My Choice

After a rather extensive and intense job search, I have finally taken a job.  Obviously, the worst possible scenario would have been not finding one at all.  But I was not quite prepared for the agony that finding too many of them turned out to be! It might be easy for a company to reject a candidate. I have been in countless meetings where that has happened. You go around the table and someone might point out how this person did not answer question X, or does not have enough experience with technology Y and so on.  The votes are counted, the verdict is in and two minutes later you are back at your desk finishing whatever was interrupted by this meeting.  From my point of view as a candidate, a lot more is going on.  I have been meeting people with the potential to become my next mentors, coworkers, best friends and beer buddies.  People who I might learn a lot of stuff from, potential brothers in arms (yeah, hardly any sisters in these companies).  Some of them read my blog, many gave me advice on my job search and much more.  Almost overwhelmingly they were all smart, interesting people with a lot of common interests and hobbies.  We talked about game programming, music, the experience of working in the software field and much more.  When it is time to choose, all of these potential relationships vanish.  Most likely forever.  I am really in a period of mourning now.  I did not expect to meet so many good people.  Pretty soon, they will all forget my name and I will theirs.  Such is life.

And there have been many lessons learned too.  I realize now more than ever how important it is that you show them who you really are. That includes your resume, web page, code samples and just about everywhere.  It is important to be liked by the right people, but it is even more important to be disliked by the wrong people as soon as possible.  If you care about being happy at work, that is, beyond the salary and position, you definitely do not want to end up working for incompatible people.  I care, and I believe it is crucial for me to work with like minded, fun loving, smart and dedicated people with a sense of mission.  The rigidity that is rampant in most corporations, big and small, is unbearable to me.  When I show them exactly who I am, that rigidity will manifest itself in rejection.  Such a thing happened with one of the companies I saw earlier on, which I liked in the interviews.  I found out after asking for feedback on what had happened.  I was very lucky.

But even if I was able to find great places to work and great people to work in multiple companies, in the end I chose one that had the clearest path to my independence.  I will be working (from home!) for a group of wacky MIT material science professors helping them with a research project that quite likely could lead to a great technological innovation that would affect people worldwide in a positive way.  This is definitely not a conventional job, and I will have to learn many new things and will be placed squarely outside of my comfort zone.  But I am tired of conventional jobs.  That is not what I am, and I feel this is being truer to myself. I even had to reject a big software architect role offer from a big company that included insane amounts of money.  From the way I was treated, I knew I could not be happy there.  But it was hard to say no.  Anyway, in the coming weeks I will try to figure out my new schedule, which will change, but not by that much.  On we go in the quest to find balance in my life.  A balance that includes work, family life and personal satisfaction.  And definitely a good amount of game programming!