Since April, I’ve been posting about my job seeking journey in probably the worst job market I’ve experienced in my entire 20 year tech career. After a long gap of radio silence, I can announce that the mission was successful.
I’ve been posting on a delayed schedule, posting on a 2/week cadence but posting a sequential daily update. The job search was moving much faster than I was posting, partly because I was lucky with early traction, and partly because I expected the job search grind to take me longer. As a result, I managed to get an offer just as I started writing about interviewing.
From there, the circus of trying to do anything complex in 2025 kicked off and my wife and I were forced to adapt and and pivot our way onto our new property in WA. We had to:
adjust my start date twice after the bank still wouldn’t accept a signed offer letter for financing
start at my new job before I even left TX for the aforementioned issue
drive a 2 hr round trip to pick up a Penske truck, because of UHaul reservation policies, the night before we had to load up the truck
leave a day later than planned due to underestimating being 41, how much stuff is in a 2,000 sqft house, and how high a Penske truck deck is
adjust our travel plans dramatically after we realized a Penske truck loaded with a 2,000 sqft house worth of shit, 2 dogs, and a cat takes 14 hours to do an 8 hour drive when driving through the mountains of Colorado, Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Washington
drive to Telluride to wire funds for the house purchase, a 90 minute drive through mountains in a truck pulling a loaded trailer, because there isn’t a Chase bank within 50 miles of Cortez, CO and there’s a $50,000 wire transfer limit online
work while doing all this
Despite the near constant stream of communication issues, friction from a large national bank dealing with small town companies, obstacles, and problems we finally made it at the start of June.
Since arriving in WA, I’ve been spending most of my time working, settling in and getting used to a rural life vs. suburban life. That’s been a larger adjustment than I anticipated. Sometimes in ways that I expected - the last 5 miles of road to our house is unpaved mountain road, and it’s a 25 minute drive past that to the nearest major road. Sometimes in ways that I didn’t - people seem really… uh… relaxed… when it comes to time, conducting business, and honoring commitments. It happens, but on their own time. My wife just told me today that the post office is closed for lunch.
I haven’t really had any time to focus on this blog, any of my personal projects or really anything that wasn’t either my new job or the new property. At first I felt guilty - it had started to become a habit - however this new job and the move was everything I was working toward for the whole project. Why shouldn’t I focus on it?
Also, my priorities have changed. This is another surprising aspect of the move. I’m more concerned with setting up a new life and sorting out the challenges of a new home in an unfamiliar place than I am about pushing progress in a field that is change so damn fast I can barely keep up.
I have notes I was taking from the interview process that I was planning on turning into blog posts. That was back when the belief was that I was in for a protracted job search and would be lucky to squeak in under the time limit and convince the bank to give me money. As it turns out, that’s not how it happened, and all the hustle and grinding and posting, the marketing plan, all of that - valuable though it was - had nothing to do with how I got my job.
As it turns out, referrals are king, and I reached out to a former co-worker whom I’ve enjoyed working with a few times now, and asked for a referral. A relatively painless interview process later and I found myself declaring “mission accomplished!”
I might spin some of my notes out into blog posts, because at one point I honestly believe I interviewed myself not only out of a job, but out of the role even existing. That was a fun experience. All in all, although rare and hard to get, the handful of interviews I had were relatively straight forward and done well - so if you do get through to interviews, don’t despair! At least you might not have to answer a leet code question or do live white-board coding (although I did a take-home, I’m not above that).
The thing with the business and the AI teacher thing is that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I need to conserve my supplies, and one supply I’m a little low on is mental bandwidth. Once the smoke clears, I’ll poke my head back out and get the lay of the land. One thing I know for sure is, what I was working on is already kind of out dated, or rather, maybe, I’ve broken through a serious barrier. Time will tell.