(public).sospep.subjects ~ view article ~ making-it-in-the-mecca-of-tech

<h1 style="text-align: center;">making it in the mecca of tech</h1>
<h2>[WHAT]</h2>
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<li>] by Desmond Weindorf @ github.com &nbsp;- ] a developer shares his experience relocating from the midwest to silicon valley and the experience of a silicon valley job search</li>
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<h2>[WHY]</h2>
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<li>] the lost article &nbsp;- silicon valley jobsearch&nbsp;</li>
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<h2>[WHERE]</h2>
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<li><strong>] READ THE FULL ARTICLE</strong></li>
<ol>
<li>*&gt;]&nbsp;<a href="http://desmondw.com/blog/making-it-in-the-mecca-of-tech/" target="_blank">Making it in the Mecca of Tech</a>&nbsp;SRC = new-links-2014-12-12</li>
<li>]&nbsp;http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/http://desmondw.com/blog/making-it-in-the-mecca-of-tech/</li>
</ol></ol>
<h2>[WHEN]</h2>
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<li>] 2016-01-0d</li>
<li>] found orig SRC link 2017-05-02, which now redirects to authors github, then found article via inet archive</li>
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<h2>[EXAMPLE]</h2>
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<li>]</li>
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<li id="menu-item-25" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page current_page_parent menu-item-25" style="display: inline-block; margin-left: 18px;"><a style="color: #525252; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/http://desmondw.com/blog/">blog</a></li>
&nbsp;
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<h1 class="entry-title" style="font-weight: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 50px; line-height: 1em; font-family: Montserrat, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">MAKING IT IN THE MECCA OF TECH</h1>
<h3 style="font-weight: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 30px; line-height: normal; font-family: Quicksand, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; -webkit-text-stroke: 0.35px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">&nbsp;</h3>
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<div class="entry-meta"><span class="posted-on">December 12th 2014</span></div>
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<p style="margin-top: 0px;">I never thought Id be here. Sitting in a cafe in San Francisco, newly employed by a Market St. startup. All thanks to a lot of determination, the support of family, and a little bit of luck.</p>
<p>After deciding to close shop on my small Michigan consulting company, I found it very hard to find work.&nbsp;Actually, I found it hard to find&nbsp;<em>jobs</em>. Michigan&nbsp;doesnt exactly have a booming tech scene. I&nbsp;expressed my concerns on Twitter in hope of getting some leads:</p>
<iframe id="twitter-widget-0" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; max-width: 100%; min-width: 220px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; position: absolute; visibility: hidden;" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
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<p style="margin-top: 0px;">Ironically I might need to move to a bigger city to find a job developing websites for the location-independent web. No luck in Michigan!</p>
<p>&mdash; Desmond Weindorf (@DesmondWeindorf)&nbsp;<a style="color: #a8a8a8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/https://twitter.com/DesmondWeindorf/status/493391048753033216">July 27, 2014</a></p>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>I never thought Id actually get a response. My aunt, who doesnt know the first thing about social media,&nbsp;found her way to Twitter and saw what I wrote. It was lucky timing because she was just starting to prepare for an interview for the position of Social Media Manager (it didnt work out). She invited me to stay with her in Alameda while looking for work and I packed my bags.</p>
<p>So there I was, driving 2000 miles across four&nbsp;time zones&nbsp;to start my new life in California, leaving everything behind to pursue my dreams. California, by the way, is everything its made out to be.&nbsp;The first thing you see crossing the border on I-80 is the Sierra Nevada a beautiful mountain range dotted with pines and lakes with roads winding through the valleys.&nbsp;But it gets better. The Bay Area is temperate year round, hardly ever&nbsp;receiving snow while at the same time avoiding brutally hot summers.&nbsp;And with the varying geography and a diverse culture theres always something to do no matter what youre into.&nbsp;Within a week Id already made friends and picked up rock climbing.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-315" style="border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; border-color: #dbdbdb; max-width: 100%; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; position: relative; left: -1px; display: block;" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712im_/http://desmondw.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1378430_379020888918629_2299206904855474717_n.jpg" alt="Rock Climbing with Friends" width="960" height="720" /></p>
<p>Sound too good to be true? Well it was for me. As youd expect the Bay Area has a&nbsp;huge number of jobs. Seriously, a ludicrous amount. You couldnt exhaust all of the opportunities if it was your full-time job. But companies are looking for&nbsp;<em>ideal</em>&nbsp;candidates as in theyre willing to wait for them. It took me a while to become ideal.</p>
<p>Put simply, I wasnt in Michigan anymore. What got me offers&nbsp;in my old state wouldnt even get me interviews here. Over the course of three&nbsp;months&nbsp;I honed my presentation and skills in a trial by fire. I applied for 156 positions, received responses from 79 of the companies, and interviewed with 41&nbsp;of them. But these werent one-hour on-site interviews in some Midwest town; this is San Francisco, and interviewing with a startup&nbsp;is a&nbsp;<em>gauntlet</em>.</p>
<p>If you were to apply for a position at a startup, it might go something like this:</p>
<p>After vetting your experience&nbsp;by email a company may grant&nbsp;you a 30 minute screening call, followed by an hour technical interview over the phone, and possibly&nbsp;even a third&nbsp;hour-long phone call. THEN&nbsp;you may&nbsp;be invited on-site for a 3+ hour technical interview with 3-6 people. If youve managed to impress them so far, and the company&nbsp;has&nbsp;a particularly thorough interview process, they&nbsp;might invite you back for a&nbsp;<em>fifth</em>&nbsp;interview to finally make a determination. During which youll spend no less than&nbsp;five&nbsp;hours making an&nbsp;attempt to&nbsp;solve&nbsp;a practical problem the company has faced recently. If youre the right man (or woman) for the job, your references check out, and you can pass a background check, youll be made an offer&nbsp;and given two days to&nbsp;make a decision. This is the San Francisco startup interview process.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-319" style="border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; border-color: #dbdbdb; max-width: 100%; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; position: relative; left: -1px; display: block;" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712im_/http://desmondw.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/downtown-san-francisco-buildings-free-desktop-backdrops-and-.-o-ibackgroundz.com_.jpg" alt="downtown-san-francisco-buildings-free-desktop-backdrops-and-.-o-ibackgroundz.com" width="1351" height="637" /></p>
<p>If this sounds exhausting, thats&nbsp;because it is. Between applying for positions and going to interviews I improved my skills and tweaked my presentation. I found out what&nbsp;technologies were in demand and&nbsp;<a style="color: #a8a8a8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" title="Polar Area Chart (Game of Thrones)" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/http://desmondw.com/portfolio/polar-area-chart-game-of-thrones/">picked them up</a>, read a couple of&nbsp;<a style="color: #a8a8a8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockford/dp/0596517742">JavaScript</a>&nbsp;<a style="color: #a8a8a8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS">books</a>&nbsp;to solidify my knowledge, and practiced on over 150 programming problems&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a style="color: #a8a8a8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/http://codewars.com">Codewars</a>.&nbsp;After three months of searching I even consulted the internet on what Im&nbsp;doing wrong (never a good idea, by the way) because at this point there were people graduating three-month hacker schools with&nbsp;<em>no prior programming knowledge</em>&nbsp;and landing&nbsp;jobs over me.</p>
<p>I&nbsp;had&nbsp;interviewed with many companies but there were a few that I really liked. It wasnt&nbsp;because of&nbsp;the technology they used, the position they offered, or where they were located it was the people. It was the environment, the culture, the values, and the atmosphere that Id&nbsp;be spending half of my&nbsp;waking life&nbsp;immersed in. Startups think the same way about their candidates&nbsp;and take cultural-fit into consideration just&nbsp;as much as technical ability when making a hiring decision.</p>
<p>There was one company,&nbsp;<a style="color: #a8a8a8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/https://www.hellosign.com/">HelloSign</a>, that I really fell for. Their values for excellence, growth, and a relaxed&nbsp;office&nbsp;culture reflected my own. Even during the interview process the&nbsp;discussions seemed collaborative instead of judgmental. After meeting with CEO Joseph Walla I could tell that he set the tone for the company, exuding an aura of calm usually reserved for zen masters.&nbsp;At one point&nbsp;I even joked with the hiring manager, Blaine Gorman, is it a matter of who says I love you first?</p>
<p><a style="color: #a8a8a8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/https://www.hellosign.com/"><img class="no-border aligncenter size-full wp-image-322" style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; max-width: 100%; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; position: relative; left: -1px; display: block;" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712im_/http://desmondw.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/hellosign.png" alt="hellosign" width="458" height="70" /></a></p>
<p>I was starting to feel disillusioned with my job search when I received&nbsp;an unexpected call one evening. HelloSign was&nbsp;offering me a&nbsp;position! I&nbsp;was so astonished and bewildered considering my recent luck that&nbsp;it actually took me a couple of hours to get my head together and call back to accept the offer.</p>
<p>Needless to say, Im ecstatic to start working there in January.&nbsp;Its been quite the formative experience uprooting from the Midwest to live in California&nbsp;at the heart of tech. It took me longer than I wanted to find work, but experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted. Hopefully now Ive passed on some of that experience to you.</p>
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<span id="footer-name" style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal; font-family: Montserrat, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; color: #525252;"><a style="color: #525252; text-decoration-line: none; transition: 0.35s ease;" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150401052712/http://desmondw.com/contact">Desmond Weindorf</a></span></div>
<h2>[HOW-TO]</h2>
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<li>]</li>
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<h2>[REFERENCE]</h2>
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<li>] SRC = HN, comments</li>
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<h1 style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;</h1>

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