Day 16: Confidence
Day 16
Today was amazing. I began my deeper study of The Book of Psalms for a small group that I’ll be helping lead with a few other church members. It was very fruitful, and I haven’t even gotten to the deeper analysis stage.
I had my final interview with a CTO from the company that I’ve been interviewing with. It went extremely fast (it was only a 15-minute interview). We chatted about past failures, parts of my career where I was most excited, and technical decisions that were “forks in the road,” including ones where I took the wrong forkin’ path ;) It was good. How do I know it was good? A couple of hours later I got a call from the wonderful lady on the Talent team who I’ve been coordinating with through the interview process saying that “good news was coming my way.” I have no offer letter; however, the affirmation from the team that they saw my worth sent me soaring. I also got to chat with a potential team leader whom I would work under, which was delightful.
So what is next? Reference checks! They’ll call two references to discuss me and make sure there are no surprises. I’m confident in my abilities and confident that my references will tell the truth: I make mistakes, I’ve made bad technical decisions, and I am committed to fixing my failures. More importantly, I’m committed to not making the same bad decision more than once. With every failure should come change that directly impacts the surrounding context of the failure. This gives you assurance that, when you inevitably fail again, you can confidently say that you took action to make things better. You’ve also started a feedback loop: OK, I failed at X; therefore, I’ll try Y and Z to improve that. DARN. I just failed at W. Y saved me from it being really bad, but Z didn’t help at all. And so on and so on.
Now I await the call and/or email with an offer letter. I’m also not so naive as to ignore the possibility that the offer may never come. While I’m confident in my abilities, character, and attitude, at the end of the day, other people have to feel the same way, and I cannot control that. So I lean on Him. I’ll hug my family a little tighter. I’ll Pray. And, Lord willing, I’ll be OK.
God Bless.