I thought it might be entertaining to give a blow-by-blow account of my job hunt here, naming names, trading off pluses and minuses, telling all. Then it dawned on me how incredibly clueless and lame-brained that would be. But I do have some vignettes—one notably optimistic for our profession—and a couple of pictures, and also an explanation of the essay’s title, which doesn’t mean what you think it does. [Update: Found! Jonas the G.J.S.L.w.n.e.]
Exquisitely Sensitive · One place I visited gave me the full treatment: five interviews with different people scheduled precisely over a few hours. And I appreciated it; thanks, guys. The first was with the Recruiting Specialist, and I said “I suppose in this job you are exquisitely sensitive to the ebb and flow of the tech economy. What are you seeing?” She said “It’s way busier. I have a big list of open requisitions and most people who come in here are also interviewing with others, not like a few months back.” And if that isn’t good news, I don’t know what is.
They call it the Golden West, don’t they?
Geek Dinner · Jeremy Zawodny organized this, he da man, all I can say is it’s a good thing the House of Orient was having a slow night, they dealt ably with a herd of 20 loud-voiced geeks (all male, sigh), making intelligent suggestions on how to order food, and it was pretty tasty too. I felt kind of sorry for the solitary couple over on the other side of the restaurant and if they didn’t want to hear the general hubbub about LinkedIn and the Hacker’s Conference and Rohit Khare shamelessly getting engaged just as he became unemployed, and why a lawyer can’t safely link to Glenn Reynolds, and so on, well too bad.
The only downside was that with that many people there, it was hard to go
deep with anyone. On the other hand, I have just discovered that Google is
worthless; I was sitting next to this real interesting guy whose name is
Jonas and who’s a German Jewish Sociologist Lawyer Wired-mag network
engineer, and I just typed Jonas German Jewish Sociologist Lawyer wired
network into Google and got nothing, so much for search engines.
(But then he saw this entry and
showed
that he can in fact be found, ain’t the Web great?)
Startup · One place I visited had that wonderful startup energy, powerbars hanging over the walls and the finance guy in a corner and unimproved wallboard offices and they’re doing real interesting work, and damn I could help them out... Hey, didn’t I say I wasn’t going to do the startup thing again?
Sunset near SFO.
OSP · So I’m sitting there talking to this real smart guy who’s got a strategic job way up in a Silly Valley titan and maybe we can do a deal, we’re winding up and I said “Anything else by way of questions about me?” and he said “Nah, I got you pretty well triangulated, you’re an Open Source Person.”
Which, I guess, more and more of us are.
