Job Hunting

2026-08-04

I am a little anxious this morning, I have an interview in SF and am a little anxious about it. Will I perform well technically? Will they like me? Will I like them?

And over the years I have learned two defenses for this type of thinking, one is being grateful for the things I have. It helps to remember what I do have so even if this interview goes poorly I am in a more positive mindset, also at least for me the things I have outweigh everything else. So in no particular order:

• My own and my family’s health
• A nice house in a nice place
• My lovely wife Sneha and working and providing health insurance
• Two healthy and happy kids (I know this overlaps with my family’s health, I have learned that health is pretty important)
• Some money in the bank

I think the other thing I do, which my Dad is big on, is to think about the worst thing that can happen realistically. I feel there is some kind of joke in here, like, ‘ohh the worst that can happen is that I get hit and killed by a trolley in SF’. That is possible but not very likely.

Even in my worst interviews, I interviewed at google for a site reliability position (a position I shouldn’t have applied for since I do more feature work) and I had a few good interviews but more than a few terrible ones where I couldn’t answer the question well. Even in those interviews all I lost was a few hours of my life. And I was sad for a while, that too. But materially it wasn’t that big of a deal and I should try to keep that in mind. I still had all of the things above and I got to meet a few new smart people.

Also one other thing I heard, both of these are kind of coping mechanisms for anxiety, pretty good ones IMO, but they don’t get at the root cause of the anxiety. And that is ok. I don’t need to get rid of anxiety around job hunting, that is a normal thing. I should embrace the anxiety and live with it, it is pretty little and part of the normal human range of emotions. I dont think this is true for every emotion, like for real depression I would want to get professional help and there are probably some other ones, but more some emotions they seem pretty natural and healthy.

Well even after writing this blog I feel a bit better. The coffee tastes nice, the kids are still asleep, it can still be a nice morning.

-Gary