) and others were both fun and challenging.

I think I'll follow up in detail on some specifics in a another blog post but here's how things played out and what I think went wrong:

ILM- The Post found out I was interviewing with ILM after they called my references. I imagine I was about to get an invitation to come out when the Post offered me a promotion to Sr Developer. Having a wife changes your priorities and I called ILM and removed myself from consideration since it would be foolish to leave at that point. They said they understood and didn't blame me but I have to wonder if I'm on a blacklist now...

Pixar- Speaking of blacklists, I may be on one at Pixar as well. After making it to my second round of interviews with Pixar I blatantly expressed that working for Pixar on their render product would be a dream come true. Maybe I didn't have what they were looking for (admittedly the interview wasn't very technical) and maybe you should never tell a company that they are your dream job. I don't know, but I didn't get a call back after that. Of course there are probably 100 "me's" in NorCal lined up the street and distance may have been a factor.

Rackspace- RS brought me out twice. I've got to say, there are some mighty fine folks working in the new SF office and they may have been the hardest to impress. (Without a doubt more finicky than Google) I was considered for a position working on their flagship monitoring product (CloudKick) and later to work on the core of OpenStack, collaborating directly with the engineers at NASA. This is second only to Pixar. Who wouldn't want to work with NASA? I failed miserably on my first interview question (hint: itertools) and aced the rest of the interview which was all Django related. The second trip out for the NASA gig was a different interview experience with another team and the feedback I received was that my answers were too complicated. So strike two for over thinking the problem. Again, awesome people interviewed me and I managed to squeeze a code review out of them on some personal work.

Google- I actually interviewed with Google twice as well. The first time around I was bounced between several teams before receiving a loose verbal offer for a 6mo-1yr contract doing Django for a Google-related project. There's no security (or benefits) for moving a wifey across the country to a state whose job outlook for educators isn't great. So that was a no go. Google called me back and decided I might be a fit for a full time position and so I entered the "Google wringer" for the second time. If you ever have the chance to interview with Google you HAVE to do it. Without any formal education in computer science (and quite a way out of my league from teaching myself PHP by copying my girlfriend's homework) I made it through three phone screens and all the way to six on-site interviews (over 7 hours non-stop). Truly, without-a-doubt, the most interesting day I've ever had in my life. You have to sign an NDA but I think I can disclose a couple tidbits- I had pizza for lunch and they have some mighty fine pizza. I rode one of the infamous, little, multi-colored bicycles (I figured it was the only time I would be there so I took advantage of everything). Finally, all of the answers to all of my questions were given on the whiteboard in BASH, Python and with diagrams. That should say a lot about how far a Python hacker can make it and how far Python has come.

So I'm sitting here and now it's 2012. I had my shot at every company I've ever dreamed of working for and I've got a pretty awesome gig punching out code for National Geographic. How do I carry myself tomorrow? How do I keep going after staring in the face of every awesome tech company out there doing great stuff with Python? What's the one thing I was missing? Where did I misstep?

I'm pretty much driving myself crazy (and a bit down) trying to figure all this out. At the end of the day I'm getting a paycheck to do something I used to do for fun in high school built on ideas that were planted as seeds at a summer camp. That should be enough to get me out of bed and off to work with a smile on my face but I can't help feel like I messed up pretty big.

It was an honor to be nominated. That's what they say. Still a hard pill to swallow.

Here's to tomorrow and whatever that is going to bring... It's been a great ride so far.

"Welcome Home" - Punch Brothers
Welcome home
-If home it is and well you come-
We've seen the smoke and smelled the fumes
You went for broke
Then under over a couple bucks
Threw down the yoke and put up your dukes