Just a quick personal aside and an update on my where-a-bouts.
The Nature of Work
Work for me is an integral part of my life. That isn’t to say there isn’t a mercenary-like property to it because of course there is. I love the work I do but if I didn’t get paid for it I wouldn’t log in. The kind of intellectually challenging work that is database engineering and software engineering is mentally taxing. At the higher levels it is very much a work-hard / play-hard type of deal. If you want the big bucks you’ve got to be willing and able to do more than others. I’ve accepted that in my career.
One Door Closes
A few months ago I ended a near decade long tenure at Varonis. I wasn’t the only one who had been there a long time and was higher up in the organization. Like so many others laid-off, both micro and macro factors played a role. There are times when lay-offs are necessary house cleaning. However, there are other times where it is a cleaning which results in brain drain. This looked and felt like the latter.
Earlier in 2023 I wrote about what I saw as the writing on the wall. The world had changed. My burnout had reached a mature stage. There was no help coming. I was stuck. The illusion that I had some agency in improving the situation became darkly comical. It’s that sort of vibe that you read about in Franz Kafka books like The Trial. It feels like the Twilight Zone but more corporate.
Job Search – the Dark Before the Light
For big-tech workers, this has been a bad year to be looking for work. For the first time in almost 10 years I had to revise my resume, write cover letters that nobody reads anymore, and apply for many jobs. The rejection was resounding.
I had never been treated by recruiters like an annoyance or someone to take advantage of. A couple highlights:
- Lowballed – not by thousands but tens of thousands of dollars.
- Ghosted – on more than several occasions after talking with a recruiter to setup an interview the conversation went dark. Amazing to see this has moved beyond online dating. Not very professional.
- Wild expectations – one recruiter decided not to dismount off her high horse when talking to me and continued to emphasize they needed “breadth and depth” in pretty much every discipline of computer science. After a bit trying to sort out if she was joking, ignorant, or delusional, I took my moment to end the call – I said some rendition of “yes, those people with those skill sets exist but they work at Google and make $300k base plus bonus plus stock ++ and they probably won’t want to work for you paying under 30% of that. Good luck in sourcing those jobs”.
- Interview torture – I straight up dropped an interview opportunity because the preamble was some admittedly rigged coding exercise that “nobody got right” but “that’s ok” somehow because the questioning would continue. I’m past the point in my career to play those games. Keep your rigged non-sense coding puzzle to yourself and maybe hire your split personality who thinks this attracts the right talent.
I know this isn’t all recruiters but it’s an experience I had with many this go-around. In case you’re wondering about how I think interviews should be conducted, I wrote a recent post about how I see it.
Another Door Opens
This month I began working at Salesforce. I’m doing software engineering in my specialty – database engineering for SQL Server. It’s the biggest place I’ve worked and there’s a lot to learn, many smart people, and a chance to make my impact. While others fumble about how to run their application as a service, this is pretty much the OG SaaS company.
Alas the search came to a close. I ended up much better than I was. I didn’t believe it but one door closed and another opened to a better place.
Conclusion
But enough of all that – I want to leave you on a good note.
“Wheel” by John Mayer is a song about change and it’s impact on you. The maturity of the comings and goings of different people, places, and things in your life. If you’re down right now, maybe you’re laid-off or you know it is coming, give this a listen. It just might give you some special solace.
Thanks for reading!
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