The Job Search

I won’t bury the lede I’m joining n8n, officially starting on March 9th, as a Senior Support Engineer! I’ll write more about n8n in the future, but right now I am really excited and think this is an excellent match.

Struggle

It’s been eleven months since I was laid off, and although I did take some time in the beginning to reset and try to relax I’ve found this time an incredible struggle. I had heard that the job market was rough, but in the beginning I had a bit of a delusional confidence that it wouldn’t take me too long to find a new role. That delusion cleared quickly and my confidence hit a deep low.

My approach to job searching changed quite a lot as time went on. When I first started I was focused only on Software Engineer roles. This is where I had spent the last close to five years working so of course I figured I would continue on this path. This did not go well.

Software Engineering has changed so much in the past couple of years with AI writing so much of the code. To me it seems that companies are looking for people more senior than me, people who have lots of experience designing the whole system rather than coding up the pieces someone else designed. This wasn’t the experience level I had and although I did get a couple of interviews early on, things did not go well and for the most part I was met with either no response or generic rejection emails.

Turning point

Things started to turn around after a phenomenal coach I had worked with in the past reached out and we had some conversations. One of the things that became very clear right away was that referrals and networking were keys to landing a new job, more on this later. One of the tasks I was given during these coaching calls was to really optimize my cold networking outreach messages. Figure out what problem the company is hiring to solve and be specific about how I’ve solved these in the past and therefore could help them solve it as well.

I struggled with this a lot. Not so much finding the problem, that was usually pretty straightforward, it was much harder to point to how I had solved them in the past. Though I still think I’m a good developer, I’m not at the level most companies were looking for.

This was a tough pill to swallow and it took me a while to come to really accept this. Once I did though this is where my search turned around. I looked back on my career where I was most happy and those were really the early years at Automattic as a support engineer. When I applied the exercise mentioned above to support engineer roles there was not much problem finding problems being faced and how I could help solve them. This gave me a more narrow focus on what I was looking for in terms of company, product, and role, and gave me a clear path forward. I ended up having multiple interviews happening at the same time for companies I would be happy to work at. In the end once the offer came in from n8n, I backed out of the hiring process at a number of other companies as this seems like an excellent fit.

Advice

As I mentioned earlier most of the success I had landing interviews came from referrals and networking. Sometimes it wasn’t an actual referral, but at least a nudge from someone to have the hiring team take a look at my application.

LinkedIn is a great resource when job searching. Although I winced each month when my premium membership came out of my account I still think it was worth it. Not so much for the job listings or directly applying for jobs, but for the networking part. This allows you to be able to message people. I could find people at the companies I was interested in and reach out. I’ve met some cool people this way.

Don’t just use LinkedIn as a job board. Most of the cool jobs that I was really excited about applying to weren’t listed directly in LinkedIn Jobs, but I did find out about a number of them from LinkedIn. Follow interesting people in your field. Follow interesting companies. Contribute to the conversations people are having.

Also, don’t limit yourself to just LinkedIn. Find communities outside and join them.

For me the Support Driven community was essential. I had been a member for years, I attended a conference they put on back in 2016, but for a long time I hadn’t been particularly active there. Mostly because I had moved out of direct support roles. I found cool job opportunities on the job board here and indirectly the role I’ll be starting in at n8n. This was also one of the cases where a member of the community nudged the hiring team to look at my application.

I am also fortunate to have a large community of people who previously worked at Automattic. Referrals and nudges from here helped me land interviews as well.

I’m so thankful to all the people who responded to my cold outreach, had conversations with me during this process, and helped me get my foot in the door at companies. I’ve tried to be good about doing these things for people in the past, but I’ll be even more diligent now.

Stats

During my job search I applied to 117 jobs. I tried to be very selective about the jobs I applied to, but there were some weak moments when I felt especially anxious that I would fire off applications to roles that I wasn’t really excited about.

Of those 117 roles I was rejected from 67. The other 50 I just never heard back from.

I started the interview process for 16 roles. Only five had no referral or nudge from someone. Two of those five were companies who contacted me directly through LinkedIn.

  • 117 job applications
  • 67 rejections
  • 50 ghosted
  • 16 roles started interviewing for
  • 11 interviews from referrals or networked nudges
  • 3 interviews from only job application
  • 2 interviews started from companies reaching out to me

Conclusion

This was one of the hardest time periods in my life, my self confidence dropped so low. There were times I was absolutely depressed and it was a struggle to get out of bed. The roller coaster of emotions felt was unreal. Honestly, if I didn’t have the support system that I have I’m not sure how I would have made it through. Past colleagues, friends, past colleagues who are now friends, and most importantly my family. At the top of that list is my wife. She is my rock and my comfort. Without her I certainly would have fallen apart. Thank you to everyone who was there for me during this time.

❤️ Web

I’m a big fan of the web. Have been for over 30 years. Though I didn’t have access to my own computer, or the internet, until the late 1990’s I still remember the first time going online.

It was 1999 when I really became hooked. I was helping people at work get online and spending a lot of time there myself. Browsing the web and then learning to build for it and contribute to it. There was just so much information freely available.

There’s been so much that I’ve learned from the web over the years from blogs, forums, Wikipedia, YouTube, social media, and taking actual online courses. I take it for granted a lot most of the time now, but when I slow down ot think about it, it still amazes me.

Today was no exception. We haven’t even officially hit winter yet this year and we’ve had a lot of snow. My body has been sore for over a week now from shovelling and clearing snow away. A few years back I bought a new snow blower to help me with this and I have a strong love hate relationship with it.

When the machine works, it is a dream, but there have been so many times where it just hasn’t worked when I needed it to. With this one it’s typically been something simple, like shear pins broken. But when it’s freezing out and showing even that is a pain to change, even if I have any on hand.

Between the break downs and the amount of times we get just a little snow where it doesn’t make sense to use the snow blower. Our last big snowfall a couple of days ago fell into category of the snow blower not working. Shear pins were all fine, but the auger’s wouldn’t spin to throw snow. There wasn’t time to mess with it and at that point I didn’t even know where to start.

Today I realized were supposed to get more snow really soon so I should try to get this thing working again. To the web! Some reading led me to believe that it was likely the auger belt that was not working. With that information in hand YouTube came through with a video showing and explaining how to change it out.

I still wasn’t confident in my ability to get the thing apart and back together, but I searched and found a local store who had a new belt in stock so I went out and took the old belt out. I figured if I could get the old one off I should be able to get the new one on. After I got it off I went to the store and picked up a new belt, some extra shear pins just to be safe as well. Back home it took a bit more work to get the new belt on, but in the end I have working snow blower again and should be all set for this upcoming snow.

So thank you to the web, and in this case specifically donyboy73, for yet again teaching me something new and helping save me some money and my aching body.

Online Resume

Since I’ve started the search for the next chapter in my career I’ve been looking for two related but different types of roles. Either a Technical Support Engineer or Software Engineer.

For the Technical Support Engineer I’m looking for a role where I’m helping developers use a product. Something that gets fairly technical. Looking at code, troubleshooting API’s, testing SDK’s, etc. For Software Engineer, I’m looking for a Frontend or Frontend leaning role, ideally helping build a product.

For years I’ve had an online resume. It’s always been simple HTML and CSS. Something that is simple, loads quickly, lists all my experience, and that I could print to PDF when applying to roles. Because it is years old and I have lots of experience that is relative to the roles I’m applying for, the resume has become long. It also wasn’t focused on one of these roles in particular.

Last week I decided to update it with a few main goals in mind:

  • Keep it simple and fast
  • Be able to tailor it to both roles I’m looking for
  • Have it look good
  • Put to practice some of the accessibility areas I’ve been learning about

Keeping it Simple, Fast, and tailored

To keep it simple, fast and being able to tailor the resume for the two different roles I ended up going with Web Components. They are light weight and don’t need any external dependencies or frameworks. They are native to the browser and just work, but you can add interactivity and make things work well.

This was my first time building anything directly with web components, though I’ve played around and helped maintain some already built projects which use them. Still not sure I have things the most optimized or done the best, but it is a good start. It reduces code duplication and gives me the functionality I wanted.

Because there is so much overlap between my roles a lot of experience I had is applicable to both roles I’m applying for. So I didn’t want to have two separate versions of my resume where I had to update roles in multiple places if I made a change. That led me to JSON Resume, which is a project that maintains a standard format for resume data. This was really close to what I was looking for so I used this schema as a base but had to make a few changes so that it allowed me to specify which role experience applied to, and a couple of extra fields that I wanted to be able to display.

The web components take the JSON data and then parse and display it nicely.

Have it look good

Previously my resume was built to basically look like the print version, like a sheet of paper on the screen. Seeing as it was on screen and I could do more I wanted to take advantage of that.

The design is still pretty simple, but it looks a lot better than a sheet of paper now. For starters I’ve added a dark mode that is the default. I love dark mode. There is of course a toggle to go to light mode as well.

For both work and educational experience I was able to give it a bit of a timeline view with some scroll animations.

Though I wouldn’t include them in my printed resume I also am able to include pictures of both myself and people who have given me nice recommendations.

Mobile or smaller screen views is pretty much the same. I did customize some of the timeline view so it works better and also added a mobile menu for the different role toggles and dark mode toggle.

Then there is print styles. I still wanted to be able to print the resume from the browser so there is customized print styles so that it still looks good when printed. Very close to the original layout and design I had to begin with. Here I hide images, and recommendations all together.

Page breaks in the printable version still need some work as they don’t always break things up nicely.

Accessibility

Tying to be even more conscious about accessibility when building this. There is still more testing I need to do to make sure, but I’ve tried to make it work well.

  • Keyboard accessible
  • Announce when using the role toggles to acknowledge things changing
  • Mobile menu having good focus management and being inert when not on screen
  • Respects prefers-reduced-motion to disable animations

Again it still needs more testing, but I think this is a good start.

Wrapping up

Overall I’m pretty happy with the results. Though I’m sure I’ll keep picking away at it as I go.

If anyone takes a look at the site or code I’d be very happy to hear any feedback that you have.

The live version is at https://resume.sandymcfadden.com/ and the code can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/sandymcfadden/resume

Rethinking My Path Forward

Things haven’t been going well in my job search. I’ve been more active over the past few months, but the results have been pretty discouraging. Roles I’m fully qualified for, and confident I’d excel in, often end in silence or rejection before I even get a chance to speak with someone. If you’ve been following the job market lately, my story isn’t unique.

For years, I’ve been a generalist in my career. That partly comes from my early days as a solo developer, where whatever needed doing, I was the one to do it. My approach was similar when I was in technical support, leadership, or engineering roles. The consistent theme across all the roles is that I’ve focused on solving problems in a customer-centric way. That has taken many forms: building tools, fixing broken flows, adding new features, updating documentation, troubleshooting complex issues, or creating entirely new processes.

Thankfully, I have a great support system and have received advice from some unexpected but welcome places. I haven’t always been able to put that advice fully into practice yet, and maybe that’s part of why employers haven’t been seeing the value I can bring.

Recently, I had a screening interview with a company I was really excited about but didn’t make it past that first stage. However, the recruiter I spoke with turned out to be the most helpful one I’ve interacted with so far. She gave me valuable feedback: one of the main reasons I wasn’t moving forward was my lack of demonstrable experience with accessibility.

For years, I’ve known about accessibility and its importance, and I’ve done the basics in the projects I’ve worked on. Even back when I was making Flash intros and banners (yes, it’s been a while), I tried to make sure the main content was still accessible and the intros easy to bypass. Being color blind myself, I’ve also always been mindful of color contrast and readability.

Pioneers like Jeffrey Zeldman taught me early on the importance of semantic markup and web standards, lessons I’ve carried with me ever since. How cool is it that years later I actually got to work with Zeldman.

During my time at Automattic, I made sure that the apps I worked on were at least keyboard accessible and compatible with screen readers like VoiceOver. But there were still a lot of areas I didn’t explore deeply, and I’ve never spent much time with the many accessibility testing tools that exist.

That feedback, combined with a few personal realizations, got me thinking seriously about where I’m lacking and what I can do about it. I’ve started updating my podcast library to focus on accessibility, following more accessibility experts on social media to learn from them, and taking online courses, starting with the free Introduction to Web Accessibility course from the W3C.

There’s still so much to learn and a lot of practice ahead, but already this focus has opened my eyes and given me a renewed sense of purpose. Going forward, I want to move away from being a generalist and instead specialize in accessibility to make what I build more inclusive and impactful. It will take a lot of time and work, but it’s also something I can start to incorporate right away into anything I do. I’m genuinely excited to focus here.

Job hunting update

The past few months have been a roller coaster and extremely humbling. At the start of this process, looking to find a new role, I might have even been a little cocky. Despite being let go as part of a large restructuring I truly felt like I was good at being a software engineer and that a good company would see that and things would work out.

With that mindset I took my time and only applied to a couple of companies as I wasn’t in a hurry to go back to work. Later this year I had my second sabbatical scheduled with some plans made for it. Seeing as that wasn’t going to happen anymore I felt like I could take a break and go at the search a little slowly, but still applying to promising roles.

For the past month now I’ve felt like I’ve had my break and I’ve been more serious about finding my next company. This is my first time in over ten years looking for a new job and things have certainly changed in that time. Maybe it’s partly that I’m only looking for remote roles, but I don’t think so. For the most part everything has seemed so impersonal. Even when I set my sights on Automattic way back I was able to seek out and have conversations with people there. While I’ve done some of that for companies that are high on my list, it feels harder than ever to make that personal connection.

The whole process is a strange paradigm and anxiety building. So many applications just seem to go into the void never to hear back from. I wake up each morning hoping to hear something. Then when I do and it is a rejection it is so deflating and I question, what’s better? Not knowing but still able to keep some hope, or no it’s over? It’s certainly better to know, but each time it’s still hard.

There have only been three companies so far where I’ve really felt like they’ve taken care in the hiring process. It’s not surprising that these three were the companies I was most excited about working for. Just this morning I received a kind and personal rejection email for a role I was so excited about. I knew it was a long shot, but they are a great company and I really felt like we’d fit well together. Knowing is better, but waking up to that message has left me down for the day.

Given the nature of job roles at my last company, there were no levels or separating titles, it has makes it hard to know where I fall in the market. When I started applying I thought I’d be a Senior Software Engineer. Maybe I’m only at the Intermediate level currently.

It got to the point last week that I was going to start applying for technical support roles again as I know where I stand there. I’m confident in my ability there. Contemplating things I remembered a conversation I had in one of my last 1:1 meetings with my last lead. After describing my progress on a project I was working on she said, you really like being a developer don’t you? She is absolutely right. I love it.

For probably over 20 years I’ve been building websites and applications on the web. While it wasn’t always my full time career, and I took a long break where I didn’t do much at all, I’m passionate about it. Since coming back to it full time over 4 years ago in a professional environment I’ve really updated my skills and learned lots. There’s always more to learn of course, and that’s one of the reasons I do love it.

One of the things that has kept me from really sinking is talking with past colleagues and re-reading the recommendations and nice things they’ve said about me. While I may not be at the Senior level, I really think I’m close, and I know once I find the right role I’ll close any gaps that there may be. So I’m not going to change tracks yet and I’m going to do my best to stay optimistic that I’ll find the right role for me at a great company.

Unexpected Goodbye, Unshakable Gratitude

The past few days have been difficult. After over 10 years working at Automattic my time has come to an end. As with any loss there has been a mix of feelings, but most consistently how I’ve been describing it to those close to me asking is heartbreaking. Although I always knew I didn’t have full control over this, my plan was to retire here.

My focus is on gratitude though. These years have been the most rewarding. I’ve written many posts about my time at Automattic and I know some of what I shared helped bring many people to the company.

Like so many work places it’s the people that make Automattic special. Though I have a terrible track record of keeping in touch with people, there are many who I consider friends, and who I will try to do better for. I’m not going to try to name them, because there are so many and I of course would end up missing some. Thank you to everyone who I’ve worked with especially those I’ve had the great fortune of being on the same team with.

My world really opened up during this time. From both traveling the world getting to meet up with colleagues, and from working with people who live all over. It also opened up career wise. From customer support, to leadership, to developer, I’ve learned so much and touched many different products. Hopefully I’ve left things at least a little better than and that I’ve done some good.

Not sure what comes next career wise. I’m going to take a little bit of time to prepare and figure it out. While it’s quite possible I’m a little delusional, I’m so far not incredibly worried. Thanks to my time at Automattic I have a lot to offer and things will work out.

Unseen influence, unspoken thanks

As I was sitting in a rural high school gym yesterday I found myself reminiscing about my own youth. It wasn’t for a typical reason you might think of for a middle aged man watching high school students play volleyball.

Despite liking sports and even once walked into a tryout to play for my high school, I quickly turned around, left and never played organized sports. So it wasn’t me reliving my glory years. Instead as I looked around the gym I thought I recognized someone, but wasn’t confident it was them. After checking with my friend, whose son I was there to watch, he confirmed it was who I thought.

It must have been 1999 or 2000 when I last saw them. We had worked together in a wood shop where we made country style furniture and decor. He worked in the manufacturing part of the operation and I worked in the finishing shop. We all worked closely together though and took our lunch and breaks together as well.

For some there this would be their career, or something similar. This person though had other plans. He was taking an Electronics course at our local community college and had goals to work at a local plant as a technician helping repair electronics and machines. The plant had a reputation for being a great employer and who paid one of the higher salaries in our area. For someone in my spot in life, having essentially dropped out of high school two years in a row, it seemed like one of the best possible outcomes for myself. So I listened to him and decided I’d follow his footsteps. Having often taken electronic things apart to try and see how they worked, or to try and fix them, it seemed like a fitting choice.

With somewhat of a plan now I dedicated myself and finished high school and enrolled in the same course. He was in the second year of the program while I was in the first though we didn’t interact a whole lot. The second years mostly stuck together and we did the same as first years.

The course was interesting and I learned a lot, though I never used it directly in my career.

Being laid off from the wood shop I had started working at a retail store part time. One of my co-workers there was also in the first year of the program I was in and we became friends. It was thanks to him that I found about a new company starting up and looking to hire a lot of people. It was a call centre doing internet technical support. It paid a lot better than the minimum wage we were making at the time and had flexible shifts so we could work lots around school.

At this point in time I was not technical or computer literate at all. My friend helped me study and he helped me email in my resume. We attended the career fair they had set up, and thanks to his help, and me eavesdropping on others who were at the career fair, I somehow managed to pass their technical test and so was on their list. I didn’t get hired in their first round, but I did in the second.

It was this job that really changed the trajectory of my life. It started me learning computers well. It was here where I had someone in leadership take notice of me and start giving me more opportunities. This lead to leadership positions of my own and I started to see the possibility of even more for my career. This is also where I started teaching myself to program and what pushed me to further my education in Computer Science. All these aspects though paled by the fact that is job is also where I met my wife.

All these thoughts and connections were quickly going through my mind while sitting in the gym. I’m certain he didn’t even recognize me, and I never said anything to him as I left. What would I say? 

You probably don’t remember me, but thank you or being a pivotal person in my life at just the right time. In part because you unknowingly steered me down this path, my life has ended up in a place that the high school drop out you knew back then couldn’t even see as a possibility. Thank you.

Reading with Ezra

One of the benefits of my renewed reading habit that I hadn’t seen coming was with my youngest Ezra. He has lots of energy and loves to be busy. His favorite thing is being outside, digging, collecting sticks and rocks, just being hands on with nature.

Ezra is also very inquisitive so I didn’t think much when he started asking me questions about reading. Why are you doing that? What is that thing? while pointing at my eReader. Being more deliberate about reading meant he saw me doing it more. In the past if I was reading it was probably early in the morning or after he went to bed.

We always have read to him each night at least. These are typically kids books. Books with lots of pictures, short stories you finish in one sitting. Typically multiple ones while lying in bed as the final step in our bedtime routine.

It didn’t surprise me when a few days ago he came up to me with James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl asking me to read it to him. What did surprise me though was how he sat right up, still and calm as could be, and listened intently to the first few questions. Taking in the story, asking questions about it, and wondering what would come next.

We’ve been reading it steady since then a few chapters here and there throughout the day, and then more at night cuddled up in bed. I thought he may get tired of it, but each time he comes and sits up and we read and talk about it together.

Looking back I guess it shouldn’t surprise me too much. About a year ago I read him one of my childhood favorites as our night time book, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It was a little deeper maybe than some of our other books. He asked lots of questions and we talked about how I loved him like the tree loved the boy. Enough to give him everything he had just to make the boy happy. The next day used his blocks to build a tree and a boy. He told me the boy was playing with the tree and loved the tree. As he played the boy took parts of the tree to build things and as he was done he had the boy sitting on the stump of the tree.

These reading sessions have become some of my favourite times of our day. We have a full collection of Roald Dahl books. I’m hopeful that I can instill in him a real love of reading and that we can continue on with this for a long time to come.

Not so fast

Right now I’m supposed to be high in the air flying across the country. Having my boys experience looking out the window and down at the clouds. The force of takeoff as you rush along the runway and then feel the wheels come off the ground. Watching the trees as they get smaller and smaller. Ezra has never been on a plane and Noah was so young last time that he doesn’t really remember. As much as airports and the process of flying can be painful, I’ll never not marvel and take in the actual act of flying.

But, instead of experiencing all this with my wife and boy’s, I’m sitting on my couch drinking a coffee.

Five years ago I had a sabbatical from work. We had this same trip booked and planned. Going to visit my sister and her family who we don’t get to see nearly enough.

The universe of course had other plans back then as well. A global pandemic and we had to cancel.

Our lives are busy and it wasn’t until now that we could work it out to go again.

I thought, nothing is going to stop us this time, so I’ll save money and booked the most basic flights which also means no changes, cancellations, or refunds.

This was a trip I needed. A break from the daily grind. A step outside the usual responsibilities.

Ah my cockiness. The universe was having none of that. Not only do you not get this, but here, have another serving of stress and heartache.

One of the hardest parts was telling my sons, both of whom have been looking forward to this for so long. They were packed and ready to go.

Ezra loves his cousins. He talks about them often and despite not seeing them much considers them his best friends. He’s too young to really understand and yet I could learn from him on how to deal with disappointment.

Noah’s first day of work

Today I’m feeling proud as a father. Yesterday Noah has his first real full day of work.

A couple of summers ago we hired my friends son, who had started a landscaping business, to replace our front lawn. Since we put it in it was terrible. The hydro seed never took and it was mostly weeds with dry dirt patches as well.

He took care of arranging the materials and tools and the two of us worked together to rip up the old lawn then lay new sod.

He is a hard worker and did a great job so it doesn’t surprise me that his business has been growing and this year he’ll be hiring help. The idea had been floated around previously but now it seems like Noah will be some of that casual help. He’s someone I’m glad for Noah to have as a mentor and first boss.

The business has not only grown but expanded beyond mostly mowing lawn and now has a contract to help out in a vineyard. That’s what Noah did yesterday.

Up early on the Saturday ending March break. The day started off crisp where I had to scrape the frost off the windows of the car before we drove out to Starrs Point. It’s a beautiful area and part of the local marathon route where I ran the half marathon last year. It’s one of my favourite local areas. Lots of farmland up against the Minas Basin that rises and lowers with the huge tides of the Bay of Fundy. The land is fertile, some of it reclaimed thanks to the dyke system.

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was up, one of first real nice days as winter dies down. As we drove our past fields through the winding roads the sun gleamed off the frosty branches of apple orchards.

On my way home from dropping him off I stopped along the Cornwallis River for a short break to drink some of my coffee. As I was driving an owl being chased by several crows flew directly in front of my car. A contrasting side of nature to the serenity I had just spent time in.

Noah’s day was in the rows of the vineyard pruning the vines. He learned the proper way to do this taking into account this year and next. Trimming so that there are two branches one pointing left and one right.

There were a couple of other people helping as well, including my friends younger son, one of Noah’s best friends.

I was never scared for his work ethic. Although he doesn’t do much around the house to help out, and I have to bribe him to do things like mow our lawn. But when he decides to do something he does it and puts in the effort.

As he was leaving the boss asked him how he felt and if he wanted to do it again. So it seems like the first day was a success.

Noah was proud of the work he did as filled me in on how much he completed and the techniques used. In his mind the first six hours of the day had been easy. But for the last two he was counting the minutes.

I feel with him. I know what a grind some of the hours of a work day can be. This seems like an excellent introduction to working through. Most of it will be in the summer, but not every day. So he’ll be able to have some responsibility and earn money, but still lots of time to have a summer and have fun.

I miss those days.