I've been silent for a few weeks (months, gah) now, but with good reason. I've spent the better part of the last few weeks interviewing all over SF and silicon valley. I'll just skip to the end: I've accepted a job at Facebook and my wife and I will be relocating to silicon valley in the next few weeks.
So up first, my current job. As you may or may not know, I work at a startup face recognition company in Pittsburgh. Our decision to relocate was largely for personal reasons, and choosing to leave my job wasn't easy. It's an awesome place to work. If you are interested, we are still hiring.
Though the vast majority of my interviews ended up with offers, it wasn't all good news. I actually got phone-screened by one startup company. I have tons of opinions about the quality of my interviewers throughout this process (and it's not all good, by any means), but I can't blame that phone screener. I bumblefucked my way through a fairly easy question (I was unprepared, more on that in a bit) and knew I was blowing it. My wife tried to make me feel better after the call but I told her, having done a ton phone screens myself, that was a definite 'no'. In fact, if he wanted to interview me after that phone screen, I'd have questioned his whole interview philosophy to begin with! There's probably another blog post hiding there, too.
In the end, the blown phone screen was a nice wake-up call that I needed to do some more review. I did, and the rest of my interviews went extremely well. Had that phone screen been later in the process, I'm certain it would have turned out much better for me, but c'est la vie.
This post was mainly an update to anyone who frequently reads. In the next few posts, I'll go back to the more general style, probably talking a bit more about the interview and the interviewing process. I feel like I could write a book, at this point.