Five hours of interviews

It was down from seven hours.  The CTO didn't segue to the software designers then the VP.  This is never a good sign.  But I'd had five - count 'em -- F-I-V-E b2b interviews.

Everyone asks why I left telecom.

Why I left the perfect job.

The perfect job title.
the big company.

Why am I looking to work at such a small company.

What people don't seem to get is that ennui - that existential boredom - comes from lack of challenge.

I've been there.

I've seen it.

I've eaten it.

I've smelled it.

I've felt that touch before.

I have to move foreward or I'm buried while still alive.

******

The interviews are stacking up.  NEVER do more than one a day.

Send the "regret to inform you, but I'm not pursuing next steps with you" emails early

ALWAYS be the first in an interview to mention it's not a "fit."

***** Friday morning ***

new "NEVER" do again:

Never schedule face to face (f2f) interviews one day after the next.
No more than three f2f interviews a week, and only then if they're separated by a day.
Don't even bother trying to manage a phone screen, tech interview, with a f2f in one day - switching gears between companies & job descriptions really isn't that easy.

Yes, one of the horrible things yesterday is that I forgot I'd spoken to someone on a phone screen - my hiring manager, the one I met yesterday in meat space.  (*i SUCK*)

Interviewing is like a dance performance.  You're all jazzed before hand, but then afterwards..

je ne regrette rien

The cycle is swooping back up again and today I feel like I've made another "break-through" in this transition process.  I don't know why I didn't notice this before, maybe I thought it was too far beyond me, but there's this whole industry building up around performance engineering for software development in mainstream IT.  I've got an interview - not because they picked my resume out of the slush pile, but because a friend forwarded my resume to a recruiter, who forwarded me to the hiring manager.  The hiring manager asked to speak to me, so he's read my resume.  I meet with him in the next few days, so I am brushing up on what I don't know based upon the job description.

I sorted the job description into what I knew (and why I applied) and pulled out what I didn't know.  This time though, instead of ignoring the software I didn't know, I went to their websites and viola.  There was some fan-fuckin'-tastic technical documentation about IQA  (Integrated software quality assurance) tools and what that is.  I feel like I hit paydirt.

The best, however, by far is the Dynatrace site.  Not only do they describe what application performance is and how it hits bare metal, but there's an extensive section on cloud KPIs worth reading for those who still aren't impacted by having to get down to the application layer.  That said, I think application performance management and performance testing is going to be part of "everyone's" future.  This site, and others have a lot of very interesting information.

Keyword search guys is "Application Performance" - there's testing and best practices, you want to pay attention to.  Also, you want to watch for "Continuous Integration" these days, folks.

Here's the Microsoft link to their document.

*****************************************************

My favorite pickle guy asked me how the job search was going yesterday.  I sighed, "Have you done much dating before?"

He nodded.  Of course he has, he's a cutie and smart and funny.

"I've had a lot of first  dates.  You know what that's like, right?  How easy those are?"

<insert nod, but confused look here>

"Now, how many second dates come from the first?  Fewer, right?  And then how many third dates come from the second."

<smiles>

"I haven't made it to the one night stand yet."

He got it.