Santa Monica and Yahoo!
Santa Monica beaches.
My interview with Cobalt in Seattle last week obviously went well, as I did receive an offer for the web developer position that I was interviewing for. That, of course, made me very excited .
My impression of Cobalt is that they are very professional with a highly talented group of developers (at least the ones that gave me a hard time answering technical stuff).
Even after some negotiation, I ended up holding back in order to explore the other opportunities I had lined up, though.
I flew down to L.A. from Portland on April 11th for an interview with Yahoo! on April 12th and Internet Brands on April 13th.
First night was spent at a nice hotel in Santa Monica, close to Yahoo!’s office, and I am now at my second cousin’s place in the Valley.
The interview at Yahoo! turned out really great. It ended up taking most of the day (instead of the two hours I thought it would take), but ended very good.
In short, it looks like I will be joining Yahoo! Music‘s team of engineers in May! How sweet is that?!
I got a very good impression of the company and the Yahoo employees, and have high expectations. It will be great to work with such a professional crowd.
I was even certain enough to accept the offer before my scheduled interview with Internet Brands. I am pretty sure that it would have been exciting to work for Internet Brands too – after all, I have had several interviews with them and they too have left me with a good impression, but to me, personally, they wouldn’t have been able to compete with Yahoo! The interview process with Internet Brands did run smoothly, though.
I will be going back to Portland tomorrow in order to visit with the family there some more, before flying back to L.A. next Wednesday. I’ll then start looking for a place to stay, probably living out of an extended stay hotel (“leilighetshotell”) or something to begin with (so that Guro can be there when we pick the perfect rental).
Hopefully, we’ll be able to find something nice pretty close to the ocean, in areas like Santa Monica, Marina del Rey, El Segundo or Manhattan Beach.
Oh, and get a car. Cars, as you may know, are ridiculously cheap here in the US compared to Norway. Maybe I can even get myself a Volvo XC90 or Audi Q7 :p
Yup…very excited 
Seattle
Parts of downtown Seattle. Taken from Waterfront with my crappy XPERIA X1.
Monday’s flight from Norway to the US went well. Flying through Iceland turned out to be an OK route as the main flight from Reykjavik to Seattle only took a “mere” 7.5 hrs.
I am still in Seattle and will be staying here until Friday when I am heading down to Portland, OR. I have my first interview tomorrow — with Cobalt. On Sunday, April 11th I fly down to Los Angeles where I will be having a couple more interviews. I plan to stay in L.A. for the entire next week. After that I’ll just have to see what happens.
It is very exciting, but I do miss Guro & Norah. Looking forward (!) to getting them over in a few weeks’ time….
Preparing for Take-Off
Just launched this blog in time for my departure from Norway tomrrow Monday, April 5th. I will be staying in Seattle from Monday – Friday, Portland during the weekend, and Los Angeles the week after. Looking forward to a lot of exciting experiences
Happy Easter!