Spiral

As most people would likely agree, to wait for something coveted might be romantic but seldom truly engaging. Being essentially in-between two radically different stages of my life I find waiting for relocation mildly boring. According to the recent gossip at work we are believed to move to the US in mid-November if not even December. Frankly, this sort of news is pretty demoralizing even not taking into account the weather which will ensue here in October.

In contrast to some bodyshops my present company does not expect from its employees independent job hunting. They have a few big corporate accounts and tend to place consultants to those companies only. Under such circumstances not only it is difficult to join a team working on something exciting but also to contribute to shifting the departure date closer to Oct 01.

Amid all this uncertainty I found that corp-2-corp hiring is reasonably common in telecommunications. A quick search at Dice immediately dug up a few vacancy descriptions full of such dear to my heart words as SIP, JAIN or Parlay. Surprisingy enough, even BEA has such a vacancy open a year after I saw it for the first time. This abundance jolted me into action. I have updated my Dice CV and I am definitely going to apply for a few found positions. The fact that most of them are in the Bay Area might complicate the logistics (by default I am supposed to go to the vicinity of NYC) but for the first time in my life I really feel myself capable of a serious foray into the heart of the software universe.

I admit I am pretty nervous about this undertaking. Telco is a demanding domain and I have been losing my skills in it since the time I went after my H-1B. It would be very awkward to fail an interview just because I am a bit out of practice after I sacrificed my telco career for the sake of the US. Nevertheless, I believe I was blessed with pretty unique experience in my previous company and this kind of baggage is durable. The only real obstacle I see is that I am completely unable to discuss anything money-related. I wonder whether anybody will be game for seriously talking to me without any idea of the rate which my company charges its customers. Anyway, I feel alive again, I see exciting projects out there so thing are looking up now. Even in the worst case I hope to speed up my relocation regardless of the chosen customer by the virtue of having more offers than my colleagues. Let's go get them :)

News from elsewhere. One of my old friends has moved from Switzerland to London, UK. Essentially, he found that with his current citizenship he had fat chance of professional success in his previous location. His first impression of the second world capital: 'a lot of garbage and non-Europeans'. So mush for the former envy of the world.