A story of my naivete
The events in this story date back to 2010 and looking back I still find them slightly amusing; but that’s not the reason I’m writing about it today.
I don’t remember exactly when Priya Khanwalker and I started thinking about moving to the US, I do remember the why though. I was bored out of my mind in my role and looking around I didn’t find anything exciting in any of the local teams in Hyderabad; transferring to Redmond was a common enough phenomenon that I figured a change of scenery would help.
To set the stage, 2007–2011 was a period of recession (Subprime mortgage crisis) that affected almost all industries and tech was no exception. Some of my batchmates who joined the industry in 2007 got laid off immediately after joining, some others had their offers rescinded. I was fortunate that I did not have to undergo that stress.
But back to the story… As you can imagine, almost all companies went into cost cutting mode. At Microsoft this meant that there was little incentive for teams in Redmond to remotely interview, hire someone from India and pay for their relocation — especially for junior software engineers like me (L60 at the time). But of course I hadn’t even considered this; I had made up my mind and armed with equal amounts of optimism and naivete, I told my manager that I was looking to transfer out; and that started the 45 day clock to land my new role.
I spent the next few days looking through internal job postings and sending emails to the teams that I found interesting. At the end of almost ~4 weeks, I had gotten ZERO positive responses.
The clock was ticking and I was running out of ideas so I turned to my co-worker-turned mentor-turned friend for advice.
After hearing me out he suggested a rather unorthodox approach — traveling to Redmond on my own dime and interviewing in person with the interested teams. And so, with this new strategy in place I once again reached out to hiring managers. In some cases, I reached out to people I had contacted earlier letting them know I’d be available for an in-person conversation. Before I knew it, I had interest from three teams; One that set up a full interview loop and two where I was supposed to go meet the managers for an informational meeting. Things were looking up !
I arrived in Redmond on the afternoon of March 17th 2010. I had no time to waste — Within an hour of landing, I was making my way to my first informational meeting. About 10 mins into our conversation, the hiring manager asked me if I wanted to stick around for a coding round. Adrenaline was high and while ordinarily I would have been severely jetlagged after a 22 hour journey, I instead felt excited! And so, I spent the next hour or so with another senior engineer doing some whiteboard coding. They seemed to be happy enough that they invited me the next day for a few more rounds. By the time I came back to my hotel, I was dead tired, the jetlag was catching up and I think I fell asleep halfway through taking off my shoes.
The next day was the big one — I had the full loop scheduled with the team I was most excited about. And so I walked into Building 6 all excited and looking forward to the rest of the day. Over the course of the next few hours, I talked to 5–6 engineers and while I don’t remember the problems we discussed, I remember thoroughly enjoying the process to the point where I didn’t even care about the result of the interview process. The final conversation was with the hiring manager — he told me that they would make an offer and everything he said after that was just a blur to me.
As I walked out of the building with an unofficial offer and another full loop scheduled for the next day my confidence was sky high; the day wasn’t over yet. Could I perhaps get another full loop and maybe even another offer ?
Shoving this overconfidence aside, I made my way for the second informational meeting of the trip. I spent an hour or so and met a couple of managers on this team and sure enough I got another invitation for a full loop for the next day. The only problem was that now I had two full loops scheduled for my last full day in Redmond; One in the morning starting at 9 and another in the afternoon starting at 2.
3/19 Friday 9AM — I had nothing to lose now and I walked in confident for my first set of interviews. Once again, I met 4–5 engineers over the course of the next few hours where we discussed and debated the time and space complexities. The discussions were engaging enough that I didn’t feel hungry until much later in the day. Finally, less than an hour before my second set of interviews for the day, I got a chance to sit down with the hiring manager. He spent some time selling his team and why it was a great opportunity for me; I already knew that, and so I waited for him to utter the magic words.
Two for two !
It was all so surreal that reality hadn’t sunk in yet. With a few more hours left in the day, I went over for my final set of interviews. I wish I could tell you what happened there but the exhaustion and excitement from the events prior ensured I wouldn’t remember anything.
Spoiler alert — I didn’t get that 3rd offer. And it didn’t matter because a) I had two fantastic teams to choose from and b) the next day I was flying to Vegas for two weeks but that’s a story for another day. And that is how I landed in Seattle in the summer of 2010.
Why am I writing about this today? Is it to teach you how to beat Jetlag without downing a dozen caffeine shots ? Maybe :). On a serious note though, I wanted to remind myself that sometimes naivete succeeds where experience and wisdom fail.
