Plaidophile

The year began just hours after my grandmother died.

The startup continues to be ridiculous, even after I'm gone.

I'm not fired, but I will be "parting on amicable terms" which appears to be the HR guy's favorite euphemism for "asked to quit."

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

I don't know why I thought the sixth startup I worked for would work out any better than the first five, but there you go. Looks like I'm going back to a corporate job where I belong.

Meh.

it is a lot easier t o keep inmiscible identities separate on the Internet if you keep thm completely separate from real life as well. I am apparently bad at both, judging by how many of my former coworkers have recently added "fluffy critter" to their circles on Google+. I mean, it was okay when it was the people who I'd let know about it to begin with (and I mean if ucblockhead hadn't known me online I'd have never had the job to begin with), but I'm not quite sure how I feel about apparently everyone else in the office knowing now too. Sigh.

Oh well. I've long felt that it's not so bad having people who actually know me actually know ME - it's the other direction I've always felt important to avoid (people trying to link my online self to my offline self in a way that makes it easy for people to know my real name which is not actually my real self). I hate people judging me by my resume and my picture and my legal name as if those are any more valid than the self I have discovered within.

I guess either direction is potentially problematic because I hate the idea that people would judge me unfairly based on stereotypes from one set of interest, and I'm still paranoid with the whole "You'll never get a job if people know about you!" thing that people have been parroting for years, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Basically I'm complicated.

I know of a few specific job openings right now for anyone who is interested.

First, the new startup is looking for a senior QA engineer and an iOS developer, ideally one with heavy UI experience. They're based in the Presidio (pretty much right by the Golden Gate Bridge), and are working on some great stuff and have amazing benefits and great pay and all the other reasons why I'm looking forward to starting there.

The startup is also interested in good talent in general, especially folks who have done mobile dev work (especially in graphics and networking) and realtime server backend stuff and whatever. They don't have any specific headcount to fill, but instead just want to attract top talent who are interested in what they're doing (and what they're doing involves distributed media stuff around low-latency audio and video streaming and creative collaboration tools and so on).

Next, Sony is looking for, well, someone who can replace me. C++, Java (especially on Android), and graphics programming (espeecially OpenGL ES) are desired there. My group was based in SoMA, although there's also a splinter faction in San Jose where a bunch of stuff happens too (especially on third-party library integration and so on). If you're interested you should probably chat with Neillparatzo (who you can PM via my forum or whatever), as he could certainly benefit from the referral bonus.

So now that the announcement has been made at work, I guess it's okay for me to talk about it here too: next Wednesday (the 29th) will be my last day at Sony. I've gotten a pretty interesting job at a tiny stealth-phase startup, where I'll be their Android platform and graphics specialist, and possibly doing stuff on iOS and a few other things too. The startup is pretty stealth and really doesn't want to be talked about (so I won't mention them by name here) but they're doing very interesting stuff in the world of mobile media collaboration and the like (real-time low-latency audio/video stuff). It's a very scary move for me, but it's one of those rare opportunities that I'd absolutely regret not taking.

I won't be starting at the startup until July 18, so in the meantime I am free for socializing, and also I have a couple of toy Android apps I've been meaning to write in the meantime. Hopefully I'll have a chance to actually see the parts of San Francisco I've been meaning to see for the last four years.

For all the issues inherent to working in a small group in a large international megacorporation, the last four years at Sony have actually been a great experience with some amazing coworkers, and I hope to see the products I've been working on actually make it to market (which they should be fairly soon).

For the last several days I've been back in NYC for the first time in six years, for Song Fight Live. The show went pretty well; there were some logistical problems and some equipment issues and of course things didn't go as amazingly as most people ever expect them to, but there isn't really anything new there. It was fun and a good time, when maintaining an appropriate perspective on what it was we were actually doing (PROTIP: we are not actually rock stars).

The main thing I was worried about is that much of our time would be spent treading old ground that represents about a year's worth of really bad memories for me, and I did everything I could to ignore the fact that I was physically in a place where mentally I was very bad off. Trying to ignore the familiar sight of the L train and Union Square and the like, in particular, made me feel twinges of ickiness (even obsessively pre-planning transit before flying here made me feel twinges of deep pit-of-the-stomach sickness), and I very purposefully let Mike (a fellow songfighter from Seattle with whom I was sharing a room and most of my time) lead the way everywhere, and basically played willfully ignorant about how to get around.

Last night, though, I ended up getting, shall we say, sufficiently intoxicated, and ended up getting separated from Mike, having gone with a different group that was going to do some further bar-hopping, but certain members of that group had much better judgement than myself and said I should probably head back to the hotel rather than drink more. (I fortunately had enough sense to realize that I was probably on the verge of feeling like I was going to die if I didn't get some water and lie down very soon. Even if it meant less time hanging out with certain friends who will remain nameless.)

So, of course, the way back to the hotel was very familiar: the L to Union Square, then the 6 up to my hotel in Midtown. It had aspects of trips I'd done many times before, and normally the majority of that would have been in order to go to work (L to 5th Ave, F/V to 25th St - or just walk, if no train was there). I also used to take a bit of extra time to myself to just walk to Union Square after work to clear my head further, so that particular station is also quite familiar to me.

But it might have just been the alcohol but I just plain didn't care. The whole journey was simple and easy and came completely naturally, and it was actually comforting in a way to be alone in the middle of a crowd of strangers. I got to thinking about my relationship with NYC and so on. I came to the realization that I'd gone to NYC to begin with because I needed to launch my career and I was just so desperate that I was willing to take anything, and the reason I put up with the hell I was in was simply because I had no self-worth to speak of. But now I know better, and while I still wouldn't want to live in NYC, I no longer hate it, because it's where I finally started to learn to appreciate myself.

So I've had a formal offer from the startup since Thursday. I'm definitely going to take it, but I need to figure out the best way to manage the message to my higher-ups at Sony.

I am almost certainly leaving Sony soon.

For the past two and a half years, my commute has been slowly wearing me out and killing me. So for the past week I've been driving to work, and the difference is profound. When I get to work I'm immediately productive instead of taking an hour or so to get into the swing of things. When I get home at night, even after an 11-hour workday (due to my own recent obsessiveness over my project) I still feel energetic and don't feel like just collapsing on the couch and crying for an hour. It's an amazing difference.

I'll still try to ride my bike on nice days (since it's good exercise and doesn't wear me out like the bus or BART), but holy cow, I am so over mass transit now, at least for my daily commute. (I'll still use it for going downtown to meet up with people, since it's still cheaper and quicker than parking and of course leaves more drinking opportunity and whatever, but work pays for my work parking.)

Basically, San Francisco mass transit sucks and it was pretty much killing me. And I'd rather be alive (and even happy!) than smug.

Lately I've been disillusioned with my job and career choice more than ever (not at all helped by realizing that I work for the bad guys), which of course always makes me think about what I'd like to do if I win the lottery or are otherwise independently wealthy. Then I start to wonder why I can't do those things anyway, and start to think about what I need to do for that to happen.

I'm way overdue for this vacation. I'm burning the candle at both ends and it's catching my frayed ends on fire.

Incidentally, Steve/ucblockhead is no longer on my friends list. I had thought I could stay friends with him after he became my manager, but that has clearly turned out to not be the case. The fault lies at least as much with me as with him, but it's still a difficult decision to have to make, especially since he's the one who recruited me to this job when I was going through the exact same kinds of crap at Amazon. Although it's pretty clear at this point that whatever friendship we had didn't mean nearly as much to him as it did to me.

I simultaneously do and don't feel like going into details. Maybe some other time. I have a comic to finish for tomorrow.

When on vacation, even if you absolutely MUST log in to corporate email in order to provide an update to the team mailing list about something project-related, do not, under any circumstances, actually look at your incoming email, not even a little bit. And if you do notice a bunch of bug reports against a key component you're responsible for, don't look to see what they are and start thinking about how to go about fixing it, because you are on vacation and the whole point to that is to not be at work.

"Hey, the building's on fire."

"Yeah. Could you put it out?"

"Well, I don't have any water. I'm waiting for the fire department to arrive. Any idea when they might come?"

"Is there something else you could use?"

"Not really. Just the fire department."

"How about this vodka?"

"No, that will just make it worse."

"What about this bottle of Coke?"

"Well, that might put a small part out, but then we'd have a big sticky mess and it wouldn't really do much to the fire anyway."

"Well, keep plugging away at it, maybe something will turn up. I heard the fire department might be here in two days."

"Might be? Couldn't we get a firmer commitment than that?"

"No, not really. So just keep on using what water you find. This is a top priority, and I'm confident you can handle it."

I'm glad you feel that adding a poker game element will be the most innovative thing ever for whatever crappy Mafia Wars knockoff you're working on now, but if you insist on using the bathroom as a meeting room for discussing your game designs while I'm taking a crap, I'm going to crap on your game designs.

So, this morning I talked with the Google staffing lead who I had previously corresponded with. I had to call him at 8:30, because I guess he'd forgotten about intending to call me while on the shuttle in. It was a very short conversation; my takeaway from it is that Google's interview process is great and very well-regarded among the people who Google hires (selection bias much?) and that the interviewers had decided that I wouldn't fit in anyway, for the reasons I'd already stated (not that this had stopped him from trying to get me to pre-poach my coworkers, ethical dilemma much?). So, yeah, I've been rejected by a company that outwardly prides itself on being innovative and imaginative but privately is actually just about brute-force cog-in-a-machine bullshit, and not getting an offer actually feels liberating because I don't have to second-guess myself about what could have been.

So the staffing lead who's been working with my interview process at Google sent me an email yesterday that showed the usual Google lack-of-ethical-thinking:

Once again, thanks for taking the time to come in and talk to us on Tuesday. As promised, I hope to have news for you early next week in regards to feedback from your interviews at Google. With this in mind, I wanted to drop you a quick email to see if there's anyone else you can think of that you would recommend to work at Google? As we have so many open roles within Software Engineering, anyone you suggest would not be competing with you for a position - but it's an opportunity for you to be working with some of your best previous/ current colleagues. If you don't want me to tell any of the people you suggest that I got their details from you, that's quite ok too (just let me know) - but we'll give you full credit for any successful hires in terms of the Google referral bonus if you start work here (a healthy $4000 per successful applicant).

Any thoughts much appreciated,
[M]

I decided this was a good opportunity to provide feedback about the interview process.

I just interviewed at Google. Everything I'd heard about how weird their interviews are turned out to be true.