So, this entry is very dated as I actually started at Shopify on December 4th 2017!

In August 2017 I concluded I was no longer interested in working at John Deere. The reasons for this are numerous, but if there’s any single reason its that after 15 years I really needed to try something new. I aggressively started looking for a new Job.

Since I knew relocation wasn’t an option for my family I began searching remote job boards. One Job I stumbled onto was for a “Datastores Engineer” at Shopify. I had never heard of Shopify before this. I was applying rather aggressively at the time I found this job posting. After some research on Shopify I found I was interested in working there for a number of reasons

• Shopify is working on a hard to solve computer problems. First A rapidly scaling SaaS application. This SaaS application which is written in Rails and sees regular flash Sales where millions of requests hit the site as people try to buy limited and in demand products in mass. So shopify has two cool scaling problems both as the application customer base grew and in this zany flash sale thing.
• Shopify was growing fast and hiring fast. This was something I wanted to be part of. When growth is happening interesting things happen.
• I though Shopify’s SaaS product - e-commerce web store is a good idea. At John Deere I had witnessed the deployment of on-premise software, it was a mess. The idea of “e-commerce site” being solved generically as a SaaS product looked like a good idea.

After studying the position description for “Datastores Engineer” and assessing my personal skills I thought I was a long shot to even get a phone screen. I really had no significant “Datastores” experience. I also wasn’t 100% sure I was really that interested in being a “Datastores Engineer”. It sounded like fancy speak for boring MySQL DBA, a less then glamours job. There was an interesting catch to the application though. I had to answer a number of techincal questions about MySQL and do a point in-time recovery of a example MySQL database. For some strange reason I really liked this. First, I really did not know a lot about MySQL or doing point in time recover from a binlog stream. So I spent about a day or so working through this problem. Oddly this made me MORE interested in the job rather then less.

After working through this technical problem I applied. In my opinion there was nothing significant about my application and I didn’t expect to get a call back. The only thing I did which I thought was interesting in my application was a tried to put a “hook” in my cover letter. I’m unaware if this “hook” was effective at all or not. Recently I had heard a report on NPR about how a Carnival salesman would close out his sale. What he said has a real impact on me:

Q: What’s your best close move?

A: The best close is asking for their money. I’ll ask them three questions First “Is this product better then the one you have now?” They usually say Yeah. Then I’ll always ask them this defensively, and I’ll backup and put my palms up. If you bought this today would you use it? I mean not everbody needs a new shower head. (Narrator: PJ has taken a step back with his hands up, with an expressive as if “Oh, no did I cross a line or something? It gives you this reaction of - Oh, no its fine keep going). And then you ask them do you want debit, credit or cash? Number one mistake of new sales people not asking for the money. They think its rude. You need to ask them for the money.

So I put this goofy “hook” in my cover letter:

“You should review my resume and ask yourself these questions: Could Alex be a strong add to the Shopify team? If Alex came to Shopify do we have good and useful work for him? Perhaps you don’t actually need to hire anyone, but if you do I am ready to interview.”

I have no idea if this helped or not but my application lead to an interview which lead to another interview (and another and another) an eventually a job offer in November 2017. I put in my last Day at Deere and ended my 16 year engagement there on November 28, 2017. It was great.