In lieu of the weekly accountability report, I shall begin documenting the events that came about to land me where I am today (for posterity and stuff). Following that, I will also document my thoughts and adventures on living in the famous Bay Area (lots of pictures 'n shit).

The ball that got this whole thing rolling was a simple email I received somewhere in mid-January. It was from a recruiter who thought that my skills might match a position they had open. Now, I've gotten several of these every month for the last couple years, to which I generally politely decline and proceed with my life (except that one time where I accepted and went to Winnercomm). The difference here was that this email was from LinkedIn and the job was also at LinkedIn, something far more awesome and legit than a random offer Kazhim. I immediately consulted one of my coworkers whom I shall refer to as "Kairu":

me: Just got a job "feeler" to work for Linkedin Kairu: to work for linkedin? me: for Kairu: damn son Kairu: damn me: yeah... Kairu: welp, see ya later Kairu: where is it? me: Mountain View me: CA' Kairu: col? Kairu: ah Kairu: figured me: sme as google, iirc me: *same Kairu: going for an interview? me: I... I don't know. I wasn't expecting this Kairu: what did they say? me: I suspect it's a mass mailing, but still me: I forwarded it to you Kairu: Gondor has called for aid Kairu: Will you answer it? Kairu: It is indeed a mass mailing, but i would still respond. you never know what is down that path, and personally, i think you should check it out --- time passes --- Kairu: why arent you on the phone right now me: because I'm working? Kairu: well you aint working on getting a massive fucking promotion me: ... Kairu: :D

As can be seen, I wasn't exactly leaping for joy. My feelings at the time were more that a huge fucking train had just rammed itself through the quiet temple that was my life. I honestly considered just ignoring the email entirely or declining as was my norm. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that nothing would come of anything and (with some egging from Kairu), I responded with interest in the position.

With that response, the waves of interviews began. I had an initial phone interview with the recruiter just talking about the position and LinkedIn and to ensure I was interested. After that was a simple technical phone screen, where a room of devs questioned me on various basic web dev topics. I thought I had failed at that point because I had trouble understanding the devs, due in part to them being on speaker, thick accents, and me being in the lobby of a busy building on my cell phone. I kept asking them to repeat and felt that my answers somehow came up short.

But, that wasn't the end (obviously). A few days later, I had a phone session where I talked to a couple of devs and they watched me write code via an online collaborative text editor. I felt a whole lot more confident about this interview than the previous one because I was at home on the phone with ear buds (these make me more awesome at phoning in general, not sure why) and also had a code editor in front of me. I don't rely on autocomplete for coding, but I have an easier time visualizing things when I can type it. Two of these types of interviews I did (back to back) and I again waited for a response.

And their response was "we're going to fly you out for more interviews". Obviously, this is a big step because the cost of booking a flight, hotel, and car is not cheap (to me, at least) and if they were going to do that, they were serious. All I could think of, though, was my interview with Digg back in 2009 and how horrible that went and how green I was compared to everybody else. With that in my mind, I kept waiting for the details of flight information, but it was not forthcoming. I worried that perhaps I was supposed to set everything up (as I had at Digg), but as it turned out an email slipped through the cracks. I called to make sure everything was still on (the day before I needed to fly out) and it was all taken care of over the phone. Because of the last minute-ness of booking, I even got an extra evening in Mountain View.

The flight itself was more or less uneventful. This time I had an evening before hand to prepare and, more importantly, shower. I had a car, so I wasn't going to have to ask strangers to direct me and make a trek in the hot sun in my interview clothes. I even dressed "down" a bit for the interview itself, wearing jeans, a button down, and a jacket. I'd been around the block enough times at this point that I felt pretty confident in how "loose" I would be able to present myself, both in appearance and tone. I was feeling nervous, as I am any time I meet people for the first time, but I was mostly confident about the interview itself.

And sure enough, things went very, very well. I had four or five interviews where I was asked code certain things on the wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor whiteboards. It doesn't seem like it'd be fun, but I really enjoyed taking everything "back to basics" as it were. Everybody I interviewed with was very friendly and seemed to genuinely enjoy working for the company, which is a good impression to leave on one who may be employed there. I lunched with some of my interviewers at the company cafeteria (they had pizza that day) and we shot the shit about all manner of things. Honestly, nearly all of my apprehension was gone within the first five minutes of the first interview and I must say that I even enjoyed the experience.

My entire day of interviewing lasted about six hours total and, since I had the entire evening free, I had asked the last person I interviewed with (who is now my boss boss) what I might do to kill the remainder of my day. He suggested a bar called 21st Amendment in San Francisco. And go to that bar I did and it was delicious. (Never thought bleu cheese would work on a hamburger.) It was a great way to cap off the day.

Even being there only two days, it was kind of sad to return home as I had caught the glimmer of what my life might become. But, that's how that goes and I just had to await their final decision. Now, even though I felt all of my interviews had gone well, I was split 50/50 on whether the job would actually be offered to me. So, when the recruiter emailed and said she'd like to talk, I became even more apprehensive.

Of course, in the end, I was offered the job and even though I was pretty certain I was going to take it (especially after she had listed off compensation and the benefits package), I slept on it for a weekend. Maybe it was just to make peace with myself and the situation, maybe it was to give the outward impression that I was doing to responsible thing and carefully considering the journey upon which I was about to embark. I dunno.

In retrospect, it's all kind of crazy. I entered 2013 with the idea that nothing new or momentous was going to happen, maybe some more dating but really just living life on cruise control.

A single email changed all of that.