New job, new apartment

[dougo]

I have a new job. Well, it's more like an arrangement than a job: I'm subcontracting for Appleseed Software Consulting, a.k.a. prog. Basically he slices off chunks from his clients' tasks (currently, Perl web app stuff using Catalyst) and hands them to me, and pays me slightly less than he charges his clients (the difference paying for his managerial overhead, not to mention the fact that he finds and deals with clients so I don't have to). It's not an exclusive contract, so in theory I could call myself a full-fledged consultant and find my own clients, but unless something falls into my lap this is not generally likely to happen. (In fact, something did just fall into my lap, but I'm still thinking over whether I want to do it. It's somewhat southeast of center in the How To Be Happy In Business Venn diagram: I'm not sure I want to do it, and I'm not sure I can do it. Weirdly, though, these sort of cancel each other out. We'll see.)

My job search, which started with gusto in mid-February and petered out sometime last month, was a big bust. I inquired at about 15 places, went to interviews at four of them (Vistaprint, BAE/AIT, Google, and Ab Initio), and got zero offers. I limited my inquiries to places where I knew someone; I could have spread my net much further and more vigorously, but by the time I realized I was going to turn up dry with my contact network, the whole job search process had left a bad taste in my mouth and I was not inspired to start sending out "cold" applications. I could write a lot more about my interview experiences, but it's really hard to avoid it sounding like sour grapes—and who knows, maybe it is just sour grapes; that, or it's just a symptom of the bad job market. And I don't want to burn any bridges... But, honestly, I did get the feeling I was being jerked around more than necessary. Enough said for now.

Once I made up my mind to stop looking for a full-time salary job, I started looking for a new place to live. I had moved to Billerica to reduce the commute to my job in Burlington, but that's been moot for 19 months now, and lately I've been driving to Somerville almost as often as I was commuting to Burlington when I lived in Somerville. So, after another lengthy, exhausting, and somewhat demoralizing search, I settled on an apartment pretty close to where I used to live, right near Powderhouse Square. I'll post more details after I sign the lease this week.

An interesting footnote: right as I was about to commit to staying in the Boston area for another year, I got two out-of-town job nibbles, one from Amazon.com in Seattle, the other from a very interesting-sounding startup in Silicon Valley. If these had arrived a couple months earlier, I would have seriously considered them, but the timing was just off so I passed. But, if you're interested in a Silicon Valley startup job that involves a "pure-functional, lazily-evaluated, functional-reactive language that compiles to JavaScript for execution on both the server and the browser", ping me and I'll connect you up.

Comments

[randomenvy.livejournal.com]

If you want to provide feedback about the interviews with us, I can't do much for you, but I can try to make it better for the next person in line.

Sorry you didn't get an offer with us... it would've been fun working with you.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I am the least bitter about Vistaprint. It was my first interview, so probably I was just rusty. I interviewed with three people; the first two went okay, but the third was kind of a disaster, and that happened to be the guy who would have been my boss. I kind of flailed at his design question; it seemed somewhat underspecified—it took me a while to figure out what he was actually asking me to do. But rather than let me talk through it until I figured out what he wanted, he kept interrupting me and criticizing what I was doing, which flustered me too much to concentrate on the problem. At one point it felt like he was doing more of the design than I was. I need to figure out how to deal with that sort of situation—maybe I should have stopped him and asked to start over with a new question?

Also, it took them a week and a half to get back to me to tell me they weren't interested. Which probably is not much longer than average these days, or maybe even shorter than average, but at the time it felt a bit long. (On the other hand, it took BAE six weeks after my second interview—which was six weeks after my first interview—to tell me they had a hiring freeze.)

[randomenvy.livejournal.com]

I *think* (don't quote me) that that meant we're on the fence.

As for the interruption... that's unfortunate. It's sometimes difficult to determine for the interviewer whether a candidate needs more or less guidance / direction during the interview. (I don't know about other people, but there are times that I'm just as nervous giving the interview as I am at receiving them).

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't really blame him. I just think we have incompatible communication styles, or at least we did at that moment. And given that he would have been my boss, it was probably the right decision to pass.