Tag Archives: redundancy

Redundancy Diary: Impostor syndrome

This is part of a series of articles talking about my experience of being made redundant from Arista. I am writing these articles as the events happened, though out of respect to my former employer I held off publishing them for several months. The hope is that writing about this will give some encouragement to other people who find themselves in the same position.

This weekend I settled down to do a coding test sent to me by a prospective employer. I had a good feeling about my chances with this employer: they got back to me promptly, and I’d already had a good conversation with the CTO on the phone. Unfortunately the coding test didn’t go at all well: It should have taken me an hour, but after 90 minutes I was still struggling with how to correctly calculate monthly repayments under compound interest. Of course, I should have looked up the formula on the web, but when I first looked I couldn’t find a formula in a form that would be useful to me, so I assumed a more clever implementation was needed. In the end, after some panicking, I ended up with code that looked very rushed and barely met the requirements.

This was a major blow to my confidence. I was prepared to have my mettle well and truly tested by the hedge funds who pay 6-figure bonuses, but frankly I wasn’t expecting the same challenge from the test at a web start-up. With only this one recent experience to generalise from, I ended up despairing.

My experience of applying for jobs has been that it’s almost impossible to be objective, and to put experiences into the proper context. Thus after a single failure I was ready to conclude that no employer would want me. Perversely, I believe some of this has to do with the fact that I’ve found getting job offers so easy in the past.

I’ve mentioned in the past how having a Cambridge degree (even a mediocre degree like mine) seems to attract employers to a degree that seems irrational. With Cambridge on your CV, you can generally count on sailing through the early screening rounds and get a flying start in the final interviews. I’ve managed to maintain something like a 90% success rate of getting job offers from my applications, and I can’t shake the feeling that it just can’t be that easy.

Along with this goes the nagging feeling that some day things will catch up with me, and I’ll find it just as hard to get a job offer as everyone else does. And right now, I’m starting to worry that that day is today.

I don’t particularly want to add to the high number of people on the internet with self-diagnosed Impostor Syndrome, but it seems worthwhile to point out that this is a recognised pattern.

Redundancy diary: Waiting by the phone

This is part of a series of articles talking about my experience of being made redundant from Arista. I am writing these articles as the events happened, though out of respect to my former employer I held off publishing them for several months. The hope is that writing about this will give some encouragement to other people who find themselves in the same position.

I’ve done a whole bunch of applications. I’ve spoken to my recruiter, who has put me forward for a bunch more. Not much I can do but wait by the phone.

And it’s annoying. An entire day has passed and I haven’t heard from anyone. Two companies have already said that they want to interview me, and will get back to me to arrange a date, but nothing today. Which brings me to what I believe is a universal law of applying for jobs: As an applicant, it always seems a whole bunch more urgent than it does as an employer. This goes double when you don’t have an existing job to rely on.

I’m not wasting my time, of course. I’ve been drilling myself on data structure basics, and trying to write C++ longhand and still make it compile. I’ve been reading through Exceptional C++ and even nailed a couple of the questions first time. But right now all this seems pointless, preparing for an interview that may never happen.

So I’ve decided not to play the game of waiting by the phone. I’ve got many side-projects that I’d love to do more with, including this blog. I’ve got an unexpected windfall of free time, and I may as well do something that will have a lasting impact beyond the next few weeks of interviews.

Redundancy diary: Applications get serious

This is part of a series of articles talking about my experience of being made redundant from Arista. I am writing these articles as the events happened, though out of respect to my former employer I held off publishing them for several months. The hope is that writing about this will give some encouragement to other people who find themselves in the same position.

This morning I started the process of making serious job applications. My experience of job applications in the past has been almost entirely positive: I work in a field where qualified people are in high demand, and I’m sufficiently articulate to make a good fist of the written application process and the face-to-face interviews. It would be almost impossible to imagine how I might have had more positive reinforcement from the job-hunting experience in the past (I don’t necessarily think I’m a perfect employee once hired, but as an interview candidate I do very well indeed).

And yet I’m petrified. Absolutely consumed by nervousness, to the point where simple tasks take an age, and complex tasks get put off indefinitely. I managed to knock out five job applications first thing in the morning by making heavy use of my already-written CV and covering letter template. I was hoping to make use of the rest of the day to catch up on some new technologies and sharpen my Clojure or C++ skills with a couple of programming projects, but I can’t concentrate on anything at the moment. I’ve had a few positive responses from people wanting to arrange phone calls, but right now this is just making it worse.

I’ve never felt quite so bad when applying for jobs, but then the stakes have never been this high. I have about 6 weeks of runway thanks to my notice period and (minimal) redundancy pay, and objectively this is more than enough time to find a software job in London. But I’ve never previously been in the situation where there’s even a possibility that I might end the month without a job.

I don’t know if this is at all encouraging to people, but I take some heart from the fact that nervousness seems to strike entirely independently of circumstance. If ever you find yourself thinking “I’d be more relaxed if only I’d had better luck with interviews in the past”, just forget it. You’re nervous because you care about the outcome, and that won’t go away.