OK so let me start from the top
Wednesday 13th Febuary AKA when I saw Waivelength
I got on the train and a woman sits at the table opposite me
I'd say early 30s, dark skinned, dreads, probably a bit drunk
takes out two bottles of wine and a muffin from starbucks from her purse and starts drinking as soon as the train moves
only thought is "glad someone's having fun"
Get my laptop out and start to work, use my phone to watch the nintendo direct
Only words she says are her phoning the taxi company asking if they accept apple pay, bit odd but hey, globalisation for you
Train says it's arriving at leicester so I start packing my things up
As I start to leave, I put my rucksack on the table and accidentally knock the napkin her muffin came on the floor
I grab it, put on the table and apologise
she then smiles at me and says
"are you a programmer by any chance?"
I was a bit surprised by this statement, my first thought was in relation to the apple pay part
I say "sort of, yeah!" and she explains how she recognised the model of laptop I was using and how her company just bought a bunch of them
I then I asked what she worked as and she says she worked in Artificial Intelligence at AWS
I was shocked at this as this is a perfect fit to my PhD
I say I'm researching that and jokingly say if she has any jobs available that I graduate in september
She then says to get in contact with her and she could help me out
The train door opens and I have seconds to get out
She asks if I have linkedin, i said i do but hadn't been updated, I put her name into my phone as fast as I could and sprint out the train with a single second to spare
(sometimes wonder what happened if I missed my stop allowing myself to talk to her more)
So I get home and try to get to my linkedin account but none of my passwords work and I can't find what email account it's connected to. I have a suspicion it's been deactivity due to inactivity
I then rush to make a new account to contact her as soon as possible while she still remembers me
I put in all my account information and then it asks for my phone number to send a verification code to
I give it my number but I accidentally hit f5 when typing in the code
This causes the page to refresh. It doesn't accept the old code and when i request a new one it won't accept that number anymore
I message all my friends who are online at that time asking if I can borrow their number for this process
they all say variations of their phone's dead, they already have an account so don't think it'll work etc
For the time being no-one will help. I decide i need to do something in the morning
Wake up and contact my dad about what happened, despite having a linkedin, he gives me his number and the process works
I make a new linkedin account and find out I need Linkedin Premium to contact this woman which is 50 dollars a month!!! (luckily for me they have a 1 month free trial)
I send her this message about being the guy from the train, attach my CV, when I'm available for a job etc
send it off and expected to get nothing back as just some Jape
I get a response within the hour
It says to look at AWS's website and find a job and that she'd refer me to a colleague who'd fast track me through the process
It's at this point I decide to look into what aws IS
Amazon Web Services
yep
She wants me to work for amazon
I'm a bit perturbed by this but I decide to look anyway
Knowing that I'd describe myself as a data scientist given that's my dream position at DeepMind I have a look if any of their jobs sound like that
Turns out they had three different positions available in London and Cambridge: Graduate Data Scientist, Data Scientist and Senior Data Scientist
I look through them and it seems like a tiered structure however the one thing that sticks out is that the Senior position is the only one that's looking for doctorate holders as a preference
At this point I decide that if this company IS offering me a job then I might as well go all or nothing given what senior positions get paid and if I don't get it then I can do the postdoc
(glassdoor says senior data scientists get £70k as a base rate... yeah)
So I wrote a message to her back about my choosing that position and I attach my CV with my proper credentials
and then
YOU CANNOT ACCESS THIS USER'S PROFILE
I looked carefully and no matter what I did everytime I searched this person it said they didn't exist
I looked it up and confirmed my suspicions in that I was nearly positive this woman had blocked me
I kept rerunning the incidents in my head and nothing made any sense. Why had she done this? Was it some sick joke to lure them into this business? Was it some contest they had over there?
I talk it over with some friends and one of them says I should make a new linkedin account and message her again
at this point i'm a bit worried about doing this. Namely that she's a black woman in the tech industry who probably puts up with enough harassment with this industry as is and making another account might cross a line I really won't want to
But she insists and offers to help write a message back from the new email on monday
So we leave it over the weekend to see if anything changes (it doesn't) and I still can't contact her
So we meet on monday and we make using my Hotmail address over my university address, I get another free trial and draft a message to her asking to send over my CV for the position I was interested in and who else I needed to contact
to BOTH our surprises she responded within minutes saying she had no idea what was going on and that she told one of her colleagues about me and that I should email her at the start of next week because that person was at a AI expo in Las Vegas that I nearly went to before settling on the Italy conference next month
To this day I still have no idea why linkedin decided to cause a block between us
I ask for her email address and we make a connection so I have all her info if I ever need it
Over last week I updated my CV adding in as much current info as I could on all the projects I'm juggling and the areas I have expertise in (I have since found out that I have 6 papers to my name with a further 6 that'll be completed by graduation. The average for a PhD student is 2. I'll have at least 12)
I send her the email on tuesday and got a response thanking me for my information and wanting to know when I planned to start
This was tricky. My current contract finishes in September however this doesn't include VIVA prep (4 hour interview you get when you hand in your final thesis) and correction time for when they find as many holes as they can in your arguments. I take a rough guess and say January 2020 but even this doesn't include the various post doctoral roles that I could be offered on completion of my current work, of which I've already been offered three positions in MRI evaluation, mammogram spectroscopies and security footage detection respectively
I go with the above and they said if my qualifications looked good enough they would be in further contact with me
I got an email yesterday that they were happy with my CV and want to do a phone interview with me.
The recipient told me to make an appointment in his calendar. I selected friday morning so I've got a week to research as much as I can about Amazon and prepare for all the competency based questions they can ask.
I haven't been interviewed in years so I'm asking the university to prepare me so I'm doing a course with them wednesday morning along with some other PhD specific mentoring which I'm hoping will stack up when the time comes (doesn't help I'm still getting over a bad cold I caught on saturday)
and... that's everything
I guess the whole Selling Your Soul To Amazon byline is giving me pause given what I've heard about their employee treatment but I have little expectations of my job prospects post uni when my courses have been this specialised. All the research I'm doing has me stuck in a loop and it seemed like Deepmind was the only place that met any of my criteria until Amazon through me a lifeline through this random stranger. I have no idea what to do anymore but after my tenure for the UK government i'm suspicious but even if I do hate it I can use this experience to leapfrog into a job that's less morally bankrupt
or maybe I ladder climb into a six figure salary and lose all moral fibre I ever had! 2020 the year of burning bridges. I don't know where it's going to end but I might as well try
Ok what's even WEIRDER is looking up her position at AWS on linkedin it seems like she graduated Loughborough in 2017 (town very near here) and given that she herself is in a graduate role... I think she's like... 22?
and that she's in a GRADUATE role that'll be several rungs below where my position will be if I do get in
My dad told me these employees get a huge referral bonus if I do get accepted which I guess was her onus for wanting me to succeed
which, more power to her but it's brazen in a way I didn't know companies could be (I heard the referral scheme had been dumped at other places due to lack to reward but guess this is the exception? how strange)
EDIT: I was all prepared for the interview them found out the recruiter double booked my interview and forgot to notify me so We've changed the date to Next Wednesday... oh bureaucracy.
DOUBLE EDIT: 20th March, They interviewed me and said I'd succesffully made it through. Since I told them I wasn't going to hand in my thesis until september and couldn't start until January they said they'd have me meet some data scientists at their office in Shoreditch, London in Mid September and they'd then tell me whether they'd like to hire me... They said the base salary was 60k.