Thursday, October 28, 2010

Ups and Downs of Job Hunting

Today I got kicked to the curb. Twice. Both by large companies, both after 2 phone screens, in which I thought I did reasonably OK. I was excited by the possibility of working for the second company (rhymes with "MaceBook"), and thought I had done quite well on the 2nd interview. But just received a rejection notice from them, saying "we're keeping your resume on file". I have _no_idea_ what went wrong in that interview.

On the other hand, I had a great in-person interview with a company in Redmond. If they were in Bellevue, I'd be in love. Seriously. It was a great place, but it's practically across the Cascades! The work, and the people, seem really cool. One guy told me "he looked forward to working with me", which is a really nice thing to say. I'm definitely not ruling them out, but that is one long ass commute.

Tomorrow I have another interview for an 'Architect' position. I don't know if this means 'you must be able to code like a God the first time out', but I'm going to find out! Hopefully the fact that this one is in person means that it will go better for me. I always tend to do better in person.

I'm not so down with the whole phone screen thing. To me it seems like there are too many intangibles when you are talking to someone via phone -- I do much better when I can see the person and communicate with facial gestures.

Right now, the companies that have interviewed me face to face are all stoked. The ones that have interviewed me over the phone were not. I've got another phone interview with a MountainView CA company on Monday and Tuesday. These guys are serious studs. I'm not highly confident. But then again I have nothing to lose. So I'll give it a shot :)

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

A not so great First, continued

This layoff is turning out to be a Good Thing. Especially when it was not by choice. Here is what  I mean:

  1. I was starting to question senior mgmt and some of the decisions they were making. They seemed a little shortsighted wrt engineering quality. I felt like I was fighting an uphill battle to write unit tested, injectable code. It was starting to piss me off. 
  2. I kept on getting hit up by really cool companies. Names changed to protect the innocent, but rhymes with Macebook, Glamazon, Noogle, and SplinkedIn. When those companies come knocking, it's really hard to not be curious. And then feel guilty about being curious because I really enjoyed the guys I was working with. 
  3. Now that  I have the time to practice, phone screens are not pure torture. The day I was laid off, I ordered Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakman. This has proved to be a Freaking Godsend. Not because people ask questions directly from the book (although...that _has_ happened), but because working through all of the problems really got me thinking about how to solve hard problems by relying on C.S. fundamentals, i.e. data structures, algorithms, etc. I would have never had the time/energy/inclination to work through this book had I actually been employed. Bottom line, I'm way sharper than I was 3 weeks ago. 
  4. Timing. Once again, I lucked out with timing. The market for software engineers is strong, super strong. I'm currently juggling 10 companies in various stages of the interview process. This is...way harder than showing up and working my ass off at one job. But on the other hand, it's very interesting. 
  5. Personal Reflection. I'm not one to think deeply. Unless I've got no other alternative. While I don't quite know what I want to be when I grow up, I think I'm getting a good sense of where I don't want to be, and what I can and cannot tolerate. This should help (unless I choose to ignore it) when choosing the next position. 
  6. Family Time. I'm around a hell of a lot more, even when running around to onsite interviews. I feel way more engaged with Lopa and the Kids. Me and Shadow have a lot of alone time, which is also great. 
  7. Fall bike rides. I haven't done these since I was in college! A nice midday ride in crisp fall weather is pretty unbeatable. 
I may have a different opinion of all of this if I'm still unemployed 3 months from now. But right now, the sky is the limit, the world is my oyster, in other words no one has kicked me to the curb because I've massively fucked up an interview. Fingers crossed! 

Training Summary 10/18-10/24

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since the Layoff, and my days are dominated by preparing for or participating in phone screens and onsite interviews. Last week consisted of a bunch of scrambling around, interspersed with some good swims and bikes. My mom visited over the weekend, which was great, but not for training. It's _really_ hard to justify sneaking out for a run when (a) mom gets up at 5AM and (b) she's only around for 3 days. But she's worth it!

I've sort of been back on the bandwagon this week, I'll elaborate below:

Monday

Swimming
200 w.u., 4x200 set. 1000 total.
Had to drop Mom off, so got into the pool around the same time the Diving class was going on. So lanes were crowded. Only had 45 minutes. Still, good to be back in the pool.


Tuesday

1 lap M.I., full tilt. 20.2 mph on the main loop, 18.5 mph avg total.

A quick lap done late in the afternoon after a two phone screen day.

The lap was done to burn off some accumulated energy, and worked quite well for that. It was 4:30 when I left, and the sun is setting around 6, so I cut it short b/c I didn't want to end up a hood ornament on some Mercer Island Soccer Mom's SUV. I flew pretty good (and felt the legs) for the first 10 miles, then mailed it in the last 3. Wanted to save something for tomorrows speedwork.

Wednesday

Running: 1 mile warmup, 8x400 @ 3k pace (7 minute miles) w/3 minute active rest, 1/2 mile warmdown. 4.5 mi total.

I had an early morning onsite interview, so I went out in the dark, drove to the track, and ran in the murk. With a surprising number of other fools people.

Turns out its hard for me to keep this pace for 1/4 mile. Hard as in I kept going out at 6:15 - 6:28 miles. That isn't the point -- the point is to train my brain to run at 3k pace, so I slowed way the f*ck down and did just that for the last 4 quarters. I'm pretty sure this program I'm on will have me running 'puke pace' quarters once the formalities have been dispensed with.

Thursday

All day interviews. Wheee!

Friday

Swimming: 1000 yards
2x200 warmup, 4x200 sets. 
Hey! its getting easier to swim 200 yards, bilaterally breathing the whole time! Frickin miracle, considering I started out only being able to swim 25 yards, breathing on my right side. 

Quick aside: I'm not sure if it's the chlorine or what, but I'm coming out of these swimming practices stoned to the gills -- in a good way! By that I mean I am completely relaxed, in a zone, and mellow. And I have a serious case of the munchies. Without having to smoke a bowl! This is good :)

Saturday

Running: 6 miles, 12x30x30 sprints.
This is the first time I've tried 30x30s. I was holding my 5k pace, right now that's between 7 and 7.5 minute miles. Pretty easy to keep that pace over the interval range, although my pulse went high and stayed high. I think I'm getting sick. Yesterdays interview was 4 hours long, in an unheated room, but they couldn't break me! 

Sunday

Definitely catching something. Needed the day off to chill out. Lifted weights, focused mainly on legs, i.e. single leg lunge squats
double leg dumbell squats
single leg forward squats
single leg reach behind squats
atomic pushup (1 set, 30 reps)
2 sets of 10 pullups. 

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

A not so great First

Two weeks ago, October 6, 2010, I was laid off, without warning, 2 weeks prior to my one year anniversary. The company had experienced some q3 shortfalls due to revenue not coming in as fast as expected.  In order to get in front of those shortfalls, they decided to (a) focus on their core competencies, and (b) let go of 24 people, myself included.

I had always considered myself somewhat blessed to have avoided being laid off so far in my career. In the Bubble Bust version 1.0, circa 2000, I saw plenty of really good, solid people handed their walking papers. I always wondered why I was kept on and they were let go. One time, I remember seeing a really talented, really nice developer who everyone loved to work with walk out the door with his cardboard box of belongings. I asked my manager why the company would let someone so talented and so easy to work with go, and he simply said "he was in the wrong place at the wrong time". Kind of like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan on Omaha Beach.Not that my misfortune is anywhere close to what those guys experienced. Watching that movie made my balls crawl up near my heart. I have no idea how those men actually got through that.

Well, October 6 was my "wrong place, wrong time" moment, and I did not see it coming. At all. When Darren called me into the conference room, I thought we were going to talk about some work that came up. Even though he had a manila folder in his hand, I had _no_clue_. Part of why I had no clue is that the company didnt send out any warning signals. The other reason I had no clue was that I had been kicking ass for the past year, and I thought that repeatedly delivering quality features within tight deadlines while increasing test coverage and putting good software design procedures in place insulated me from getting laid off.

Not so in 2010. It was made clear to me that my layoff was not at all related to my performance, but that these were tough times and tough decisions needed to be made. And while numerous people from within the company, from Seattle and San Francisco, reached out to me to let me know they were as confused and disturbed as I was about the fact that I was let go, the fact is that I was let go.

I'm not sure if it was a combination of age, high salary, or both, but there are obviously metrics that I did not and will never fully understand that made this an easy decision for someone. And I was not the only good person let go. They laid off the Director of Operations. While she was on vacation. And she basically held that place together until she built up a team of 4 people to do the job she had done singlehandedly. They laid off one of the best TPMs I have ever worked with. He was one of the few people who had the bandwidth to walk a feature from customer facing requirement all the way down to technical specification and back. And those are just the people I know about. Because prior to this massive layoff, the company had been hiring so much that every time I visited the mothership in San Francisco, I would walk past desks and desks of people I didnt know.

I do know that I'll really miss the guys I worked with on a daily basis. Darren, Arun, and John were great, and taught me a lot about how to code, how to approach problems, how to approach life, etc. Brad and Zi were a blast to have around, Brad was the life of the party and Zi was and is literally larger than life, I'll miss his friendly middle finger salutes. Holli took such good care of us that I'm seriously going to pieces now that I don't have my fresh cut fruit and coffee every morning. We had a blast, always giving each other a ton  of shit, and getting a lot of really solid work done. I've never been a part of a better team, and I'm going to be heartsick for a while when I think of those guys. Good thing they're local, because we're meeting up for drinks and the abuse will flow just like the alcohol.

Anyways, that was then, this is now. Since then I've been working every recruiter that has reached out to me over the past year. There is a lot of hiring going on. I'm tracking my current progress on a spreadsheet, there are at least 12 opportunities in play. It turns out that trying to get a job is much harder than actually doing a job! On the plus side, I've been paying more attention to my professional blog and some of the side projects that I blog about. And having the time to actually study has made a huge difference in my confidence wrt the dreaded whiteboard reviews.

Training has, of course, taken somewhat of a backseat to interviewing/interview prepping. I'm actually managing to get in some midday rides, which is an unexpected treat. The days are nice and crisp, and fall riding has always been a favorite activity of mine that I have always been too employed to indulge in. Since I'm not indulging in the plethora of treats that Holli managed to line the kitchen with, I'm not packing on the usual pre thanksgiving weight. And being around the house more means that I feel a lot tighter with Lopa and the kids. So there is a lot of silver lining in this particular cloud.

I'll  update this blog with various vents from interviews. I think I'm going to either do that on password protected entries, or change the names to protect my ass. Because there have already been some memorable moments with well known companies that have scarred me for life :)

More later (and hopefully some training data as well!)

Training Summary 10/4 - 10/10

This training log is truncated because on Tuesday morning I was laid off. I'm going to write a separate post about that now, and try to get back on the training log 'train'. Here is the original text:

This week a 'recovery' block is scheduled, which is basically week 2 all over again, but I'm stronger now (in theory), so its easy, right?

My left knee is twinging, disturbingly. It doesn't hurt all of the time, in fact it doesn't really hurt. It just feels weak. I've brought out the stretch cords in an effort to hi-rep leg extension my way out of impending knee issues, I've also gone back to the stick. I'm hoping the 'a stitch in time' approach works.

Monday

Woke up the morning. Felt tired. Chilled with some coffee. Tomorrow, is another day.

Tuesday

Swimming. 50-250 progression by 50s, then back down. i.e. 50-100-150-200-250-200-150-100-50, and some warmdown laps. so ~ 1250.

I'm now breathing bilaterally most of the time. One thing I'm noticing is that I get real tired for about 100 yards and then I start to feel better. Mentally it's still tough to swim 250 yards at once, but I think that it's a really good head training exercise to shut that weak ass talk down and just focus on the stroke.

My right arm is still crossing over the centerline when I get fatigued, and my elbows still drop underwater. My head is still lifting up on my left (weak) side breathing, and I noticed that I have a tendency to not glide. But at least I'm aware of all of that, and at different points during the swim I was able to rise above those inefficiencies. I may not have been moving that fast, but I really, really feel that it's here, moving slowly, that I am building the foundation to become a solid (if not blazingly fast) swimmer.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Training Summary 9/27 - 10/3

Trying to get back on track after last week's detour.

Monday:

50-300 by 50s up, and down, for a total of 2100 yards. Bilateral breathing is almost second nature. I'm noticing that arm fatigue is a factor until I focus more on pulling with my core by engaging my stomach muscles and maintaining tension through my lats. Also, I've got to keep focused on keeping my head low. It's simply too fatiguing after a while, and I start thrashing. The other thing I really need to pay attention to is not crossing the centerline with my arms. And finally, pulling back instead of down during the first 1/3 of the arm stroke. Lots to pay attention to!

Tuesday:

was supposed to do a six mile base run with drills, but bailed b/c rain and general tiredness.

Wednesday:

8x30 second relaxed sprints uphill. after a 2 mile warmup. 4.5 miles total.
total miles ~ 4.5
hr/split data messed up b/c my workout kept resetting.

I warmed up the 2+ miles, and decided that out of the two hills, the less steep one was a better choice. It started out gradual and ended with a little kick up. Still, this was a brutal workout that had me seeing stars at the end. Here's how it went:
Sprints 1 and 2, relaxed speed: "OK, this feels good. Maybe I can even go harder"
Sprints 3 and 4, less relaxed, roughly same speed: "This is about as hard as I can go right now."
Sprints 5 and 6, visibly less relaxed, slightly slower speed: "I think I'm feeling a little bit queasy. And 30 seconds is a f*cking long time!"
Sprints 7 and 8, not relaxed, roughly same speed, because any slower would technically be a jog: "I want to puke. Now. Or Cry."

In any case, I can claim the moral victory after gutting through all 8 hill sprints. The hill (I was looking at it from the car while taking Kiran back from soccer practice) actually has a decent grade. It doesn't compare to the hill at Ft Mason from the bay side in San Francisco, but it is gentle enough for me to get some speed, and steep enough at the end so I really have to work to keep that speed.

Thursday:

swimming, short on time, so 50-250 up and down by 50. Endurance is good for me. Here is the thing. I'm noticing that my pull is getting more efficient, i.e. I am pulling back instead of down. It feels good. I can comfortably move for ~ 150 yards, so swimming 200 right now is where I start to notice form breakdown. This is a huge step up from only being able to swim 25 comfortably. I'm going to keep on with the long (for me) intervals, and not focus on the speed. Bilateral breathing well through 150, starts to get hard around 200. I want to push all the way to 500 (big dreams!)

Friday:

Running, Fartlek, 8x30 second sprints @ 1 mile pace.
total dist 6.03 mi
total time 52:47
avg pace 8:45/mi
avg HR 139
1220 feet climbed, 1449 feet descended.

30 second intervals: hard to keep it slow enough for 1 mile pace @ only 30 sec. Also, at mile 5, realized I was supposed to be back at 7AM, and it was 7AM, so I had to pick up the pace from 'base' to 'get my ass home'. So the last couple miles were in the low to mid 7s, with 30 second sprints thrown in on the last riser before the big downhill, and the final nasty uphill finish.

Saturday:

recovery pace run + trx weights.
total dist 3.21 mi
total time 33:11
avg pace 10:21/mi.
avg HR 124
498 feet climbed,538 ft descended

This time I grabbed 2x10lb dumbells for the second set of split squats, and reduced the reps to 10. That made it hurt :)

Sunday:

7.94 mi base pace run
avg pace 9:15 mi
avg HR 138
1026 feet climbed
1183 feet descended

Started out, lt knee felt a little sore, and legs tired. first mile split was 10:21, ugh. Felt better after that, kept pace at 9:38 in the hilly section of the climb. Breathing and pacing felt good. I tried to keep it at 'marathon' pace, 8:15, on a flat section, and that felt pretty hard, not sure how I would do that for 26.2 mi! I'm going to have to trust the pacing tables on this and hope that I get more comfortable at 8:15.

Summary

approx 21 mi, 4 hrs.
Left knee feels 'tired' more than painful. I think I need to loosen up the left IT, do some leg extensions with the bungee cords, and take tomorrow off :)