76 Card Pick-up
A poem about the interview process, and other silly games we play with the world
it started with an intro
hi, I’m Van…
something concise, and yet
needing to thoroughly convey
roughly 14,000
days of experience
not all of it relevant, mind-you
the result of an exercise
given by
the hiring consultant
I hired
somewhere along the way
to sketch-out, capture, and crystalize the borders
of who I was, am, and desire to be
in any order
naturally
we spread it all out
a grand tapestry, unfolding
flags planted on foreign, abstract terrain
cross-functional
conquests and milestones, noted
and scaled up
and to the right
in re-imagined, strategic product verticals
aligned with company values
mission-driven
and hungry for growth
what’s left out, of course
are all the scrapes and bruises
conflicted over company values
dots connect, convenient
retroactively
XP
reverse-engineered and
broken down into sections
“Goals for my next role”
command-clicks into
“Finding teams that share your values”
needle spinning
deferred compass headings
join other new tabs, effortlessly
a Kanban board
my Interview Process on display
status cards
quantitatively arranged by state of play
I drag myself from
Research to Applied
then over to Interviewing, in Progress
eventually
No Response 👻, dismay
better yet, a response: Rejected
although hasty feedback notes say
“you were all over the place” or
“we’re going a different direction”
after 9 calls, the take-home exercise, and a 10-6 interview
forgive me
I’m losing count of uncompensated full days
anyway
the one column that keeps me going
has got to be
Chose Not to Pursue
it shines now
my dignified, little delicious
attempt at agency
a cope, role-playing reversals
for a moment in time, I'm
the decision-maker
head-turning, predator from prey
oh well
but, it's all mahalo
you know the story
here today, gone tomorrow
tough pills, in the land of chew and swallow
tell us more how you ran
uphill, both ways
tough act to follow
hey kid,
truth is
we don't need the Oracle of Apollo
to find out, after 76 bouts
who kept dealing the cards
it was you, without a doubt
and each time
you got your answer
finding new ways to lose
pieces of yourself
in the wrong arena
waking up
to do it over again
I got a new game
it's called 52-card pick-up
wanna play?
sure thing, I said genuinely
and with that, the cards fell
where they may
Thanks for reading! This poem came to mind as I remembered the Kanban board I created for my “Interview Process” 2022. It ended up lasting most of the year, as I interviewed with at least 76 companies formally. I didn’t know it at the time, but it ended up being my Farewell Tech tour. I look back on it in a new light now, and want to offer something to people going through this grueling interview process.
It can make you question your value. “why don’t these other companies see my worth?” and “why are they mis-interpreting what I gave a great answer for?” or “why are they giving me hurtful non-constructive feedback?”
It can make you over-think and over-prepare, with so much advice turning us into Products rather than people. From “Have your elevator pitch ready! make sure you cover everything, but don’t be too long-winded!” to the truly de-humanizing “make sure to have a mind-palace of all your stories and experience organized so you can have the perfect anecdote ready in STAR answer format” (I was once docked for not following an answer format exactly in an interview).
It can make you sacrifice your boundaries, agreeing to do days of uncompensated work. Sometimes, the assignments are even directly aligned with the company’s actual problems and strategies, which is truly unethical not to compensate candidates for.
The more I look back on this, the more I recognize how much “rejection as redirection” worked out for me. I did Choose Not to Pursue many of the companies, which I tried to capture in this poem as a powerful self-affirming gesture. I would also like to say that I recognize this is a place of immense privilege to be able to “not pursue” a company based on their red flags, and I hope more people can feel comfortable saying no and setting boundaries as they make sense in their situation.
There were also many disappointments: places I imagined working at and that I got SO far in the process in, pulled away at the last moment with a hurtful, nonsensical comment about my performance in one interview. It feels like lazy justification because it is.
The more distance I have from this, the more I realize it was really about each role not being aligned for me. Yes, that can be cliche. But think about it - would we really like to be in a role that didn’t compensate us for hours of work - what will it be like when we get in the door? Will we really want to work somewhere that was threatened by our skills and had to make-up a reason to discredit us? I know it doesn’t seem like it, but these are slow-motion Matrix bullet-time dodges, and it just takes a minute for them to whiz by before we realize it.
As for me, I don’t have it all figured out. It is scary to play 52-card pick-up with a career and see what happens next, but it was time for a new arena. I hope everyone in the interview process today can set boundaries, see the rejection as a redirection, and move on to something more aligned with their purpose.
If you’d like to read similar pieces about emotionally navigating the interview process, I suggest “split-second glimpses” by Franco Amati:
Franco Amati
Take care
🦋