Geodog

The Dream Job that Got Away

I was reading Dan Gillmor's Weblog a couple of weeks ago and saw his piece on Mitch Kapor's new Open Source Application Foundation and their project to make an open source PIM, code named Chandler. I followed up and checked out the website, and got really exited. I have been frustrated by the lack of a decent PIM on Windows, and as a result use a combination of programs (Eudora for email, Outlook/Palm for calendaring and contacts, MyBase, AskSam, and Ticklist for information capture and retrieval, and NoteStack and TickList for to dos. I would love to have a decent Windows PIM that did all those things. I looked at the team, and was very impressed - a lot of smart people who have built good stuff. Then, as I am wont to do these days, I looked at the job listings. I saw that they were looking for a product manager.

My first thought was: "That would be a dream job -- Work with really smart people, building a really great product that lots of people will want -- I want that job."

My second thought was "Everybody and their brother is going to apply for this job."

So I wrote up a cover letter and sent it and my resume to the mail link that OSAF had posted, but I also decided to campaign for the job. I racked my brains trying to think of who knew me and my work well, and also knew someone at OSAF. I sent mail to people who I had worked with in the past, asking them if they knew anyone on the OSAF people page. I hate doing this kind of thing, and haven't done it for any of the other jobs that I have applied for, but I figured that I needed to make some connection, otherwise my resume would just get buried in the pile of hundreds. It turned out that my first boss in high tech, at GO Corporation, knew one of the people at OSAF and was willing to put in a good word for me, which he did. Then I signed up for all the OSAF mailing lists, lurked on them, checked the OSAF website and Mitch Kapor's Weblog daily, and waited. And waited.

A week later I came down with the flu, and was lying in bed when I heard the home office phone ring, and someone leave a message. I stumbled upstairs and heard that it was soneone from OSAF, wanting to talk to me. I jumped up, grabbed a few tylenol and drank a few cups of coffee, then called back. I had a very pleasant phone interview with John Anderson that went on for a about an hour, at the conclusion of which John told me to hold myself in readiness for a call inviting me to an in-person interview in a couple of days. I was so eager I couldn't stand it. I spend the next two days doing everything I could think of. I did my own competitive analysis, downloading and reviewing existing PIMS, email clients, and P2P groupware (Groove). I read up on Python and wxPython and ZOPE. I googled all the current members of the OSAF team. I thought about what problems I would attack first, and how I would attack them (requirements, competitive analysis and user scenarios -> specs). I skimmed though some of my project management books just to remind myself of some of the issues. I even read up on the other person Kaitlin Duck Sherwood who I knew had applied for the job.

I got the call to come in, and went down to OSAF for an afternoon of interviews. The interviews lasted 4 1/2 hours, and I met with nine people. I actually had a great time, although I was pretty wiped by the end of the day. As always happens in our industry, I found that I had at least remote connections with half the people on the team, and in one case discovered that the wife of the engineer interviewing me was best friends with the wife of one of my best friends - so goes Silicon Valley. I would only give myself a B+ for my interview performance -- I was still recovering from the flu, and it has been so long since I have sat at that side of the table that I didn't have answers ready for all the standard questions (what was your worse mistake, what was your greatest accomplishment...), but it was a lot of fun and energizing to talk to these really intelligent people about the exiting product they were building, and how I could help them with the challenges involved. I wanted that job so bad I could taste it. But it was not to be.

I was told that I would hear in 4-5 days whether or not I had gotten the job. Five days went by without hearing anything. Even though I knew it was foolish, and that odds were strongly against my getting the job, I put my job hunt in suspended animation. Who could apply for a job as a PM managing the company wide upgrade of Peoplesoft version x when it was possible that I could get this job? 6 days went by, then 7. I was nerving up to call and check on the process, when I got the phone call. I was very nicely told that someone else was going to get the job. I was told that while I was well qualified for the job, this other candidate was even more qualified, having founded a company during the dot com boom which he later sold for $74 million. Plus, salary wasn't an issue for him. How can you compete with that?

I am getting over it slowly. I am trying not to hate the person who got the job, which as far as I can tell he is well qualified for, and I am actually planning on sending him an email offering to help him out, since I still hope that Chandler is going to be a great product, and they clearly need some help in defining it. I'm not checking the OSAF site daily. And only once a day do I fantasize about how I would be doing the job now. Most days.