The Job Situation

Well, as most of you are aware I quit my old job a couple months back and have been looking for a job since the beginning of this month (with an eye toward starting in mid September). I spoke with several companies including Google and Wired.

This was my second time interviewing with Google. Unlike the first time I did not perform in a way that made me feel deeply embarrassed to be alive. Still, I missed a question on Huffman trees which I should have gotten. Google passed on me but the fact that I only wanted to work in San Francisco probably factored into it.

Everyone at Wired.com liked me but were actually looking for someone with a different skill-set. For those of you who care, the web development is in the process of splitting into "front end" guys who make everything look cool with Ajax and style sheets; and "back end" who actually makes everything - you know - "work". I'm not a strong front-end guy as anyone whose looked at my work on the squelch website can attest.

I interviewed with a company called *Name redacted* who make websites for fortune 50 companies. That place absolutely wreaked of hipsters. The place looked like a nightclub only all the hip 20 somethings have paying jobs. Indeed, here was a company that knows what white people like. All in all I thought I did pretty poorly in the interview flubbing some questions about unit tests and writing exactly one program which had a major bug in it. Did I mention that due to a mix up I arrived an hour late? Anyways, they did end up making an offer with a caveat. I had to accept or deny in 24 hours - noon the next day. This was awkward because I was actually supposed to be wrapping up an interview with another company at that time.

The interview was with a company called... well, so this page isn't found by the search engines let's just call it "A river in Egypt shirpa". A friend of mine works there and it seems like a pretty strong group. I explained the *Name redacted* situation to them and they very nicely obliged by agreeing to make an offer (if they decided to do so) before noon. At 11:00 the interview ended and 30 minutes later they made an offer which - to say the least - was substantially better than the *Name redacted* one and much better than what I was making previously. Even though I technically had an interview scheduled with Ask.com I decided to accept right there. The chances of getting a better offer were slim since start-ups pay more and anyways if they were nice enough to make a quick decision on me I should return the favor.

So, in conclusion I have a new job starting in about two weeks; I'll be making like 20% more than I used to; and I'll be working with what look to be a pretty cool team. Hooray!

Update: Redacted name of a company per their request

What did you do today?

Lisa and I biked to the Golden Gate bridge today. How do you like them apples, employed people of the world?

We got up early this morning (around 9) and took the BART over to Embarcadero where we started biking. Right away I saw one of the Parrots of Telegraph Hill. I took it as a good omen even though it was in front of the Ferry building. A little pedaling over flat terrain brought us past Fisherman's wharf and Ghirardelli Square. At that point we were confronted by a steep hill at Fort Mason. We called it "the wall". It was quickly surmounted. Annoyingly once you get past it there's a downhill portion just as steep that brings you back to near sea level. It's like they made you climb the hill just because they were too jerky to make the road go around. To add insult to injury there an abandoned tunnel leading through the hill that's been fenced off.

The other side of Fort Mason is much more frou frou (frou frouier?). Fancy homes line one side of the street as the bay lines the other. If I get ridiculously wealthy that's exactly the kind of place I want to move to. Probably hard to grow vegetables with all that salt air though. Anyhow, a long ride past Crissy field (which I had never heard of before) brought us to the base of the Golden Gate bridge and the hill Lisa and I called "the never-ending hill". Unlike the first hill this one never seemed to stop. I don't know what comedy technique I'm employing with this description. It is highly experimental.

Anyhow, once we biked up the hill (which wasn't that hard in the end) we got the bridge itself. The main problem was weaving around the hoards of pedestrians and other bikers who - as Lisa observed - came in exactly two types: Super grand-master professional and obvious tourist who had rented a bike for the day from "Blazing Saddles".

The other side of the Golden Gate bridge lets out directly onto a dirt road, or at least that's the impression I got for all there is to do on the Marin side. Still, the view is quite nice and I was afforded yet another chance to test my Italian speaking skill on vacationing Italians. Today's hit rate was 50%: Of the two words I spoke "Sieti Italiani?" I got one wrong (should be "Siete Italiani?"). They were very nice and took a picture of us doing the "Go Team Venture" pose which my facebook friends can find look up if they're so inclined.

After that the ride back was a little anti-climactic... and downhill. Which was real nice. We ended up hanging out by Fisherman's wharf and taking lots of pictures of the sea lions there. You can expect plenty of drawing by Lisa on that subject shortly.

Without the BART ride the whole excursion took about 4 hours which is really not so bad considering that we stopped to eat lunch and futz around the wharf. I strongly recommend the ride to anyone visiting San Francisco. It is not terribly difficult, even for someone out of shape like me.

The future!

Being unemployed for the time being I've found a lot of extra time to contemplate the world, my place in it, the future, and everything. This has lead not only to a lot more TV watching and computer go playing but some insights as well.

The first insight is that a lot of what I take for granted now will probably seem quaint and olde-thimey in the future. Either that or future apocalypse survivors will look upon my lifestyle as a warning against sloth and sin. But I like to imagine it'll be the first one. I imagine they'd ask something like "Did you really drive cars? Wasn't that dangerous?" Why of course it's dangerous! I've been in more than one accident and I know personally more than one person who has been in a car that has flipped over while going more than 60 m.p.h.* on the freeway. Still, since we don't have cars that drive themselves have to choose either to strap ourselves into metal compustion engines guided by our unenhanced monkey brains or take the BART which - here in 2008 - will not transport you from SF to Portland in 1 hour. And since we're on the topic of transportation is it weird to you future people that I fly around in planes regularly on business (or did before I quit my job)? Well, is it!?

Oh! Here in the past, only my two vegan friends give me a hard time about eating meat. Wierd, eh?

The past really is a different country. The life my grandfather lead - an illiterate traveling salesman vendor type life - is pretty much as far removed from the life of a professional programmer as you can get. (not to mention that he lived his life in Italian) And yet here I am. Will my job seem anachronistic in the future? I bet it will. As a programmer I do most of my work by typing (yes, typing with an old-timey klicky-klacky keyboard of all things!) into a glorified word processor. I suspect that in the future most programming, if it needs to be done at all, will be done by machines. And any that doesn't will be done at such an abstract level that programmers will look more like musicians than writers. Maybe if I'm lucky people will look back nostalgically on professional programming the way we look to blacksmithing or telephone switchboard operatoring.

* That's like 90 kilometers and hour to you future folk.

Yosemite!

A long time ago when I was in college I voyaged all the way out to the far side of SF to attend a party thrown by a friend from my community college days who shall remain nameless (Katy). Due completely to my own personal issues and difficulties mingling with people I didn't know,* I had a bad time. Again, I can't stress enough that Katy is a good party-thrower and I would recommend her parties to anyone. Anyhow, I can't remember exactly what happened but drinking was probably involved and I hatched a stupid plan to drive to Yosemite that night with Katy's car. Perhaps Katy was very drunk too, or maybe she was just humoring me but anyways we got as far as looking up accommodations at Yosemite before deciding it was a foolish plan and falling asleep. For many years, that was the closest I'd ever been to Yosemite...

...unless you count a visit there that my family made when I was just a zygote.

Last week I decided to end my flirtation with Yosemite and just go there already. Lisa, ever the awesome fiancee, took my ridiculously short planning time-frame in stride except for a notable argument concerning whether to bring a cantaloupe on which - I will now admit - reasonable minds may differ. We stayed at Camp Curry which I strongly recommend. Their tent cabins strike a good compromise between a camping under the stars and staying a hotel. Really its more like summer camp. The food was surprisingly passable for cafeteria food.

We hiked up Bridalveil falls. Not just to pool where the water falls to at the bottom but the super secret upper pool. Lisa painted it. Check her blog for postings. We hiked around glacier point where the "fire fall" used to start from. (Yes, Mr. Strong, I remember your descriptions of it.) From there I looked at half dome and shook my fist. We later hiked up to Vernal falls which is the same trail used for Half-dome. Since it was late in the day we mostly saw wasted cadaver-like hikers, many shirtless, returning from having conquered (or been conquered) by half dome. Just looking at them made me tired. Still I'd like to do it someday. I will pack light.

We also hiked around Yosemite Falls which was incredibly unimpressive due to it being summer of a dry year. Seriously. A low-flow shower head could put the falls to shame the way we saw it. Since we stopped at got lunch there we were got to experience waves of hikers reaching the falls only to be disappointed in a variety of European languages. I suggested we temporarily rename it Regret Falls.

Speaking of, did I mention the number of foreigners? It was like the tower of babble. I guess it's 'cuase the euro's strong against the dollar or maybe it's just always that way. I'm not complaining. It allows me to indulge in two guilty pleasures: 1) playing "guess the nationality" and 2) practicing Italian with actual Italians. For those who want to play the nationality guessing game my word of advice is that anyone with an upturned collar should be assumed Italian till proven otherwise.

Also, we saw many deer, many squirrels, many many Stellar's Jay (which everyone insisted on making a big deal out of even though I see them all the time in Oakland) and a Tanager.

*This comma has been put in to relieve parsing issues.