Job

On Thursday, Sept. 27th I was informed that my position at my job is being eliminated on Oct. 26th.

During all the swirl of that day, before I found out I had 4 weeks before I was out on the street, I had a realization that this time I have connections. (I didn’t when I was laid-off in 2002.) So I immediately started to reach out to those connections to help me find a new job. Actually, I started to do so, and then thought that driving, crying, and texting was probably a bad combination, and put my phone down until I stopped the car. Then I contacted former co-worker and current friend Lyudmila, who is in a leadership position at another company. She didn’t have any jobs to offer, but she put me in touch with her recruiter and with Helene, a manager I used to work with at another company I had previously been interested in who was now hiring.

After the initial melt down and trying to contact my bf Emily and my mother who was on vacation in Seattle (failed at both), I set up time with my best neighbors the Taylors for that evening and found a couple people to talk to. Then I went back to work and waited to find out all the details of me being downsized. Em found me on Facebook and we were able to “talk” that way, which was a help. Then I was very surprised at some of the severance package, very generous.

At work people were giving me condolences and trying to help me feel better by telling me the Ann Arbor market is really good for programmers right now. One co-worker friend, Ryan, even said I’d likely end up with two offers. Yeah right! I’d be happy with just one, preferably one I wanted. I had quickly come to the decision that my job now was finding a new job. But even though I was saying that, it was hard to accept.

I had a great evening with Elizabeth, Greer, Addy and Amber at the pool, and then dinner with Nick too at their house. Much needed. At the repeated recommendation of my job and co-workers, I took Friday off. I don’t even really remember what I did that day.

While the severance was good, we’d be okay for a while, and that helped me feel better, a new issue became apparent. I was going to loose friends. Co-workers I like, some I even really like. You know you say you’ll keep in touch, and with the closest friends you even do, for a while. But usually it doesn’t last. And that reality made me sad. I began going into mourning for relationships that were being forced to end.

The next handful of days were up and down. Sometimes I was okay, maybe even pretty good, sometimes I was not. Overnights or early mornings were the worst. But my connections where already starting to come through. Including one I didn’t even know about.

Still, when I was down it was hard. I remember walking into the house one time, and resolutely promising that “I am not going loose you.” I was going to do whatever it took to keep this house. I had no idea what that was, or how to do it, but I would do it. Another time I had one crying fit (at church, during a sermon on Suffering) that felt exactly like my toddler’s tantrums: something was being forced on me that I had no control over. “But I don’t want to go!” my internal voice whined. *sigh*

The recruiter I was put in contact with began pressuring me for a resume. On advice of close co-worker friend Matt C., I got on Linked-In. And the previously unknown connection was made known on the dl, also asking for my resume.

I hate writing resumes. I found my old ones, but they were only up to when I got this current job 4.5 years ago. Ugh! And then I couldn’t even remember what I had worked on in 2009 at this job! Bah. It took a lot of effort to push into the mental block against updating my resume and just do it. I found the updates I had made for NASA earlier this year, and took it from there. I was so proud when I finished! Even if the resume was 3.5 pages long. I knew I had to cut it down, but was just relieved to have had it done.

I asked my good-with-words co-worker friend Naomi to review my resume and help me make it better. She came through so well! With her notes and my preferences, I was able to cut the resume down to 2 pages. Then I asked my immediate manager Matt L. to review it, and he had excellent technical updates to make to it. With all that done, I had a solid resume. Yay! Off it went to everyone.

The interview requests came rolling in. It was only a week and a half since I’d been told and I already was fielding surprise phone meetings/initial contacts and lining up phone interviews and in-person interviews. Guess that’s what happens when the previous CEO of the company recommends you to companies he knows! I got a couple starts on my own too. My head was spinning from it all. Not always in a good way. But things were looking up. Apparently people were right, software development was hot in Ann Arbor right now. We even joked at work about companies trying to lure good developers like trying to call a lost dog.

Then I had my worst freaked out. Over interviewing. I hadn’t interviewed in 4.5 years. The thought of interviewing set off my confrontation / stage-fright in a big way. I had already asked my manager’s boss, Maurice, to help me interview the day before my first actual interview, and had asked my technical geek co-worker friend Jeff to run me through a mock technical interview. But I was still legitly freaking out. After going through both those practices (Monday and Tuesday, respectively), I felt some better. But I still wasn’t looking forward to the first real interview. I mean I was, but I didn’t want to do it.

The first in-person interview (Tuesday late afternoon) was not what I hoped. I didn’t like the building. But the first person I interviewed with went well! Then I got a tour and found out this was a start up, like brand spanking new. Or rather, a restart-up. There were no developers, I’d be the only one. There were no technical people at all! The second person I interviewed with… didn’t interview me but instead pitched the idea, hard. He was much more interested in finding someone who wanted to do the job, than interviewing for the position. Twice he mentioned my resume was “buzz word compliant”, and seemed unimpressed by it all. He was very old school, both in mannerism and ideas. It wasn’t a match. I left disheartened. Was I going to have to take that job? My head spun around that interview all night and the next morning.

Then I had my second in-person interview (Wednesday morning). 3 hours, 3 managers. And it was great! I really liked the company, I got good vibes from all three, even enjoyed the interview with one of them. Many of the technologies being used were what I use now: Java, Spring, Hibernate, even Hudson. And the direction the company wanted to head in sounded very much like what had been done at my current company: re-archtecture of proprietary software, add web services, move email off to a third party vendor like Responsys or Strong Mail. Hey, was this two years ago? I could totally step into this job and be successful. I might even lead the charge on the web services and/or email stuff. The location was pretty, the insides were comfortable and nice and welcoming and everything. The only thing that I noticed as a draw back was the cubicles. I don’t mean normal cubicles, I mean the ones with 6 foot high walls. While fun to decorate (and lot of people there did!) I couldn’t find much other positive about them.

After that, on the same day, I had a 1.5 hour phone interview. It was the most intense technical interview I’ve ever had. So much so that I had to take a 1 hour mental recovery afterwards. Whew! Hard. I didn’t think I did too well, on that one, but that was okay. I loved the interview from that morning and really hoped they would call me back.

Thursday morning the company I really liked called me back. And made an offer!! 2 weeks to the day from when this all started. I managed to get through that phone call, though not really smoothly, and promised to give them a definitive answer on Monday morning. I was kinda hoping Helene’s company would call me for an interview, and so wanted to wait at least through the end of the week for that. And I had one more interview I’d committed to that I didn’t want to blow off (keeping your word type thing). Yet the whole rest of the day I was ecstatic, I was bursting out of my skin! I couldn’t stop talking about the company and job, and how great it was even though there were two draw backs: the cubicles, and only 2 weeks PTO instead of the 4 weeks + sick time I had now. They also wanted workers in the office 45 hours a week, which meant Amber would be in daycare an hour more each day. But otherwise, it was GREAT! I got really close to calling them back and just accepting the offer that day, or the next morning.

I felt like I had whiplash from how fast things had moved over those 2 weeks. And it being over was a relief. But there was one more interview I had scheduled on Friday I was still mildly interested in. Mostly just to see what else was out there.

I almost didn’t go to Friday’s interview. I started to think it might be a mistake, and I wasn’t really up to it, not with my A game anyway. But I did go. The company was again not what I expected. Again it was a start up when I didn’t realized that beforehand, but this one was about 2 years in and had a proven product with 5 or 6 big clients. It had 20 employees, 4 of which were developers and 1 CTO. So already better. The first about hour was with 2 interviewers at the same time. And it went Awesome. By the end I was thinking “I knew I shouldn’t have come. This is messing with my head.”

I REALLY clicked with one of the two interviewers. I called him my new friend by the time I was leaving. I really liked the environment, it was open. Desks that pretended at being cubicles, which is the office set up I most prefer. The inside of the building was odd but in a cool way. Best of all, I liked the personalities of everyone I met I day. 5 people, so about 1/4th the company. And on my way out I also finally saw another female! Apparently there are 4 of them, besides me, they just were all out for the two hours I happened to be there. While the technologies in use are almost none that I know now, I’m not at all worried about learning C#. And it’d be fun to learn new stuff!

Apparently I also blew their socks off, because they were telling the CFO they wanted me before I even walked out the door. I warned the CFO, who was filling in for HR, that I had an offer I needed to respond to on Monday. He said he’d contact shareholders over the weekend and get an offer together for me. They REALLY wanted me. And… I think the feeling was mutual.

This past weekend my head, and phone, swarmed with weighing options and what-ifs and descriptions and just everything. It was a hard choice. A good problem to have, yes, but still tough to deal with. I sought advice from specific people, and used specific others for sounding boards, to try and help me make my decision. Mom, Reesie, Michael, Dad, even Colette had good advice, and Matt C.

The formal offer from the second job came in Sunday evening: base salary was near equivalent to the first company, but they were offering me the three weeks of PTO I asked for, instead of two. That definitely swayed things. But I was already leaning towards the second job, and I was worried that it was simply because I had seen them most recently.

With help, I realized I need to go back to both companies and see them again. And I successfully set up the meetings in reverse order so I would have last contact with the first company. Before I went to see either of them, I talked with a job counselor and through laying out all the details of my life and each job and what fit where and what didn’t and why and my feelings and concerns, I realized I had already made a decision. But I visited both anyway, to be sure.

I’m glad I did visit them both. Because the second company, the start up, was just like I remembered. I met many more people, and liked at least half of them. Mostly, I seemed to fit well with all the developers (although one of them I didn’t really get to talk to). But when they really got into what they were working on, my eyes started to glaze over. Uh oh, bad sign. Was it just that it was demoing a data collection site with different configurations? – nothing new to me. Hmm.

When I walked into the first company, one of the big reasons I liked it came back to me. It was so calming, and restful. The environment that is, the building. And the courtyard where you could work outside on the wireless under a tree… ahhh. But then, I didn’t click with any of the new developers I met this time like I had clicked at the start up. And the work they talked about… was all too familiar or just uninteresting.

And that was it: the start up seemed so much more interesting, exciting to me. Even though I don’t need the added chaos in my life of a start up, I didn’t want the restful nature of the established company. At least not right now. Why? I don’t know. But I was more excited for the start up company, I wanted that one.

So this morning I accepted the offer with Amplifinity here in Ann Arbor. I start work November 1st. :)