About two weeks ago, I left my previous company.
I didn't start looking for a new job right away. I went to Wudang Mountain for a few days first, ...
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@xulingfeng THATS INCREDIBLE NEWS! Glad you got a good job working with people you already know and (hopefully) enjoy working with! Honestly, that's the best possible outcome I coulda hoped for you! In the modern world of toxic workplaces, having an old colleague vouch for you makes a huge difference and you landed right in the honeypot, good growth opportunity, a friend on the inside, informal hiring process, all point to a job that knows they need you and you have the skillset to impress! I hope you also pushed your book a lil 😂 Any CTO that reads it would immediately think 'this guy gets it' and you know, book sales never hurt anyone. When do you start?
Seems like Wu Wei was the best approach for you, go on holiday, come back and do what you enjoy doing and you got it!
P.S. update on my side, still nadda from Fractile, BUT... I do have an interview with Wasmer on friday 🤞 Essentially, I'd be writing same stuff I'm already doing for MCP, rewrite the world to run in WASM, so anything can execute anywhere at near native speed. So definitely a fun challenge, lets just hope the hiring process is better than the horror stories on the internet make them out as 😅
@unitbuilds Thanks a ton for all the kind words! I haven’t got my official start date yet, waiting for further notice. I did mention my book briefly during discussions 😂
I’m passing some of the good wishes and luck from this post over to you, hope it brings you lots of fortune, haha.
Really rooting for your Wasmer interview on Friday! WASM‑related work sounds super interesting. Fingers crossed the whole hiring process goes smoothly for you 🤞
And actually fits right in with what I built before, you remember towards the end of my series that started me on writing the IDE? I ended up with a single address space OS running ring-0... Well... It just so happens that the JIT compiler I built for it was exactly that, shelling it to WASM, so it's platform agnostic and can run anything in it's private sandbox... They're small team, about 12 people, so cross-functional is a mandate, the role is for distributed systems, which my Drone would help alot with testing and things like my MCP would fit right in! Salary wont be extraordinary, because they're still small, but good growth potential and working on things I already enjoy doing in my free time! So who knows, maybe the job that picks you is the one you're meant to have?
From my experience, try not to overthink it, it will only add unnecessary mental pressure. Now that you’ve got the interview, just go for it, speak your mind. If it works out, it’s meant to be. Good luck!💪 Keep a relaxed mindset and everything will go well 👊
Will do! Yeah I tend to overthink and overplan everything... I spent all of yesterday (sick day) digging into them to get a full picture, so I know what I'm walking in to. Seems like it's a brutal dev cycle, but good challenges and ability to really make an impact if you have a cool idea you wanna try 😁 Though they had me at the 'completely emancipate JavaScript', I hate the serialization overhead, so I'll fit right in 🤣
Haha🤣, I can tell you’re really going for it. Honestly, all those carefully‑polished projects you’ve built deserve a place where you can fully show your talent. From what you described, this team is hands‑on‑oriented — they let code do the talking instead of empty words. It sounds like a great fit for you. Wish you all the best! I’ll be rooting for you from the other side of the globe. Looking forward to seeing your code shine in real‑world production environments 💪
Congratulations 🎉
My Dear wise old sage!!
Been waiting for this day!
Haha what, I’m still so young! Don’t call me an old sage, hahaha.🤣
sorry , sorry
😤🤣
I don’t know why, but I just can’t stop myself from saying this. I’m sorry if it bothers you.
Haha🤣 it’s totally fine, I was just joking. Time catches up with everyone, I am indeed getting older. Still, strangers on the street call me big brother instead of uncle, and I’m pretty satisfied with that 😂
Congrats! I'm really happy to hear that! 😸
I guess saying “How about me?” must have taken a lot of courage, but you actually did it, and it worked!
It also feels like taking the right kind of break helped you move forward to the next stage!
Anyway, congratulations again! 🎉
Thank you so much! To be honest though, I didn’t really feel like it took much courage at the time. My exact thought was: “Wow, what perfect timing! I was just dozing off and a pillow shows up.” Hahaha 😂
Congrats, man! I’m really happy for you! 🎉
Long time no see, buddy! Thanks a whole lot, haha 😄
Still lots of work, both at my job and around the house. It’s the end of the season here, so there’s a lot of harvesting and processing vegetables and fruit, plus taking care of the garden. 🤠
Wow that sounds busy! Hope you get some rest amid all the gardening and harvesting😆
Working in the garden is actually a form of rest from work, at least for me. 😅👨🌾
Haha, tending a garden is definitely healthier than staring at a computer screen all day 😄
Awww congrats!!!! I knew it would be fast for you to find a new job 🥰🥰
Awww, thank you! 🎉 Honestly, I wasn't sure about that after so many read-and-no-replies. 🤣 But somehow, one call from an old colleague did the trick!
Congrats on the new role. Sounds like you found a place that values the part of QA that’s hardest to capture on a resume.
Totally right. Those intangible QA insights can hardly be put into resumes. Thanks a lot 🥳
Congrats! Really happy to see how this worked out for you. Wishing you all the best in the new role! 🎉
Thank you so much 🎉 I’m looking forward to this new chapter.😁
Congratulations! 🎉
The "read and no reply" thing is worse than a rejection, honestly. At least a no gives you something to work with. Silence just makes you invent reasons, and none of them are ever good for your head.
What got me was the CTO conversation being about judgment and trust instead of tool checklists. That's a much better interview than most QA roles run, where it's just "do you know Selenium" for forty minutes. The point about AI mistakes being dangerous specifically because they look reasonable is the real skill in testing right now, not knowing which tool to run.
Also, "wow, perfect timing, a pillow shows up while I was dozing off" is a great way to put it. Congrats on the new role.
I couldn’t agree more. Getting read‑and‑no‑reply responses is really crushing. So whenever HR gives me a genuine reply, even a rejection, I sincerely appreciate it. Getting to talk directly with the CTO was only possible thanks to my former colleague vouching for me. And once you reach the CTO interview stage, there is no need for basic tool‑level questions anymore.
Back when I worked as an interviewer for QA roles, besides questions about everyday QA tools and techniques, I would always end with one question for candidates: “What exactly does testing do?” I got all kinds of answers — keeping projects stable, ensuring smooth releases, improving customer satisfaction, and so on. But what I really wanted to hear was the simple answer: testing is about finding bugs. No matter if it is manual testing, automation, or any other approach, finding bugs is what a QA engineer is supposed to deliver.
Haha “a pillow shows up while I was dozing off” is a local idiom from where I’m from. Glad you caught the reference 😄 Thank you very much.
Congratulations, nice !!!
Yeah, personal networks beat the best resume, simple as that - even in the "AI era" ...
Well, I've been hired more than once via references from my personal network - it makes things so easy ...
Also nice to see you kept your cool and didn't fret about things - confidence is gold :-)
Thanks! 😄 I think you're right. A good resume can get you into the queue, but someone who has actually worked with you can sometimes get you straight to the right conversation.
And honestly, working on my 36 Stratagems project probably helped me stay relaxed. I was busy doing something I actually enjoyed, so I didn't spend all day staring at the recruiting site. 🤣haha
Yeah and I'm sure that being relaxed and confident helps a lot in an interview!
Haha 😄 Exactly. I kept totally relaxed the whole time, just like chatting with an old friend. He didn’t act like a high‑and‑mighty CTO at all.
Congratulations and good luck on your first day!
Love the concept of the Stratagems game. The character bios alone are a win!
Thank you so much! I’m still polishing more character details, hope I can bring more fun content soon 😄
You haven’t disappeared from the job market — you’re simply standing at a transition point.
And transitions always feel uncertain.
But your experience — your ability to work with automation, APIs, frameworks — and, most importantly, your willingness to dive into AI and understand how to use it effectively, make you not a “candidate from the past,” but a candidate who can work in the future.
Your words mean so much to me. I’ll keep learning and evolving to keep up with new‑era tech👊
Congratulations! Life is unpredictable and we often take this uncertainty in a bad way. But like your case, the uncertainty sometimes gives us a complete unexpected gift.
You put it really well. I’ve learned a lot through this whole journey. Thank you for your kind words 😁
@xulingfeng YESSS! 🎉 Congratulations, man. I've been quietly rooting for this since the last post, and seeing it happen this fast is a blessing that just made my day.
Two weeks of applications got you read receipts and silence, and three words on a Friday night phone call, "How about me?", got you sitting in front of a CTO on Saturday. That's a whole different level, better than any recruiter scouting app.
A rejection at least closes the loop. Silence leaves you filling the gap yourself, and nobody ever fills it with something kind. You wrote that better than most people manage while they're still in it.
And the CTO conversation stayed with me, particularly your point about someone still standing at the last gate. An obviously wrong answer is easy to catch, and a polished, sensible, completely wrong one is not. That's the actual skill now, and it's good to see a CTO interviewing for it rather than asking which tool you know.
The timing of all this is almost unfair. A layoff, a mountain, a book, twenty-eight chapters, and now a job that came looking for you. Take the win.
Enjoy the new chapter. And buy that old colleague a drink. 👊
@ndcodes Thanks so much for your warm words! It really means a lot. You hit the nail on the head about the pain of silent rejections. I’m still pinching myself how everything unfolded. Huge thanks also to everyone in this community for all the encouragement. Wishing everybody here all the best with their studies, work and life. I will definitely grab a drink with my old colleague later 😄 Looking forward to what comes next in this new chapter!
Congrats! 🎉 And the CTO conversation is my favourite part — "AI can help make the decision but shouldn't own the final one, a human still holds the last vote" is almost word for word what I keep landing on too. Funny that the thing that got you the job is the same instinct the whole industry is slowly relearning.
Also, "read-and-no-reply" is such a specific kind of quiet torture. Glad the old-colleague call cut through it. Enjoy the new gig — sounds like a good room to be in.
Congratulations :)
Psst, "I'm spending more time figuring out how to actually use AI in my work" - Play around with headless browsers in Chrome or Codex ...
Thanks for the tip! I haven’t dived deep into headless browsers yet, will definitely give them a try later👊
Congrats
Thank you very much😄
Congrats, Xu 🎉 So happy for you 😀
Thank you so much. I also owe a lot to everyone’s support 😁
Good.
🥳
Really like reading such posts! Congrats!