returning to canada and the interview grind
It's been a while.
Last time i posted i was still in Colombia, and at the early stages of applying for jobs in Taiwan. Of the ~25 applications i sent out, two got back to me, and i am still going through the pipeline at both of them.
But in between that i came back to Canada.
I deliberately chose a more expensive and less direct flight via Bogotá instead of Miami to avoid having to deal with American carriers and the whole shitshow of airlines being strongarmed by powerful conspiracy theorists into allowing passengers to travel unmasked.
It was still disconcerting to have people coughing and spluttering into their N95s just a seat or two away from me. I'm not unreasonably fearful of catching COVID - i am vaccinated and relatively healthy - but quite frankly i just don't want to get sick with anything thank you very much. Being sick sucks, regardless of what it is, and i feel like people should've learned from the past few years that life is way fucking better when you don't have to put up with unnecessary periods of coughs and sniffles and headaches several times per year.
But it was even more disconcerting to arrive in Canada and take the train into the city, where outside of public transport almost nobody is wearing a mask any more. And they are still sneezing and coughing all over their fellow citizens like the pandemic never even happened. Like, at least cover your mouth, guys. Fuck.
Canada in general was a massive culture shock, especially Toronto. "Cheap" meals are over $15, and then you're still expected to tip on top of that. A single beer is over $8, so pretty much $10 when you tip. $10 for a pint of beer! $20 for a meal! It's insane. I stayed overnight in a college dormitory where they rent out rooms to travelers during the holidays, and it was literally the only place in town that was under $100 per night. Even budget hotels start at $200. The country is just spectacularly unaffordable, especially when you are not working at all. Of course you could just buy food at the supermarket and beer at the liquor store (as i did the last time i lived in Canada), but then you're still going to get hit with some of the world's most expensive accommodation plus eyewateringly pricey data packages just to be able to take part in the digital sphere.
On the upside, walking around in Toronto was a delight - hearing so many different languages around me, seeing all the different cuisines and "ethnic" products in the shops. It still feels like one of the most cosmopolitan cities i have ever visited, a city that is proudly almost 50% foreign-born.
But even with all the gentrification and new apartment blocks going up downtown, it's still a car-first city. There were very few pedestrians, at least compared to Barranquilla. No street vendors. And so much wealth. God, the wealth was unbelievable after 6 months in Panama and Colombia. Not in obvious ways - not like people dripping with gold and jewels (although there was that too). But just, all the cars being models from the last 10 years or so, all the bikes being clean and new instead of rusty frankenstein models, people wearing clothes that are "fashion" rather than functional, those weird cordless headphone things that iPhone people use... I mean, just seeing iPhones cradled in people's hands in the first place. All stuff that well-to-do people in the US or Canada might consider unremarkably "middle class", but actually is a sign of spectacular wealth on the global scale. I felt like i had more in common with the homeless people huddling in alcoves and sitting on park benches in my raggedy-ass clothes and travel-battered hiking shoes.
So i spent my one night in the big smoke, then trained it down to Windsor, a smaller town where R lives, just across the river from Detroit. If Toronto is a car-first city, Windsor is basically a car-only city. The sidewalks are completely dead. People don't go anywhere unless there is parking. I've been here before, i know how it is. But it's even worse because during COVID the city inexplicably decided to cut public transport, and now several buses are not running at all (notably the cross-border bus that allows commuters to take public transport to Detroit and back) while others are on Sunday timetable. All in a province where now there are no longer any COVID restrictions, everyone's unmasked and blasé about the whole thing. So put the fucking buses back then, right? Jeez.
Anyway, i knew what i was going to get coming in, and that's fine. Because i also get to hang out with my best friend who i haven't seen for several years, and i have a free place to stay while i look for work.
And i have been looking. As mentioned up top, i am in the pipeline at two companies. One of them i have my final interview on Monday, with the CEO. Another one i am waiting to hear back whether i made it to the final interview or not. It has been exhausting, because there is a 12 hour time difference, so i am interviewing at 9pm, 10pm, 11pm... And of course, because it's the tech industry, it's not just two interviews and you're hired. There is a pipeline of 4 or 5 interviews with different people (mostly behavioral questions), plus 1 or 2 coding tests where you need to prove you can actually do the thing that you have been paid to do for the past 20 years.
Fortunately none of the coding tests have involved Google-style algorithm questions, which i find utterly obnoxious and always fail at because i refuse to study math problems for a job interview, but they're still several hours of unpaid work. In this particular instance i don't care so much because i have been out of the industry for 10 months, so it's helping me flick my brain back into coder mode. But it still takes a toll, having to be "on" all the time.
And having to feign interest in getting a job when of course in the ideal world i would much rather never have to work again.
My two options at this point are a smallish "startup" that has been around for 10 years or so and is still running on VC. Silicon Valley founder, Y Combinator alumni, bla bla bla. The other one is a larger company that has paid off its VCs and is now privately owned and independently profitable. The second company has a more old-fashioned infrastructure and provides a service that i actually am a paying customer of, so for possibly the first time in my life i would be working at a company whose mission i believe in, and don't just pretend to give a shit about because i happen to work there. That's the job i really want, but they have a higher bar for hiring, and they are moving slower through the process than the other one. I've already slow-pedaled the Silicon Valley company a bit, and i'm not going to slow-pedal the CEO chat, so it's looking like by next week i'll have an answer one way or the other.
God, just thinking about having a chat with some Stanford dude who has had "successful exits" and bla bla bla makes me want to shoot myself in the head. I really hate that whole Silicon Valley/VC culture. But that's the industry i'm in. And it's especially hard to be picky, filtering out all the "hip" tech companies and instead choosing "boring" ones, when you are looking in a very specific location where you would need visa sponsorship.
I keep thinking, my life would be so much easier if i just looked for Canadian or US companies that are geared for 100% remote work. I get multiple cold-calls every week from recruiters on LinkedIn offering that kind of work. I could really take my pick of companies, instead of machine gunning every fucking company that isn't finance/cryptocurrency or adtech (my moral blacklist) and hoping one of them takes a chance on a foreigner.
Perhaps that's what i will do. I am so exhausted from going through these two interview pipelines that i stopped submitting new applications last week. Next week, when i know more, i will fire out another 10 applications or so that i now have backlogged. And then that'll be it for Taiwan. If by June i still don't have any offers, i will expand to other destinations, maybe Europe, but more likely just suck it up and remain here in North America till i stack up enough cash to travel again, either completely freely, or to enrol as a student of something... Maybe finally consider that career change.
Of course R says to me that i am in my career twilight years anyway. Which is only half a joke. There's no way i could early retire like a Silicon Valley tech bro, not even with mom's inheritance that pushed me into the top half of the wealth distribution, and definitely not with the stock market going the way it is. But R is sort-of right in that i have now grinded away for long enough in this fucking miserable industry that i am done with job-hopping. If i could find a company that wasn't a complete VC- or market-driven douche factory, i'd probably quietly stick around for at least as many years till my next international move - and even longer, if the company allowed it. So, i am in my "twilight years" in the sense that i am done with trying to find an engaging or exciting job, i just want a job that doesn't totally suck. My bar is lower than it was in my 20s and 30s.
I've also come to the conclusion that i am going to remove all my team leadership slash management stuff from my résumé before the next email blast. I am done being put into roles with better paychecks and more responsibility that just result in burning me out faster. Yeah i can do management. I think i'm actually a pretty good manager, as far as managers go. But i don't really get much out of it. I don't want to get even one step closer to those dumb political games that happen any time a role involves overseeing a budget or allocating funds. I fucking hate that shit. I don't care. I'm happy to level up my colleagues and help them climb the ladder into that hell-hole if it's what they want to do, but don't keep sticking me in there. It just forces me to stare the monster in the face, confront exactly how corrupt and evil the whole capitalist system is, and quite frankly i'd rather ignore it and just try to scratch together enough cash to eat and sleep and travel every now and then.
Twilight years.
Sigh.
Anyway, CEO chat is next Monday, Pacific Time. I hope to get a surprise final interview invite for the other company on the very early end of next week so i can compare two offers, but if i only get the bite from Silicon Valley, i suspect i will hold my nose and just take it. It's work. And the company seems nice enough, as far as the industry goes.
In the mean time, i am going to finally enjoy having 2 days off where i don't need to plan or prepare for anything in particular. I need an $8 beer and a blanky to cry in.
Last time i posted i was still in Colombia, and at the early stages of applying for jobs in Taiwan. Of the ~25 applications i sent out, two got back to me, and i am still going through the pipeline at both of them.
But in between that i came back to Canada.
I deliberately chose a more expensive and less direct flight via Bogotá instead of Miami to avoid having to deal with American carriers and the whole shitshow of airlines being strongarmed by powerful conspiracy theorists into allowing passengers to travel unmasked.
It was still disconcerting to have people coughing and spluttering into their N95s just a seat or two away from me. I'm not unreasonably fearful of catching COVID - i am vaccinated and relatively healthy - but quite frankly i just don't want to get sick with anything thank you very much. Being sick sucks, regardless of what it is, and i feel like people should've learned from the past few years that life is way fucking better when you don't have to put up with unnecessary periods of coughs and sniffles and headaches several times per year.
But it was even more disconcerting to arrive in Canada and take the train into the city, where outside of public transport almost nobody is wearing a mask any more. And they are still sneezing and coughing all over their fellow citizens like the pandemic never even happened. Like, at least cover your mouth, guys. Fuck.
Canada in general was a massive culture shock, especially Toronto. "Cheap" meals are over $15, and then you're still expected to tip on top of that. A single beer is over $8, so pretty much $10 when you tip. $10 for a pint of beer! $20 for a meal! It's insane. I stayed overnight in a college dormitory where they rent out rooms to travelers during the holidays, and it was literally the only place in town that was under $100 per night. Even budget hotels start at $200. The country is just spectacularly unaffordable, especially when you are not working at all. Of course you could just buy food at the supermarket and beer at the liquor store (as i did the last time i lived in Canada), but then you're still going to get hit with some of the world's most expensive accommodation plus eyewateringly pricey data packages just to be able to take part in the digital sphere.
On the upside, walking around in Toronto was a delight - hearing so many different languages around me, seeing all the different cuisines and "ethnic" products in the shops. It still feels like one of the most cosmopolitan cities i have ever visited, a city that is proudly almost 50% foreign-born.
But even with all the gentrification and new apartment blocks going up downtown, it's still a car-first city. There were very few pedestrians, at least compared to Barranquilla. No street vendors. And so much wealth. God, the wealth was unbelievable after 6 months in Panama and Colombia. Not in obvious ways - not like people dripping with gold and jewels (although there was that too). But just, all the cars being models from the last 10 years or so, all the bikes being clean and new instead of rusty frankenstein models, people wearing clothes that are "fashion" rather than functional, those weird cordless headphone things that iPhone people use... I mean, just seeing iPhones cradled in people's hands in the first place. All stuff that well-to-do people in the US or Canada might consider unremarkably "middle class", but actually is a sign of spectacular wealth on the global scale. I felt like i had more in common with the homeless people huddling in alcoves and sitting on park benches in my raggedy-ass clothes and travel-battered hiking shoes.
So i spent my one night in the big smoke, then trained it down to Windsor, a smaller town where R lives, just across the river from Detroit. If Toronto is a car-first city, Windsor is basically a car-only city. The sidewalks are completely dead. People don't go anywhere unless there is parking. I've been here before, i know how it is. But it's even worse because during COVID the city inexplicably decided to cut public transport, and now several buses are not running at all (notably the cross-border bus that allows commuters to take public transport to Detroit and back) while others are on Sunday timetable. All in a province where now there are no longer any COVID restrictions, everyone's unmasked and blasé about the whole thing. So put the fucking buses back then, right? Jeez.
Anyway, i knew what i was going to get coming in, and that's fine. Because i also get to hang out with my best friend who i haven't seen for several years, and i have a free place to stay while i look for work.
And i have been looking. As mentioned up top, i am in the pipeline at two companies. One of them i have my final interview on Monday, with the CEO. Another one i am waiting to hear back whether i made it to the final interview or not. It has been exhausting, because there is a 12 hour time difference, so i am interviewing at 9pm, 10pm, 11pm... And of course, because it's the tech industry, it's not just two interviews and you're hired. There is a pipeline of 4 or 5 interviews with different people (mostly behavioral questions), plus 1 or 2 coding tests where you need to prove you can actually do the thing that you have been paid to do for the past 20 years.
Fortunately none of the coding tests have involved Google-style algorithm questions, which i find utterly obnoxious and always fail at because i refuse to study math problems for a job interview, but they're still several hours of unpaid work. In this particular instance i don't care so much because i have been out of the industry for 10 months, so it's helping me flick my brain back into coder mode. But it still takes a toll, having to be "on" all the time.
And having to feign interest in getting a job when of course in the ideal world i would much rather never have to work again.
My two options at this point are a smallish "startup" that has been around for 10 years or so and is still running on VC. Silicon Valley founder, Y Combinator alumni, bla bla bla. The other one is a larger company that has paid off its VCs and is now privately owned and independently profitable. The second company has a more old-fashioned infrastructure and provides a service that i actually am a paying customer of, so for possibly the first time in my life i would be working at a company whose mission i believe in, and don't just pretend to give a shit about because i happen to work there. That's the job i really want, but they have a higher bar for hiring, and they are moving slower through the process than the other one. I've already slow-pedaled the Silicon Valley company a bit, and i'm not going to slow-pedal the CEO chat, so it's looking like by next week i'll have an answer one way or the other.
God, just thinking about having a chat with some Stanford dude who has had "successful exits" and bla bla bla makes me want to shoot myself in the head. I really hate that whole Silicon Valley/VC culture. But that's the industry i'm in. And it's especially hard to be picky, filtering out all the "hip" tech companies and instead choosing "boring" ones, when you are looking in a very specific location where you would need visa sponsorship.
I keep thinking, my life would be so much easier if i just looked for Canadian or US companies that are geared for 100% remote work. I get multiple cold-calls every week from recruiters on LinkedIn offering that kind of work. I could really take my pick of companies, instead of machine gunning every fucking company that isn't finance/cryptocurrency or adtech (my moral blacklist) and hoping one of them takes a chance on a foreigner.
Perhaps that's what i will do. I am so exhausted from going through these two interview pipelines that i stopped submitting new applications last week. Next week, when i know more, i will fire out another 10 applications or so that i now have backlogged. And then that'll be it for Taiwan. If by June i still don't have any offers, i will expand to other destinations, maybe Europe, but more likely just suck it up and remain here in North America till i stack up enough cash to travel again, either completely freely, or to enrol as a student of something... Maybe finally consider that career change.
Of course R says to me that i am in my career twilight years anyway. Which is only half a joke. There's no way i could early retire like a Silicon Valley tech bro, not even with mom's inheritance that pushed me into the top half of the wealth distribution, and definitely not with the stock market going the way it is. But R is sort-of right in that i have now grinded away for long enough in this fucking miserable industry that i am done with job-hopping. If i could find a company that wasn't a complete VC- or market-driven douche factory, i'd probably quietly stick around for at least as many years till my next international move - and even longer, if the company allowed it. So, i am in my "twilight years" in the sense that i am done with trying to find an engaging or exciting job, i just want a job that doesn't totally suck. My bar is lower than it was in my 20s and 30s.
I've also come to the conclusion that i am going to remove all my team leadership slash management stuff from my résumé before the next email blast. I am done being put into roles with better paychecks and more responsibility that just result in burning me out faster. Yeah i can do management. I think i'm actually a pretty good manager, as far as managers go. But i don't really get much out of it. I don't want to get even one step closer to those dumb political games that happen any time a role involves overseeing a budget or allocating funds. I fucking hate that shit. I don't care. I'm happy to level up my colleagues and help them climb the ladder into that hell-hole if it's what they want to do, but don't keep sticking me in there. It just forces me to stare the monster in the face, confront exactly how corrupt and evil the whole capitalist system is, and quite frankly i'd rather ignore it and just try to scratch together enough cash to eat and sleep and travel every now and then.
Twilight years.
Sigh.
Anyway, CEO chat is next Monday, Pacific Time. I hope to get a surprise final interview invite for the other company on the very early end of next week so i can compare two offers, but if i only get the bite from Silicon Valley, i suspect i will hold my nose and just take it. It's work. And the company seems nice enough, as far as the industry goes.
In the mean time, i am going to finally enjoy having 2 days off where i don't need to plan or prepare for anything in particular. I need an $8 beer and a blanky to cry in.