What I'll Never Forget About Pouring My Heart into a Job Interview

Here I am, sitting at my desk on a Saturday, spinning along with this little blue orb in space we call Earth, processing the last two-and-a-half weeks. Thinking about my future, thinking about the past, typing right now. Looking outside my window at trees covered in snow, thinking about JavaScript as the sun begins to set, pausing to gaze at the books strewn across my table: Brain Rules on neuroscience, Prospect the Sandler Way on sales, Applied Cryptography on cryptography, The Principia on mathematics, LIFE 3.0 on artificial intelligence, and Mastering Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain. JavaScript and JQuery just four feet away.

This is my life right now, a man looking for work, five months on the search, trying to make sense of the question mark that won't seem to go away: when will I find my next home?

Applying for Work is a Journey into Yourself

This morning, I completely overhauled my resume. It was a badly needed makeover, and I felt a lot better after I was done. Back to the basics. No picture, no fancy layout, no link to Why You Should Hire Me. Just Times New Roman, size 12. Just here's what I've done, here's what I studied, here's what I know, these are my skills, and these are the languages I speak. A kind peer who has never met me but believes I should be working for her fast-growing company had sent me her old resume as an example, and when I saw it, I was reminded of the power of simplicity. So I simplified mine. It made me smile: fourteen years of just a tiny fraction of who I am, writ on a piece of paper more powerful as a gatekeeper than any piece of paper ought to be.

We are more than our work, and our work is not core to our worth, but our minds draw us to problems and our hearts draw us to teams.

Before This Learning Arc Begins

I learned so much in the last few weeks, but there's also more I've learned in the last few months. Applying for work is a journey into yourself, a process that forces you to rediscover or reframe your passion, interests, knowledge, and values. Whether we have plenty savings or we have little; whether we have ample mentors or just our friends; whether we have more recruiters knocking than we have the time to answer or we look towards our doors with longing silence, the process of searching for work, especially if you don't have a job, is powerful, humbling, frustrating, and filled with lessons you never forget.

I don't know if work has always taken on such prominence, if our relationship with jobs has always been this defining. But I do know what this feels like, this process of looking over at the hourglass each day and observing that the sand never stops falling, of trying your best to articulate the business value of your skills, of hearing others say again and again that any company would be lucky to have you, as you stand, again and again, in front of companies that turn elsewhere.

Of course we are more than our work, and our work is not core to our worth, but our minds draw us to problems and our hearts draw us to teams, and so it's no big marvel that when we don't have a space to apply ourselves and our time to something challenging and bigger than we can solve and do alone, then we can't help but wish that we could work again.

And that brings me to the other purpose of this article: to admit that I am grateful. Because I miss working. I miss having a team to say hello to in the morning. I miss knowing what's going to happen on the 1st. I miss contributing to a project for which I'm not the only one responsible. I miss getting upset at silly things that don't matter and having the chance to speak up about the ones that do. And maybe it's taken me this time to remember that.

I’m also grateful for the space I've had to learn some new lessons about myself and about the process of looking for work. These are lessons that I hope others will benefit from reading, lessons that perhaps I'll write about someday in a more enduring and timeless format, and lessons that, should I ever find myself on the other side of this experience — hiring others in some future company of mine — I will remember.

But for now, I'll share just a few very specific lessons I've learned in the last three weeks, lessons reflected in the arc of twelve posts I wrote throughout my interview process. Lessons I'll apply again the very next time I have the chance, hopefully soon. Lessons I hope you'll apply during your own search. Here they are.

A Summary of Small Lessons, Worth My Price of Admission

1. You should pour your heart into every interview. A job interview is a rare occurrence with a significant acquisition cost to you, so always pour your heart into preparing for each phase of every job application
2. Absolutely nothing beats the feeling of knowing you've done the absolute best you could. You will know that feeling when that happens and should strive for it every time
3. Whenever you have the opportunity to build new professional friendships when preparing for job interviews, do everything you can to build them. These are wonderful, memorable markers along the lifelong highway of your career

Without further ado, here's what I'll never forget about pouring my heart into a job interview.

An Incredible Two-and-a-Half Weeks

Below is a series of posts during my interview process with a company, during which I learned an extraordinary amount about fascinating areas of computer science, about my learning process, about seeking advice and building relationships with others, and about handling rejection and reassessing possible paths for your career based on your strengths. Though the scope of this journey is intended to focus readers on what to do when undertaking their own job interview process, it's also worth noting that this was as nearly perfect a model for how to interview a candidate as any candidate could ever hope to experience. The process was fast, it was honest, it was human, it was inspiring, and it equipped me with what I needed in order to ask the right questions along the way.

I. An Encouraging First Interview

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1/22/19

"This afternoon, I had a super-encouraging first interview with a technology company in New York building next-generation tools for developers of distributed systems and decentralized applications. It made [me] reflect on something fascinating, something every technology company and industry should ponder with some abandon:

~> What is it that makes a community of would-be adopters want to use one tool versus another?

Are the reasons practical? Or are they also inspiring, cutting through existing possibility and making users feel as though they can conquer new sets of problems and classes of dreams?

It can’t all be just natural consequences of sound business strategies, of being first-to-market or first-to-scale. Can it? Humans, and certainly communities, are more complicated than that.

Might it be something more, something emergent, something that can be created but not be fabricated through a careful assembly of levers and their pulling?

Why this library and not that one? Why that API and not this one? Which toolsets come to be preferred and why? At any given point, there’s a fork in the road involving choice. What makes developers choose to go one way instead of the other?

Behind every great and widely adopted product, there’s this story of questions, and also a dash of wonder."

II. Excited for Two Second Interviews Tomorrow

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1/25/19

"Tomorrow, I have two 2nd interviews. The first is with an amazing web3 startup in NYC building the future of social; the second with the red-hot Redis Labs in Mountain View.

Both are dev-facing but in different ways, requiring also a mindset that's part thought leader, part relationship manager, part business developer, and part trail-blazer: either evangelizing and driving adoption of a JS library for interacting with user data on web3 platforms, or championing open-source and enterprise database software as a technical storyteller.

If there's anything the last three months of my search have taught me is, "Be open". Circumstances and opportunities are forcing me to evaluate what the right intersection is among my interests, what I'm good at, market demands, and timing. It's been tough, but I'm entering the exciting home stretch. I can feel it. Two other opportunities began manifesting this week in the cloud infrastructure space also.

The best thing to come out of these last three months is that I've proven to myself that I have what it takes to excel in whatever direction I choose. I've developed discipline in important new areas, and I've embraced my voice in technology.

And, as I told a mentor of mine today, I'm so excited to apply all this to my next role.

Wish me luck!"

III. I Made it to the Final Round!

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1/29/19

"Update: I've advanced to the final round of interviews with the New York City startup :)! I was very happy with last Friday's interviews: I was prepared, did my absolute best, and learned a ton from both orgs.

There's a lot to love about this startup:

• The distributed social database tech they're building is intriguing and seems technologically solid
• Its culture and leadership seem to be grounded in built-to-last principles
• And there's a strong fit between the needs of the role, my skills, and my desire to continue to learn about distributed & decentralized systems at the intersection of multiple developer communities

Now for the preparation.

Part of Self-Assigned Homework

• Review how/what data infrastructures help high-growth web2 apps scale as they go mainstream
• Review pros and cons of centralized, distributed, and decentralized databases, incl. the history of open-source relational and non-relational db's
• Research basics of how information is shared between & among web2 & web3 apps
• Study how and when web2 companies have transitioned from one back-end design to another (e.g. Uber 2014)
• Look into how the above impacts web2/3 user experiences and development environments
• Existing web3 browsers, apps, and tech stacks

This will provide me context—should be fun! :)"

IV. Day 1 Prep: Learning about Back-Ends and APIs

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1/30/19

"Interview Prep Day 1. Say I’m an engineering team at a new company. We’re building an app. Maybe a new LinkedIn, Slack, or Medium. The app’s going to have users. We’ll need a place to store user profile data.

On LinkedIn, that’s photo, name, headline, and current position.

On Slack, it’s photo, full name, display name, and what I do.

On Medium, that’s profile picture, name, and about.

Where will I store that profile data? Locally (on-device) or remotely (on a server)? If I have Slack on my phone, and I also use it on a laptop and a third computer, it should display the same info in all three places. If I edit my name from my phone, that should sync the local change to update the other two interfaces.

This introduces infrastructure considerations: how and where the data is stored and synched. How it’s processed when a user clicks “Save” and encrypted for transit when synced to a remote (centralized or distributed or decentralized) server. And how fast the storing & retrieving process is, plus bandwidth considerations.

Today I’ll be thinking and reading about these questions in the context of how web apps and mobile apps cope with sudden or planned user growth, mapped to data infrastructures that help social apps scale.

This behind-the-scenes stuff of apps is interesting!"

V. Day 2 Prep: Data Storage Options

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1/31/19

"Interview Prep Day 2. Say I’m a team building a service we think will grow quickly, with a total addressable market of hundreds of thousands or millions of users in the next few years.

LinkedIn reached 1 million users in 20 months.

Slack had 2.3M daily active users by their second anniversary.

Medium’s member numbers are harder to come by, but within five years it had 60 million unique monthly readers, of which a subset would be readers & writers with Medium accounts, so let’s say a few million.

As part of the system design, one of the decisions is going to be which databases and content delivery networks to use for member sign-ups, user profile data, and content storage and delivery.

There are a ton of options for databases and file storage systems out there. Some are cloud-based, centralized document databases; some are distributed file systems; and some are peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that are cloud-based and decentralized.

Today I’ll be thinking and reading about how these choices relate to web and web3 app development, and what the dotted line is between two things: the dev tools for interacting with current vs up-and-coming data storage networks, and user acquisition once the app is released, becomes popular, and starts experiencing rapid user growth.

Fun!"

VI. A Break from Prep to Volunteer

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1/31/19

"Took a break from my interview prep to volunteer for an event by LinkedIn hosted here in Seattle. LinkedIn's Andrea M. and others were helping full-stack developers, data scientists, technical product managers, and others here tonight to network and find jobs.

I got to greet passersby, point people to the new InItTogether: Seattle Tech Community group I'm a part of here (you should join!), and rock a modded LinkedIn tee (see the blue stickers, ha).

In one of my interactions, I was able to gain some perspective on database selection during early-stage Systems Design, and why things like choosing a db that's optimized for a particular data structure, will scale as your app scales, and won't outpace you in long-term costs all matter. Got to talk to a few React and NodeJS devs too.

Andrea has been working super hard lately to create new ways for us in Seattle's tech community to interact, engage, connect, share our strengths, and get more out of the platform. Both of the events she's hosted have been hits. Can't wait for the third one, whenever that may be!

Good luck to all the job-seekers who attended, and let me know if I can help in some way.

And thanks Andrea, LinkedIn, and Brett of New Tech Northwest. Great event! #NewTechJobFair #SeattleEngineers"

VII. Day 3 Prep: How Computers Talk, and Halfway There

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2/1/19

"Interview Prep Day 3. Halfway to the big day. Suppose you’re a team building a new application for web and mobile users. Maybe, as with LinkedIn or Slack, it will work on mobile devices as well as web browsers like Chrome or Brave. Or maybe, as with Uber, it will live only as an iOS or Android app. You have a powerful business mission, you have or will have funding in place, and right from the start you are building with love, human-centered design principles, and deep technical commitments to quality.

How will what’s happening in the first four open systems interconnection (OSI) layers - the physical, network, data link, and transport layers - affect your team’s work and the end state of your app?

As you systems design and build your technology stack, how will your servers talk to one another, or to remote servers of cloud database and other providers? How will information from your users be packaged for secure transmission, for trusted interactions? How is data transferred from one API to another? Will your choice of web or web3 libraries be “felt” by the users?

These are the questions I’m thinking and reading about today as I continue to prepare for my final interview this coming Monday.

I look upon this world—of the software that connects us—with great fascination."

VIII. Day 4 Prep: Thinking about Web Apps and Distributed Systems

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2/2/19

"Interview Prep Day 4. For the last few hours, I've been thinking about "practical non-centralization". Say you've decided that you want to incorporate decentralized and newer distributed architectures into your web app. Where possible, you'd like to use distributed peer-to-peer infrastructures in your tech stack—emphasis on "where possible".

What are your choices for non-centralized computation, file storage, user data, external data sources, and payments? There are several great resources out there on this question. For computation, there's of course Ethereum as a virtual machine; for file storage, Swarm, Storj, IPFS, and others.

(The database one is interesting. In some ways, the promise of self-sovereign identity—of decentralized identifiers plus verifiable credentials—is about creating a type of hyper-distributed user data "base", decentralized across an ecosystem of mobile devices, organizations, enterprise servers, and the back-end infrastructures (ledgers and blockchains) to secure, store, and transmit the base data. But these are early days.)

Today I'll be thinking and reading about the intersection between today's web apps, newer web3 components, and distributed systems.

What's cool is that, come what may on Monday, what I'm learning will be v useful later :)."

IX. Day Prep 5: Final Preparations and Practice

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2/3/19

"Interview Prep Day 5. The final day. Today I’ll take everything I’ve learned, what I’ve read and reflected on, and the many great conversations I had in the last week, and use it all to infuse a deliverable I’m putting together for my interview tomorrow: a demonstration of how I would approach web3 developers and technical product managers, and the web3 community, to drive interest and adoption of the company’s API for Ethereum user profiles.

Thank you to Emmanuel, Hassan, Chris, Dave, Taban, John, Jacob, Dmitrii, Megan, Nguyen, Perla, Casey, Stephan, Billy, Michael, and Igal for spending a little time with me, each in your own way. Your advice, comments, conversations, insights, messages, resources, and support in the last week have helped to shape my preparation, reading, and thinking. This further underlines my belief that the single biggest predictor of success in work is a simple thing: how much help we receive.

Thank you.

I’ll never tire of saying this: the story of technology—of web applications, software architectures, databases, computing infrastructures, protocols, and devices—is really a story about people.

Here’s to tomorrow."

X. As Ready As I've Ever Been

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2/3/19

"Thanks everybody. That’s it. I just finished. I’m as prepared as I’ll ever be and as I’ve ever been for a final interview. WOW that feels good. I spent today putting together a 22-page deck as a mock presentation. It came out really nice. It forced me to assimilate learnings from this week and filter it all through what I understand of the company’s value message, developer audience, point of view, and project roadmap. I even went through the process of trying out their app as a user today, having gone through the process of installing their nodejs developer module yesterday to really see things clearly.

THANK YOU for all your support these last four months, this last week, and today.

Here’s what I’ve learned throughout this multi-day/week preparation process:

• We can learn anything if we’re curious enough, lean on the people around us, and are willing to put in work over time
• Discipline under stress can help you produce more than you think is possible in one day
• Nothing will give you a greater sense of pride than stepping into a situation not knowing what the outcome will be but knowing that you prepared your heart out for it

I won’t be posting an update in the morning before the interview, but I know you’ll be rooting for me.

What an outstanding feeling.

I’m ready."

XI. I Didn't Get the Job

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2/7/19

"I didn't get the job. But they definitely made a new friend along the way. Not only was the experience really positive, but also I learned a ton, both about them and myself. The process also forced me to hone the way I ask questions of what I don't know, and I made new allies here in the small community of developers who lent me their ears and time as I prepared for the final round (thank you). It just wasn't the right time.

Of course it stings when you fall in love with a company and then it doesn't work out. But that's good. Because if there's one, then that means there's a whole world out there of amazing projects, big and small, with the values and objectives and work you cherish. You just haven't found them yet. And of the ones you eventually do, there will be a match for what they need and what you're great at. It takes a lot of work, but they're out there to find. So let's go, my friends.

If you're in a similar place as me, don't despair. Learn, reassess, and apply the best of what you've newly gained to your next effort. No one ever knows in advance how these journeys will transpire. But there is always more than one path. I'm open to any path where my ability to quickly fill knowledge gaps and build relationships can generate business growth.

The adventure continues."

XII. Reflecting on Next Steps

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2/8/19

"Thanks, everyone, for your kindness and support. I'm doing some reflection. They say the ideal job is a combination of what's in your heart, what you know, what you're good at, and what a company needs at a particular point in time. Previously I thought, based on what's in my heart, my recent work, and my strengths, that I would love to work evangelizing a product or technology to drive its adoption. I'm such a fast learner and I'm so good with people that I figured I could parachute into any technology environment with a great team and find a path to help that team from there. But those jobs are extremely rare. And they are often spec'd for deep technologists who enjoy building relationships, not for relationship-builders who deeply enjoy technology. That's the data, and like any responsible learner, I must listen to it. So I'd like to open my heart to other paths.

What may make the most sense is to pivot back into technology sales. In my three former sales jobs, I learned a lot about how sales cycles work, how to run an effective sales discovery process, and how to navigate environments with multiple decision-makers. All of this is highly transferable and valuable to teams desiring business growth. ??

From what you've learned about me, is that sounding like any team you know?"

And just like that, the story of my interviews concluded.

So Where to, From Here?

“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.” -Walt Disney

My mother tells me that when I was a small child, I would ask so many questions that the neighbors would sometimes playfully chastise her, as if to say, “Your son asks so many questions!”. Curiosity found a home in me long before I had any say over it. It'll probably never leave.

I honestly don't know entirely where to go from here. We're not given clarity; it's something we must find. What I love is learning. What I'm good at is people. What I want to do is help. And I'm drawn, sure as a hummingbird to nectar, to technology. There's so much I don't yet know about the computer sciences—about computers; about databases; about distributed systems and blockchains and decentralization; about microservices and Docker and Kubernetes, too; about APIs and software; about how this all comes together to transform our world, and how communities of builders and businesses of products bring these transformations to market. I want to take the entire car apart and figure out how it works, and I wish I could be paid to do that. But if I can't, I already know where I’ll be spending my nights and weekends: in the garage.

From Maybes to Probablies

Bill Gates has a quote about the nature of accomplishment in relationship to time: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” To borrow the cadence and split from its parts, I add that we underestimate what we can learn in the short-term, and we overestimate what we can’t learn in the long-term. I offer this to anyone who wonders whether they can pick up a new skill or transfer to a new career, and to any hiring managers who question whether an otherwise amazing candidate can hit the ground running fast enough to be effective in their work. The answer to both is yes. There is nothing so arcane that a determined mind can't access.

Maybe the knowledge I've acquired and the lessons I have learned and the questions I'll continue to ask will have business value to an organization willing to hire me. The lessons and skills I learned in the last year will serve me well wherever I go, that much I know. Maybe the perfect opportunity to apply those skills is just around the corner, as they say. Maybe someone will read this and say, “You know what? This guy's going to learn on the job, and he's going to share his journey; he's going to bring others along with him as he grows, and that story is going to be awesome, and he's going to be awesome at what he does too. Maybe he’ll take longer to get up to speed, or maybe he'll pick things up faster than we think is possible, but either way he'll get it done, and with a fresh perspective to offer at that. So let's bring him on and just support him and feed his curiosity, and the rest will work just fine.” Maybe that company exists.

But this process has shown me that I can't rely on maybes. Maybes are hard to come by. I must move on to probablies. So on this cold day in February, as I look back out my window and finish writing this, at the snow on the trees, at the sun in the sky, at the books on my table, I think about how there are probably many organizations who need people that can sell. Who can speak technology, who can ask good questions, who can be good listeners, who are able to dial the resolution of the conversation up or down, who can write compellingly and persuade authentically, and sell. That's where I need to be.

What I'll never forget about pouring my heart into a job interview is this: heart won't get you a job, but pouring your full heart into something teaches you lessons that stretch across time, and it creates an opportunity of a different kind, maybe not the one you want but the one you need: the unexpected doors of insight that open up within and set you free.

The End.

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P.S. A Happy Consequence

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2/9/19

"One of the happy consequences of my recent experience was that, in the process, I had to peek into the world of JavaScript. The API in question was for nodeJS projects, so I'd downloaded node (and the node package manager, npm); seen what it was like to install an API; and read about that API's callable functions.

But because I'm newly trying to understand this good world of code, mysteries abounded. Technical documentation appears arcane until you learn how to decode it, but at first you just don't know what you don't know. So earlier this week, I picked up this book to fill in some gaps. Great buy.

100 pages in, I'm getting the gist of:

• conventions in the syntax of code
• how an interpreter reads code and what it does <~ big aha for me
• how you declare variables and functions, what you can store in them, and how the two work together
• what it means for code to "call a function"

Even better, learning how to read JavaScript is also helping me contextualize my Python journey. You scratch your head for a few days, learn some new stuff, return to the old stuff, and things click.

Funny: navigating new knowledge is a bit like navigating new organizations in the sales process: you make a best-guess map, find your compass, and just start exploring.

Then, adjust along the way."

P.P.S. How You Can Help

Thanks for reading my story. I hope you found something here that connected with you.

1. If you want to help me, then what I need most is referrals and interviews. If you know of a company, anywhere in the country, hiring Sales Development Reps, Account Executives, or Sales Engineers to sell technology, with a start date of March or April, please introduce me or refer me. I’m open to other job title suggestions, though keep in mind that resumes are so ingrained in the modern workflow that most hiring is done based on what you’ve done before, not your potential or what you’re capable of doing today. (If you’re the Hiring Manager or CEO of your company, you might have more flexibility on this.) My email address is [email protected]. My LinkedIn is in/alexoblockchain. [I also have two friends who are looking for work in Growth Marketing, Social Media Management, and Content Marketing—if you have a lead for them, please reach out to me.]
2. If this helped you, please consider leaving a comment and sharing some wisdoms of your own. We are all figuring this out as we go, and if we share just a little more a little more often, we all win
3. If you think this will help someone else you know, share this article with them to remind them that others are going through this too, that they are not alone

Thank you.