It’s been a long year.
Subjectively, of course, at least I don’t think the planet’s orbit has enlongated.
It all started back in about March 2022. I enjoyed working at Move —the people especially— but after ~4 years I was ready to move on. I had an opportunity which sounded great on paper and was looking forward to a new role at the end of the summer. I took a nice chunk of time off over the summer in preparation for the new role.
One week before I was due to start, the company rescinded the offer.
Well, 💩
Turns out this might have been better that one week after I started… but that is as close to a silver lining as I can squint to see.
So, beginning of September and I am frantically looking everywhere for jobs. I sent out a lot of applications and went through a number of interview processes. God, the job search process is demoralising. Turns out I am was really bad at interviewing, I was nervous in the wrong places and confident in the wrong places. This improved over time, but I also found it hard to judge how well an interview had gone. Basically the whole process is voodoo and insanely opaque.
Then there are the technical tests. To be completely honest I had a lot of fun with some of them. One company’s test was to write a small “spreadsheet” parsing programme (for a horrible syntax they gave) and the ask was to implement it a language you hadn’t used before. I used Zig and that was a lot of fun, but took a bunch of time and they didn’t offer me the job :(.
Come November and I still haven’t landed anything, and everything going on with Rosie’s dad just makes the whole situation unpleasant.
Then finally I am offered a position! I can start at the end of November. So I accept.
January is a very busy month. Lots of pressure and lots of work. But we come out the other side. Things have still had their crunches and calms but, boy am I glad last year is over…