Day 10: Opportunities
Day 10
Today started with a baby in arms. I spent a little bit of time with my baby boy before he and my Wife headed off to the Chiropractor. I then hopped into my “work” day—oddly enough, it’s starting to feel that way! I think it is a good thing.
First up was a project for my church. We’re using PushPay to set up a Mission Trip pipeline that aims to automate as much as we can while making the process effective and keeping participants informed. I set up a demo on our website and got some feedback from our pastor’s wife who is helping me build requirements for this effort.
Next I started in on a Codewars challenge that dealt with a Fibonacci sequence and I was reminded of the difficulty of writing recursive functions. I set up some useful debugging and even “whiteboarded” my solution on some paper with a pen to visualize my algorithm. Very fun! I crashed the Codewars process with my first solution, so go me. I wrote a threaded version that used a semaphore to protect some shared memory that I then semi-ported into my synchronous version. I haven’t tested either one of those solutions yet though. I’m not even sure if threaded solutions are supported on the Codewars platform.
BIG NEWS. I got accepted into the tech interview stage of one interview process. This feels very hopeful, especially because I was referred by a former colleague of mine. PLUS I got moved into the initial interview stage with another company which my Wife knows of and uses regularly. This would be a really cool opportunity with what seems to be a thriving engineering team. I’m elated to have these two opportunities.
BAD NEWS. I got denied for an application that I put in myself. So far, the applications that I’ve submitted blindly (no recruiter help) have all been denied. I look at this as one more failure out of the way of my success. It doesn’t help that the denial came from a no-reply email address, which effectively means “and no, we won’t tell you why.” This is probably the most damaging thing to job applicants. Failure without any feedback about why it happened leaves that failure on the shelf like an ugly trophy. Feedback takes the failure off the shelf and turns it into a gold medal of success.
As part of moving on to a technical interview, I spent a couple of hours spinning up projects ahead of the meeting. The company provided me with instructions on what to do. It’s the most unique process I’ve gone through and so far I love it. It’s very communicative and personal, definitely technically focused, and leaves room for collaboration. I’m really looking forward to this process and I hope that their team gets the perfect new team member. I’ll work my butt off to see if it’s me.
We had another prayer night tonight (and for the next 19 nights) which was fulfilling. I love seeing brothers and sisters in the Faith praying together, and watching my sons watch other people pray and worship in a public setting. What a blessing!
Last on my list today was a call with a former colleague who is interested in hiring me for a short-term contract. I had a blast working with this fellow and his team so I know that it would be a good time. We’re going to discuss more details in the coming days and I was upfront about the interview processes I’m currently excited about. All friendly, all good. So grateful that he reached out.
Glory to God! God bless folks.