Things about me
Wrote emails for Opportunities 2 & 6 today, and received a preliminary questionnaire from an internal recruiter for Opportunity 1. I’ll write a response on Friday or Saturday.
I need to do some more searching or some more networking this weekend and get a few more opportunities in the hopper to replace the two rejections.
Not much activity the last few days as I close out my current position. However, today I got rejection emails from Opportunities 3 & 4. I have an email on Opportunity 2 to set up some time with their engineers.
Not much activity the last couple of days because I did other stuff. However…
For Opportunity 1, I submitted my resume to the company’s application portal after some communication with the internal person who referred me.
For Opportunity 2, I signed an NDA in preparation for further discussions.
And for Opportunity 5, I scheduled some time next week for a short intro with the company founder.
Today’s activities:
I spent an hour talking with the principals for Opportunity 2. They have a good MVP for their product and are looking to scale. Next steps are signing an NDA and talking one-to-one with an engineer or two to see if my skills are a fit.
I officially applied for Opportunity 4 after exchanging emails with the former co-worker who now works there. He was game for an internal referral.
And lastly, a friend sent an intro email to connect me with one of her friends whose company has a number of openings. Filed that in my tracker as Opportunity 6. I’ll reply by the end of the week introducing myself.
I’ve also reviewed and discarded dozens of job listings on LinkedIn, mostly because the search criteria doesn’t have a way to exclude things I am really not interested in. Anything LLM or trying to piggyback on AI as a buzzword for instance. I like the idea of machine learning, but not the way a lot of generative AI companies are pitching it or how they operate. Swipe left. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a swipe dating app, so I don’t remember which direction means “no match.”
Today was finishing up some work for my soon-to-be-former employer, Orbital Sidekick. However, after work I did send a couple of emails:
A new Opportunity 5, a logistics company that uses AI to enhance the shopping experience. They don’t have a current opening, but a mutual thinks they could use a dev manager to tame the chaos and sent an intro email to their CEO and I. I drafted and replied with my own intro. I’m not the most eloquent in writing, so we’ll see.
On Opportunity 4, I sent an email to the former co-worker inquiring about an internal referral.
I hadn’t intended to job search today, but someone pointed me at an Engineering Manager position at a transportation startup where a former co-worker now works. I reached out to that co-worker on LinkedIn, and our mutual connection sent email to connect us. Calling this Opportunity 4.
Opportunity 3 is a Software Engineering Manager position with a political fundraiser. It’s remote. Submitted my resume. Since I don’t know anyone there or even someone who knows someone, this is relatively low probability.
Other job search tasks completed today:
Well, my promise to myself last January that I would post here sure didn’t last did it?
For the last five years, I’ve worked at Orbital Sidekick managing software development. Yesterday, that ended with a large layoff that includes me. I will be there for a short time tying up some loose ends and will be fully unemployed soon.
Consequently, I am looking for work. If you need a senior back end developer or a development manager, reach out. My contact information is elsewhere on this site.
Maybe I’ll use this to document the job search. Somewhat circumspect, obvs.
Friday morning, someone reached out to see if I would be interested in developer positions at their company. Of the three positions they sent, only one matches my skillset, for a senior developer in C++ working on autonomous systems. I replied that their email was fortuitous and sent them a resume. I’ll call that Opportunity 1 here.
Opportunity 2 is someone who has their own satellite imagery startup. They reached out on LinkedIn to catch up. When I told them I was leaving OSK, they asked if I’d be open to joining them. I’ll set up some time to talk with them in the next week.
While I’m working on some more substantive posts, here’s a roundup of which accounts on the Internet are me.
From 2008 until 2024 I had the account kingrat on Twitter, but largely stopped using it in November 2022. In November 2024, I closed the account. I am told a right wing account has since claimed the handle.
I have profiles on whatever the Playstation network is called now (Sony?), Steam, Xbox, and battle.net, but I haven’t played video games in years. If I ever game again, maybe I’ll add them here (or repost). I also have an account on Goodreads, but I don’t use it. There’s probably another dozen or so similar kinds of accounts that are dormant with nothing visible.
Tap tap. Is this on? This is what passes for yearly goals or resolutions for me. I don’t don’t grade myself on a pass/fail basis. Rather, these are about what direction I am going.
I want to think highly of my appearance again. In the last couple of years, I’ve gained weight. A partially related change is that I no longer wear clothes that make me look good. Some of that is that the weight gain has made fitting into some items difficult. Some of that is that I don’t want to buy new clothes for this weight. Some of that is that my clothing has just worn out. I don’t enjoy shopping. For 2025, I will find a combination of weight management, new clothes, and mental health such that I like what I look like.
I want to really enjoy day to day living in 2025, rather than just being content. That may mean more cooking. That may mean meeting people in person and developing some in-person connections that I haven’t had since the beginning of the pandemic. It definitely means getting out of the house more.
I want to make progress on my genealogy work. Among other things, I will complete a practice kinship determination project that meets the standards of the Board for Certification of Genealogists.
I want to be more active in my professional life outside of the day to day work. I want to go to conferences, work on some open source, write some white papers, or … something. It’s unlikely this will be my last job ever, and I don’t want just my co-workers to know what I can do when it ends.
I had a few years at the beginning of the pandemic where I just wasn’t reading that much. In 2023, I finished 46 books and in 2024, I completed 77. I don’t expect achieving any book reading goals to be difficult this year. Nevertheless, I’ll put in writing that I hope to finished 28 books this year, two more than my goal last year. Two books every month, plus an extra every quarter.
I haven’t been enjoying the television and movies I’ve been watching. Many days I look at the options and I’m just not enthused. I don’t know how to measure this goal yet, but I intend to be more intentional about what I watch so that I enjoy what I do watch. I’ve ended up watching Youtube for multiple hours per day because I can’t handle the tension of a show or I get bored. I intend to watch Youtube mostly while working on the computer. If I’m sitting in my recliner and watching, what’s on the television should be something I want to watch.
I will publish a post here on the blog, hopefully every week.
I will write in my journal daily.
From 2021 to 2024, my political participation was limited, mostly window signs and a few contributions here & there for local San Francisco candidates & ballot initiatives. I want to be more involved in 2025, but I don’t know what that looks like yet.
