halfacanuck

I passed a couple of weeks looking for work. Everywhere. I spent hours walking round downtown giving out resumes wherever I saw a "help wanted" sign. I went to employment centres, I surfed Monster and Workopolis. I filled out the obligatory Starbucks application. I went to an IT recruiter, who told me that my resume is unimpressive and I'm going to have a tough time finding work. I even had an impromptu interview for the position of "assistant chef" at a sushi restaurant. In retrospect it's perhaps a good thing he laughed me out of the building.

Then, via Monster, I found the position of "Senior UNIX software developer" at a place called Sophos. I'd heard of them, or at least their anti-virus product, but knew next to nothing about them. Then I read the job description. I've looked at a lot of job descriptions online in the IT industry, but there was always something out of place, something that didn't quite fit with me. Either they required some skill I didn't possess or the work sounded dull. But this one was me. It was as if I'd given someone the commission of writing the perfect job for me. All my skills matched, I had more than the amount of experience they required. The only thing I lacked was a degree. I wavered for a while, decided to attempt to write a cover letter, and came up with the perfect opening line. The minute I stopped writing and read it over, I knew, somehow, I knew that they'd want to talk to me. The rest of it wrote itself, I attached my resume, hit send, and crossed my fingers. (What's the opening line, you ask? It was "HELO," which you'll only understand if you speak SMTP. Which you probably don't, because you're not an email server.)

Two days later I was working at a construction site as a general labourer (yes, I underestimated how hard it would be. No, I don't want to talk about it. The emotional scars are still too fresh) and got a call around noon. It was a recruiter from Sophos. They wanted to see me. The next day. "Holy crap," I thought to myself. "Holy crap," I said out loud. "Fuckin get back to fuckin work!" yelled Jim the lead hand, who needs some serious help with his people management skills.

So Friday there I am, betied, sitting across from Dave Cornell, Spam Analyst, and Dmitry Samosseiko, one of the guys who helped start ActiveState. He would be my boss in the SPOPS (Spam Operations) team, also known as SophosLabs. Holy crap. It's funny, though. I wasn't nervous. I hadn't been nervous since I wrote that first line of my cover letter. I knew I could do the job. I already had my foot in the door. I was confident, I made them laugh (by referencing Larry Wall's shirts), and I answered all their technical questions without hesitation. It went pretty good, I figured. Then

Dmitry: To be honest, we really like you.
Me: Oh. Uh... Cool!
Dmitry: We still have someone else to interview, but... [To Dave] I guess we still have to interview that guy...?
Dave: I guess.
Dmitry: But anyway, please don't accept any offers until you hear from us.
Me: Okay...

Holy crap, I thought. Then Dave invites me out to lunch with the team, and during lunch he tells me I nailed it (the interview. Not the lunch), and then I get a call from the Sophos recruiter, arranging an interview for Tuesday.

Dave: Was that HR?
Me: Yup.
Dave: Jesus. That was quick.

All in all I considered the events of the day to be mildly promising, if you'll permit me to wander deep into understatement.

So Tuesday rolls around (very slowly. Very, very slowly) and there I am again, being quizzed by a couple of programmers. I do pretty well, I think, and then I get a five-minute break before meeting Janet, the HR Director. We talk for fifteen minutes and then she says and holy crap then she says and then she formally offers me the job and I spend the next couple seconds moving my lips before I realized that no sounds were emerging, and then thanked her, I think, I don't really remember, and she went off to fetch my contract, which had apparently already been prepared, and I signed, and she signed, and we agreed I'd start Thursday, i.e. yesterday, and that was that.

So there you have it. There was a slight catch, which I'll talk about another time, and I've got about $75 left of my savings to last me 10 days until I get paid, but fuck it, I have a job, a really good job, at the kind of company you read about all the time but don't believe actually exists: where I can show up more or less when I want, where I can wear what I want, where coffee and tea is free and food is heavily subsidized, where there are pool tables and fussball tables and a beer fridge (yes, a beer fridge) and a patio with a hottub (yes, a hottub), and a bunch of young, friendly and really, really smart people, right downtown in a beautiful city.

I always knew being kind to small animals would pay off one day.