I start working at Electric Imp tomorrow. Their business model is essentially selling IoT hardware (think Nest, lights you can turn on and off with your smartphone, etc) and enabling connectivity between that hardware and their cloud service, which allows programming of that hardware. It was a hard decision. I was fortunate in that I had several other promising offers - the most first world problem I ever had, really. In the end my decision boiled down to do I want to be a small gear in a big machine, or a big gear in a small machine? I chose the latter.
The internal recruiter I worked with at Electric Imp demonstrated unparalleled skill and professionalism - before she talked any details with me, she worked on selling me on the company, the position, the team. Having played the recruitment game, I like to pretend I’m immune to this sort of thing, but it certainly had its effect. It turned out to be unnecessary. After my on-site, I was selling myself on the team. It’s an eclectic mix of a variety of personalities, all exhibited by sharp engineers. They were big on self-education, and I see a great deal of opportunity to not only work in the frontend (my role), but in the future, branch out to other techs.
Within a few days of that, I had picked out the DOPEST condo, within a 5 minute walk of my office, a gym, several supermarkets, and Stanford. Come tomorrow, my quality of life is skyrocketing. This place has a fireplace, there’s a pool and hottub in our little neighborhood, we even have a grill. I’m moving from a trailer stuck on the side of a mountain in foggy Daly City to a brightly lit Mountain View condo with a wet bar. Amped.
I’ll put up another post illustrating my job search methodology and what I believe were the important factors for me knocking this job search out in about a month.