Job Hunting and Hard Decisions

Someone recently suggested I write a blogpost about my experience in this job search. I’d been through a lot of ups and downs in this whole process. I’ll concentrate mostly on the grand/weird finale of it all.

I had applied to a multitude of job posts both in San Francisco (where I live now) and all over the US. Rejection after rejection, I was really starting to lose momentum and motivation. To be honest, I don’t really have the antidote for losing your spirit. I was losing my spirit along with my mind during this phase.

Oddly enough, even though I am trained in the middle of the most competitive market when I tried to look for roles outside of San Francisco and the Bay Area, the only responses I would get were from gigs that are remote or overseas in Europe. I was hoping to maybe get out of the Bay Area via my foot-in-the-door job.

One thing I’m realizing now is that my Imposter Syndrome is what maybe stopped me from finding a job in Europe. I didn’t apply early on in my search because I assumed I was too junior therefore “no company would invest money into me to bring me out there”, but boy was I wrong.

I’m a Software Engineer at 99designs, an Australian-based company with offices in the US, Australia, Europe and Asia. There are many reasons why I chose to work at 99designs. They’re based in Melbourne, my favourite city in the world. The team members I’d met while interviewing were fantastic and friendly. And even little things like 2 old friends still in Melbourne recommending me to my Team Lead and CTO. Anyway, after 4 levels of screening and interviewing (non-tech interview, code challenge, onsite technical interview, another onsite non-technical interview) I was offered a position and after negotiating salary, I was given 2 days to sign my offer letter.

But let’s rewind a few weeks.

I applied to a travel and hotel booking platform that is based in Germany. Honestly, not very hopeful when I sent out the application. Same thought as before… “who would spend money to hire me?” But they reached out to me, actually at first because I didn’t fill out their salary expectations field when I applied. So their HR rep reached out to me asking for salary expectations, with a few links that would help me figure out cost of living etc. I gave a big salary range in response, and again, not expecting much to come of this. He replied with a code challenge, and I was excited!

Unfortunately (but fortunately) I was given other code challenges to work on and also still had to finish an assignment from another company from Estonia. I was so overloaded that weekend. I debated for a long time to just dropping one assignment/company, but how to choose? It was either going with the notion of “which company was I least interested in?”, “which company did I have the highest chance of passing their interviews?” or whatever. This was also while I was waiting for a decision from 99designs so I still had to keep working on keeping the pipeline full.

I decided to drop the German company because the technology in their stack and in the assignment was the most unfamiliar to me, assuming then this would be the most time-consuming one. Also I just thought again “why would they invest in me?” So I decided to “ghost” the German company and just not submit the assignment without saying anything. But after the due date for their assignment, they came back to me asking me for the assignment in another 3 days, reiterating that my application really impressed them. So I decided to retry it, and after 5 days (3 days plus the weekend) I submitted it with the news I had an offer from 99designs. Because the technologies in this code challenge were so new to me, I surely thought my assignment wouldn’t make it past the finish line. The German company replied a day later, asking me to do a Skype interview with one of their lead engineers. As all my video/phone screens go, I was nervous, mistyping all my words and saying “like” too many times. I saw him chuckle a few times though. I think being myself helped. I felt like I stumbled a few times on certain topics, which is why I assumed I was failing this interview.

At the end of the interview he asked me about my timeline. I did tell him maybe I could possibly ask for an extension on my other offer with 99designs, depending on the outcome of the present interview. I honestly didn’t know if I actually passed. I felt like my lack of explanation on some topics fucked me. But, maybe that’s another one of my problems… I concentrate on all the fuck-ups and not my strengths, and that lack of confidence feeds my Imposter Syndrome and causes me to screw up on interviews.

Less than two hours later, I received another email from the German company offering me to come onsite to interview in Germany (with the price of flights and hotel covered by the company). There it was. Proof that I was wrong this entire time. I AM worth investing into.

There was no way I could ask for an extension from 99designs that would allow to me go off to Europe, interview, explore the city, and fly back. I figured it would be at least 5 more days, conservatively, I would have to ask for. And for so many other reasons it made sense to put my foot in the tech door of Australia. I was gutted because working in Germany would have been amazing for so many reasons, but I’m happy with my decision to go with 99designs.

One of the major things I learned from that crazy day was to stop underestimating myself. I needed to stop thinking that there was no chance a company in Europe would invest money into me to bring me on board because clearly there was at least one company that would. I only finished 3/4 of the tasks of their assignment, handed it in late, and used technologies that I was unfamiliar with at the time… and they STILL wanted me. I need to stop saying things like “I can’t be that bad if they liked me Redux assignment…” and instead say “Yeah, I’m badass at this shit. Lots of people, in different countries, want to work with me!”