WARNING: Excessively long post. If you want the summary version instead...
I started to freak out about the post-WDI Meet and Greet event
Got an interview for a Node.js developer role
Got sick, started losing my voice and couldn't work on my portfolio and so freaked out some more
Had another inteview for a .Net MVC role (in C#)
Landed the Node.js role the day before the Meet and Greet so didn't have to attend! Phew!
We finished up our course on Wednesday (the 21st of May) and all of us headed off to Atlassian. We were first getting a guided tour of Atlassian's office space and then hanging out for SydJS in the evening (which is hosted at Atlassian). Joel was going to repeat his talk from JSConfAU at SydJS so we wanted to stay to support him… And also because they provide free beer and amazing pizza!
Anyway, the Atlassian tour was very cool. They truly do have an amazing office space. It's in the Westpac building on the corner of Martin Place and George Street which is obviously prime real estate. The office itself is equally amazing with a stocked kitchen, plenty of beer fridges (including a mini bar with tap beers), a room with a table tennis table and pool table, a breakout area with an arcade machine complete with all emulators imaginable, bike racks on all floors and is just a nice environment all round. Every staff member also has a desk that can be elevated to allow them to work while standing and stretch their legs. Definitely a great place to work.
At the end of the tour we got to ask questions to the Atlassian staff to get a feel for the company and their culture. During this Q&A, Scott Farquhar (the co-founder) casually wandered into the room and answered a few of our questions. Most of the class didn't recognise him but I had seen him in an article not long back. Was nice to get a visit as I'm sure he's a very busy man!
After the tour, I got a call from an agent I had sent my resume earlier. I had a chat to him about my background and also what types of roles I was interested in. Initially I said to him I was interested in rails roles, but I then also mentioned that I was also interested in javascript developer roles (front end roles minus the excessive CSS). It was lucky I did. Having mentioned this he said, oh yea, I might have a javascript role coming up, I'll let you know. He was also attending SydJS so I had a brief chat to him during one of the breaks between talks.
SydJS was good and we all made the most of the beers and pizza. Joel's speech was predictably hilarious and well worth a watch. We finished up with a few beers afterwards at the pub before parting ways for the last time as a complete group (Erik and Mathilda were both off to Byron Bay).
I intended to spend the Thursday and Friday chilling out, playing games and doing as little coding as possible. But in reality I spent most of the day doing boring shit I'd neglected for months and applying for a few jobs. The weekend wasn't any less hectic as we had a wedding to attend on Saturday (a friend of Pavs) and then Pav flew out for Malaysia on the Sunday. Finally Monday and Tuesday I got a little time to relax before it suddenly dawned upon me... I've only got a week until the Meet and Greet the following Thursday (the 5th of June)!
The Meet and Greet event is something GA uses as a means to set up new graduates with work opportunities. Essentially they invite companies to come and see the work that we have done in class and we spend 3 hours talking to them, showing off our portfolio and trying to sell ourselves. They had 60 companies sign up for the event so it was likely to be pretty big. This is a great initiative but also requires a lot of preparation. So a week after finishing my course, I stopped stressing about my final project and moved on to freaking out about my portfolio.
For the Meet and Greet, we each needed to prepare a personal portfolio site to show off our work and also touch up any issues with our projects. I knew this was going to be a lot of work, as although my projects were in fairly good shape, I'm not a designer and building an aesthetically pleasing portfolio was a scary prospect. Me and a few of my former classmates decided GA was a good place to get shit done distraction free, so most of the week I headed into class to work on my portfolio and hang out with them.
Around the middle of the week, I got a call back from the recruiter who asked me if I was interested in a role with a company called Prismatik for a role as a support developer in Node.js. I hadn't heard of the company but he told me they have very talented javascript developers working their and told me their sister company Thinkmill, built KeystoneJS (a Node.js CMS) and also the SydJS website.
I was immediately excited about the role. It felt strange to go for a role in Node when I had spent a good part of the 3 months learning Ruby on Rails. But I was excited at the prospect, as I knew Node was likely to be the next big thing and I really enjoy Javascript but had stayed well clear of Front End roles as writing CSS all day is not my idea of fun. I was concerned that I wouldn't get the role due to a lack of Node.js experience but this wasn't going to stop me from trying and I knew there aren't enough experienced Node developers around.
The interview got scheduled for Monday which was awesome, but also left me in a difficult position. I knew I had a lot left to do on my portfolio, but I also wanted to make sure I at least knew something about Node.js before my interview. Shit.... Naturally I chose the more interesting option and set about learning Node.js through the Code School tutorials.
By Monday I felt like I knew enough to at least talk some Node speak. Literally just before the interview I got a phone call from Tarun (the careers guy from GA) who suggested I would be a good candidate for a role he was recruiting with. This was again in a language I wasn't familiar with, .Net MVC (C#). This role was with an amazing company and this made it appealing, but I was much less interested about the prospect of learning C# when compared to Node. He wanted to set up an interview and I asked that this happen after the Meet and Greet event (on the Thursday). He said that was fine but to keep him posted on my Node.js role in case this moved quickly. I agreed but thought it unlikely I'd get an offer after a single interview.
The interview with Prismatik went really well and by the end I was confident I would get an offer without a second interview. The interview was with the CEO who was just a nice genuine guy and seemed very interested in taking me on board. It definitely helped that I was eager to learn node.js and had already put in some personal time to do so (and have continued this afterwards also). I also briefly got shown the office space and introduced to the team. I left the interview feeling pretty elated and praying that the offer would come in!
Having had such a good interview however, I wanted to do the right thing and let Tarun know that this offer was likely to progress quickly. Because of this he wanted to move the interview forwards to Wednesday (the day before the Meet and Greet). This was super awkward as I knew I had so much to do on my portfolio but Tarun is a good guy and I felt I owed it to him to at least have the interview before I got the offer. So I agreed to the interview on Wednesday.
Right on queue on Tuesday night I started to get sick with the flu. I contemplated cancelling the interview Tuesday night but felt this would be a pretty shitty thing to do. So I rocked up to the interview in Green Square (which was a bit of hike), feeling like shit, having lost half my voice and was operating on very little sleep. The interview went very well and Bevan (the CTO) was also a nice guy and very knowledgable. He offered to setup a second interview to which I agreed, not wanting to reject any opportunities until I had signed a contract. I left the interview still feeling pretty shitty and so headed home to go back to sleep.
At this point things were not looking good for my portfolio. It was 3/4 finished but I just felt too shitty to keep working on it. But then, just in time, on Wednesday morning I got a call from the agent telling me the offer had come in from Prismatik. I was thrilled! I had given the other offer consideration but reached the conclusion that Prismatik was the company for me. I accepted the offer and immediately felt a huge wave of relief. The timing couldn't be better as having a part finished portfolio and only half my voice wasn't going to make for a successful Meet and Greet event for me.
So now what? Well this post has been WAYYY too long as it is, but maybe I'll look back on it one day to reflect on my time at GA. For me, the future is now Node and I can't wait to get started in my new role (on the 1st of July). Recently, I have a new idea for a continuation of this blog. In the lead up to my job and obviously once I start, learning Node is going to be a huge component. As such, I'm going to endeavour to post my Node learning experiences on Tumblr (in a seperate blog). Hopefully this will be of help to others who have intentions of learning Node.js also.
If you got to this point, thanks for reading (you must have been really bored!?) and I hope you'll enjoy my future posts on Node! You can find my new blog here.