Week 15: Light

on updates

Week 15 was the third week of the job search. I’m making serious progress!

Thoughts
From: ‘No Church in the Wild’, Watch The Throne by Jay Z & Kanye West

Two tattoos: one read “No Apologies” The other said “Love is Cursed by Monogamy”

This week got me feeling like I want to get the same tattoos as the above lyrics, but with a slight modification:

Two tattoos: one read “No Apologies” The other said “Life is Cursed by Anxiety”

Things went well this week, but I’ll once again refrain from disclosing too much until I make the important decisions that need to be made.

One of the highlights of this week was actually a really thoughtful rejection message I got. I cold emailed someone at a company that seemed awesome and had a well designed site. I wasn’t hoping for a response, as most cold emails go unanswered, but this is what I received.

Thank you for your interest in working at [redacted]. I am always happy to see a Columbia alumnus apply, however we have made the decision not to move forward at this time. I looked through a lot of your online presence and was really impressed by your coding progress (and your blog was a really good window into your thoughtfulness). Unfortunately, at our size we have neither the bandwidth nor mentorship to grow you into a web developer. I sincerely hope you find an engineering role that you’re excited about at a company that can adequately support you.

After receiving standard “Thank you for your interest” rejections, it was really nice to receive one from someone who had clearly considered me. Since the hiring manager responded to me, I emailed him back asking for advice on how I could approve. He responded again(!!!) and told me to work on one good project that most accurately reflects my coding abilities so that a hiring manager could look through just one, really good piece of work.

For those of us who are in the job search process, this is a clear sign of hope. Someone from an awesome startup not only took the time to review my profile, but also to send me 2 responses and advice. Sure this interaction ended in rejection, but I’m not sad because I got a ton out of it! The interviewing process is all about iterating, so let’s keep moving!

Thanks

  • Natalia - Thank you for sending me so many good people to talk to, not just about the job hunt but also about transitioning into a full-time software engineering role.
  • Dan - Thanks for taking so much time out of your day to do a mock-interview, and a debrief. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this. Thanks also for being a sounding board re: job stuff in general.
  • Ben - Thanks for meeting up with me to describe your own experiences at a/A! It was a great opportunity for me to collect more data points about how this job search looked for others before me.
  • Sweta - Thank you for being the person I go to whenever I have any feelings about job hunting. I have so many feelings, so thank you for listening and being supportive through this whole process.
  • Bethany - Thanks for being a wonderful a/A mentor and being there for me when I’m looking for advice :D