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Career job hunting

Cate’s Career Coaching Process (AKA A Process for Finding Your Next Job)

I know a number of people who have been laid off recently – the market is on a downturn and this is more common than seems to be being talked about. I’ve spent timeĀ helping a few people try and find their next thing lately, and after some iterations I now have a process. 1. What […]

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Career job hunting management

Interviewing as a Manager

The final part of interviewing for my last job involved coming to Colombia for 3 days and having 21 1:1s. FYI, this is the kind of thing that immigration finds very suspicious and resulted in me being detained and searched for drugs in Canada. But I digress. I firmly believe that people should interview their […]

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Career job hunting management Programming WISE women in computer science

Bad Interviews are a Company Problem, not a Candidate Problem

We know technical interviewing is a problem but rather than asking interviewers to do better, a lot of suggested solutions push that problem off onto people we interview rather than those who are doing the interviewing. This comes up a lot because the hiring process is the second most popular place to improve “diversity” after […]

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job hunting Organization Programming Reflections WISE women in computer science

Being Dispensable

I heard a horrible story the other day – someone had been off work because they were seriously ill, and a week before they returned to work one of their colleagues called all her clients and said she was never coming back. Shocking, right? Bitchy! Horrifying. Disgusting behavior. Hurtful. The last thing you need. If […]

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job hunting Programming

Round 2 @ Google

If you follow my Twitter, I may have already given away the ending to this! But as a continuation from my first round, here is my experience for my second (final) on-site with Google two weeks ago. What Did I Do To Prep? Things were a little hectic with the end of Extreme Blue and […]

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inspiration job hunting Reflections

Defining Dreams

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture was, and remains, the most moving video I have found on the internet. It’s about how to achieve your dreams, but more than that – how to live your life. The thing is, I don’t really seem to have the kind of dreams he had. So from time to time I […]

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Extreme Blue job hunting Networking Organization

Failure Is Not An Option

Having admitted that I seek out a high level of stress, it’s timely that I have, once again, gone way past the level of stress that I like to operate and hit the “woah this is damaging to my productivity” bit. I wrote before about How to be Crazy Busy Without Losing Your Mind and […]

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Education Extreme Blue job hunting Presentation Reflections

When Excellent is Adequate, Nothing is Ever Good Enough

I have the dubious distinction of being the intern, who on my self evaluation, had the biggest (positive) different between how my team rated me, and how I rated myself. I gave myself all average marks, bar one (initiative, +1). My 3 teammates evaluated me, and I only had one average mark, total, so I […]

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job hunting Programming

Interviewing @ Google

For those of you who didn’t know (or work it out), this is where I interviewed last week. It went well, I think – at least I feel like I did the best I could and whatever happens that will be helpful. I agreed to an NDA, so I can’t write about the questions that […]

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Education Extreme Blue job hunting Organization Programming Reflections

Delegation – What Value Do You Place on Time?

My friends and some of my colleagues have been mocking me for “outsourcing my life”. I don’t think that expression is accurate though – it’s more that I’ve been outsourcing details in order to enjoy life more (and achieve more). For me, it’s all about leverage. How can I leverage myself in order to do […]