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.