So much happened since my last blog post, so here goes.
Julie spent 1 month in Dresden, Germany learning German. She is doing very well now and she can carry on full conversations now. I am very proud of her.
While Julie was in Germany, I was aggressively working with London recruiters to find a job. Apparently my skills are in high demand because I’ve been turning away recruiters left and right because there are just too many of them to work with. At first I was only working with 2 recruiters and I wasn’t getting enough interviews but once I started working with about 6 then the interviews started pouring in. With all interviews, I did the first round over the telephone and if they still liked me I might fly over to London for a face to face.
In the end, I visited London twice for 4 face to face interviews.
The first trip to London was interesting. There were 2 interviews lined up for the first trip. I didn’t want it to be too rushed so I flew over the night before and stayed in a hotel so that I could be fresh in the morning. Unfortunately my head was too focused on the interviews that I ended up showing up to the airport only 30 mins before my flight and the gate had closed. So I had to buy a new ticket for the next flight (not a good start). When I got to my hotel in London I just sat on the bed with my laptop and studied for several hours for the interviews. I made a detailed itinerary for the next day describing which trains & tube lines I needed to get on so that I didn’t have to figure that stuff out on the day of the interviews.
My first face to face interview was with a financial investment company working with FOREX (Foreign currency exchange) investment software & services. The building was incredibly sexy and modern. Everyone wore suits. I was dressed up well but I wasn’t wearing a jacket. The interview itself was with a stern Russian man who was clearly brilliant technically. I think he was probably a nice guy but he did not show any positive emotions on his face or in his tone. He asked me a lot of technical questions that were way beyond my level. I think he was interested in watching HOW I struggled with questions that I didn’t know the exact answer. He was clearly interested in watching me talk the answer out. When I finished the interview it was quite difficult to gauge how well I did because I really only correctly answered about 50% of the questions.
I then got on another train and headed to my next interview. This company specialized in online banking and was looking to get into the mobile phone banking market. The building was not nearly as sexy as the first one. They had way too many people crammed into a small building. People were even working full time in meeting rooms. The interview started with a bit of chatting and then the technical questions started coming. I nailed all of the technical questions this time. The role I was interviewing for here was a technical test lead as well as a customer facing contact. I really got along well with all 3 people who were interviewing me (especially the test lead).
I left London without any issues. The next day I got a call back from the mobile phone banking company. They said the loved me but didn’t think I was suitable for the “customer facing” part of the role. However, they wanted me to work there and said they were going to try to create a new position just for me. They had to get sign off from a manager who was on vacation. A few days later, the manager came back from vacation and said they didn’t have the budget to create a new position so therefore I didn’t get the job.
One week later, the FOREX company called me back. The recruiter told me that I pretty much had the job in the bag but HR wanted to have me in again for one last HR type interview to see if I was a nice guy who would fit into the company. All I had to do was dress nicely and act nice and I’d be in! I booked a flight over again and setup the interview for the morning. This time I was just going to fly over and fly back all in the same day.
However, just after I booked that flight, I got a call back from another company who I’d already telephone interviewed with and they wanted to do a face to face as well. I slotted them in for an interview just after the FOREX interview.
I made another itinerary for my day (this time I was determine not to have any transportation screw ups). I flew over early in the morning. My interview with the FOREX company was first at 11am and it was going to be tight just to make it there from the airport. I paid extra to take the express train into the city. I decided a taxi would be quicker & less prone for getting lost. This turned out to be a mistake because traffic was terrible – I should have taken the tube. The taxi driver was hilarious because she was dedicated to getting me there on time and pulling some crazy driving maneuvers. I ended up being 10 minutes late but it was ok because I called them early and let them know I would be a touch late. The FOREX company was understanding about me being late. The interview was easy HR type questions with 3 different people. I got to go out into the cubicle floors which was quite interesting. It reminded me very much of a stock trading floor. Some people had 6 monitors and their desks with tickers and graphs running all over the screens. There were no cubical walls whatsoever. Again, even the software guys were wearing black pants, shirts, and ties. The working floor where I would work looked a lot like this:
I left and headed over to my next interview (this time I took the tube). I had a bit of time to relax and study a bit more. This company works on streaming movies & TV over the internet (much like Netflix), but they wanted to get into the mobile phone & tablet space. The company was a startup with only about 20 people but it was part owned by a huge corporation. Everyone I interviewed with was super nice, young, and fun. The interview was typical but fun. The technical questions I did pretty well on but my code had a bug in it that I struggled to fix. I took me almost 10 minutes to fix the bug in my code which was a bit stressful with people watching over your shoulder. I finished with the first 2 interviewers and as one of them left, the other guys turns to me and says “you’re doing really well”.
In the end I got both jobs and I had an interesting decision to make. The FOREX job paid a nice chunk more. However, the online streaming job seemed much more interesting, had a better group of people (based on quick first impressions), was working on more interesting technology (like phones & tablets), and was a small startup where I could really make a big difference. When I first went into the job search I had made up my mind that I would always choose more money between 2 jobs but this seemed different. This online streaming job had a lot of things going for it that were interesting to me. This was a tough decision and I lost many hours of sleep trying to figure it out. In the end, I chose the online streaming company and turned down more money from the FOREX company. I have a good feeling it will work out :)
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At Microsoft, your bonus is tied to an annual performance review. I was expecting to do fairly well this year and therefore expecting a decent sized bonus before I left for UK. However, I ended up getting quite a bad review. I am almost certain that it has a lot to do with the fact that I was leaving Microsoft and there was no incentive to give me a good review and keep my morale high. Your manager has to fight for you against other managers in review sessions and if you get a good review it means someone else doesn’t. There is little incentive for my manager to fight hard for me if I am leaving the company. That’s my theory anyways. I talked to my colleagues afterwards and they agreed I was rated too low (but maybe they were just being nice). Anyhow, I can’t help feeling quite sour towards Microsoft after I feel they screwed me out of at least 1000 euros. Regardless, I didn’t burn any bridges and I was still courteous right to the end. I gave a nice leaving speech that everyone seemed to enjoy. We had two nice leaving drinks nights that were both a ton of fun.
On October 1st, we packed everything we had into about 10 boxes/bags and headed down to the ferry to Hollyhead, UK. I was very nervous that the ferry company would turn us away with the insane amount of bags that we had. I had called ahead before hand and they said it was ok. In the end there was no problems getting our bags into the ferry. However, at Hollyhead, our rental car was far smaller than expected. We had to do some creative packing to get all of our bags into the small car but we somehow managed! We drove our little car from Hollyhead port to Oxford.
The first few days living in Oxford have been good. Julie’s new flatmates are nice. Julie has the attic room which is fairly spacious and has its own on-suite bathroom. We’ve got the house setup nicely and now we are starting to get other things setup like internet, banking, mobile phones, etc. So far oxford seems like a nice little city and I think we will be happy here.
I got Julie a nice new laptop that I hope will last her most of her school career. Its very thin & light but still has a nice size screen.
I’ve got to start looking for my own place in London soon. I will probably live somewhere near Paddington station because there is good transportation (by either bus or train) from oxford. If you book the train more than 24 hours in advance you can get really good deals between oxford & Paddington. I was in that neighborhood today and it looks really nice. Mostly just houses and shops (no offices). I’m hoping to postpone getting a place as long as I can because I’m living for free right now with Julie in Oxford and I don’t want to waste money having 2 places until I start my job on October 17th.
That's all for now.
--Ben
