Monday, February 09, 2009

Fate, it seems, has a strange sense of irony

I'm moving back to Seattle! Believe me, I am as shocked as you are. I haven't lived in my hometown for seven years.

As you may know, I've been working on defense software for Lockheed Martin in Littleton for the past year and a half. I'm proud of my work at Lockheed and I don't regret the last several months by a long shot.

Over that time, Sarah and I came to realize two things: we are not mountain people, and we're not really outdoor people. We've made some great friends and had some fun times, but we're ready to be close to family again, in the wet and woolly and green Pacific Northwest.

I'm starting work for Amazon shortly (yes, that Amazon) as a software developer. As an AI guy interested in getting out on the cutting edge, this was a chance I couldn't afford to pass up. To be honest, I racked my brains after my on-site interviews, replaying them for several sleepless nights afterwards, finding ways I could've answered technical questions better. I read somewhere that rat brains do this after the rat runs a maze. Their neurons actually fire in the same pattern that they did while running the maze, dozens of times.

My C++ and SQL questions were fun and interesting. I was thinking about "find the longest palindrome in a string" for several days afterward, still looking for performance hacks.

I was pretty sure I blew my last interview after venturing into some chancy territory about internet technology, with which I have a nodding familiarity, but no great expertise. You can imagine my surprise and my relief when, after my last sleepless night, I looked up the difference between a GET and a POST and found out that I had basically remembered correctly, in a somewhat stressful situation. That was when I began to believe it all might happen.

Last Friday, the hiring manager talked to me again about the position, proposing an interesting project for my first several months, then all was go. The recruiter made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and we were off.

I'm suppose to be there two weeks from today, but I have trouble believing the relocation can happen so quickly. On the other hand, I've been surprised already.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's so awesome. Congrats. I love Amazon.com. They always seemed like an innovative company to me, up there with Google. I hope you have fun working there.

Dan Lewis said...

Thanks Paul! I am happy about it too. They seem to be out on the cutting edge, but under the radar... I think everyone thinks they are just a bigger, better version of a store. I think they are far more ambitious.

I hope all is well in Utah. We miss you and Stacy a lot.