Job Hunting

Next update in my potential job change journey...

Talked to this recruiter on Zoom. He works directly for the company. About the same age as me, a lot of similar shit in the background of his office. We get along real well. By the end he's talking about the number of shares that hires are getting, the number of shares that he got, what the founders last exit was, and what the goal for the exit for this company was. If it exits at the expected amount (in 10 years) the shares are worth $2m. The last exit the CEO had was 6 years for 36% above the 10 year target.

He sends me along right to the VP of engineering, I get the guys name and look him up on linkedin. He's a fuckin' Harvard grad with like 20+ years of experience. Damn. I'm a self taught guy with an AR high school education. Outlook not good.

The interview goes fairly well. He's a little colder. Had a fancy office with actual encyclopedias and shit behind him. He's got bad male pattern baldness, clean shaven, shaved head with stubble. I have a wild head of hair and a giant wizard beard. Polar opposites. But like I said, the interview went good, I had him describe some decent details about their product, prodded for some potential trouble areas, asked some good questions, ended on a good note.

Then nothing. That was Tuesday. I get back from a long lunch Friday while I had my phone off, turn it back on and see a call and a VM from the recruiter that loved me. I use the text transcription, so I skim the VM and it says something like "Hey we're changing your title from senior SRE to staff devops manager to meet your salary requirements, things look good, blah blah" and I call him right back. He was like "Yeah man, I wanted to call you directly so you just didn't receive an form email with no explanation. The VP liked you but we're deciding to pass in the grand scheme of things." My reply was, "Hey, what about this voice mail? Senior to Staff? What do you mean passed?" "Oh, yeah, that. I just got back from vacation and I was going through my emails in order. I left you a second voice mail once I got to the point where the decision had been made."

Talk about a roller coaster. After we hung up about 5 minutes later the transcription for the second one was done, my phone dinged, and there was the "pass" VM.

This would have been a +29.5% bump in base pay and it was my first real interview that I took beyond the recruiter phase. I'm trying to figure out what that means - obviously I didn't get it, so that might be a little too much money, but then again who knows. Need more data.