Job Hunting

Back in October/November when going through my annual review things seemed to be going well, work was fine, and things were generally going well. We were getting ready for the arrival of our baby girl, and my annual reviews were about the same as they always are. (Technically doing great, some people think I need to be louder and more assertive, and others think I am the right amount and not to change).

As I went through the compensation review and career growth portion, I realized that to achieve the changes I wanted (providing more for my family, both time and money) that something would have to change. I tried some searching on LinkedIn, but most of it was local contracting with good pay and terrible benefits or working on things I didn't care about for the same salary.

I found out that someone who recently left work and went to a Silicon Valley company was making significantly more money, working on something interesting, and was working from home. An opportunity like that would be perfect, but how in the world was I going to get on the radar of a company willing to give me that opportunity. It turns out the person who left went through Triplebyte, and I've heard them advertising on Software Engineering Daily for what seemed like forever, so I figured I'd give it a try.

After going through the process, I ended up with five on-site interviews; three in San Francisco, one in Seattle, and one in New York. These on-site were all about the same stereotypical Silicon Valley interview lasting around five hours. They typically break down into at least one hour of hands-on coding by building something, an hour of an algorithm challenge, informal lunch interview about you and your interests, an hour of architecture, and a final hour talking about your work history and expectations for the role you are interviewing. Some of them had multiple coding sections, some had more academic algorithm challenges, and others were more practical.

After the five on-site interviews, I ended up with three offers (I think I would have gotten five job offers, but during the interviews, I made it very clear I was looking for remote). Two of the offers were remote, and one was one year on-site then the possibility of going remote. In the end, I went with the offer that required a year before possible remote.