Tag: career

Hello blog – it’s been a while!

It’s been a busy year-and-a-half (thereabouts).

Here’s what’s happened (on the personal side):

• Decided to upgrade to a condominium
• Had to sell my current place to fund the new place
• My father passed away
• Dealing with the legal issues of my father’s passing
• Finding a buyer for my house
• Packing and moving to a temporary place to stay (twice)
• Receiving the keys to the new place, and doing default checks and then renovation
• Moving into the new place.

On top of those, there was the work stuff to deal with of course. I got a promotion (of sorts), and now lead a slightly larger team. Progress has been slow, but it’s still moving in the right direction, so I can’t complain.

That’s it for now – I’ll update more in the next few days, I promise!

Well, that’s one promise I didn’t keep. How did 3 years just go by? I quit my job, joined another company, and quit THAT job after a year and a half. Its been 9 months since I left full-time employment – that went by is a flash!

So what have I been up to? Power-lifting 1000 pounds (453KG) between the squat, deadlift and bench-press. Working on my Marketo, SFDC and Google Analytics certifications. Reading exactly 29 fantasy fiction books. Oh, and applying for more than 400 jobs.

Job hunting during the COVID-19 pandemic has been anything but easy. There was a period in April where I didn’t get a single call or email for about 3 weeks. Of the 400 jobs, I’ve maybe received a call back from 50 companies, and of those I’ve had at least 1 interview with 20 different companies. From the 20, 5 made it to the next stages. And exactly 0 turned into actual offers.

It has been frustrating, but I am fortunate to have a wonderful family, and a large financial buffer to fall back on. Instead of wallowing in self pity, I’ve used this opportunity to focus on myself and my family, and I am thankful for the bonds I have formed with my daughter. Every cloud has a silver lining, and that would be mine.Not to forget, the last 9 months have also brought us this:

After 30 years, Liverpool have finally, finally won the English Premier League!!!

So after three years at Fuji Xerox, it was time for a change. I started looking around (quite passively, I might add), and found an amazing opportunity at Amazon Web Services.

Amazon is one of the five companies I would not say no to (the others being Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Apple).  The role was more focused and narrower than what I was doing at FX, but it gave me more room to grow and develop. And most importantly, there was not ceiling on my ambitions.

After eight(!) round of interviews, I finally received an offer, which I promptly accepted. Financially it was not a huge increment, but I accepted the offer anyway as I felt that this was where I could fulfill my career aspirations.

The interviews all happened within 2 weeks, and I was impressed at how structured and intense it was. It was similar to the Microsoft hiring process, but the major difference was that the interviews drilled down deep on the Leadership Principles.

I’m now looking forward to learning from the best in the business, and working with a team that is truly innovating and a company that has enormous potential to grow.

Wish me luck!