This post is a follow-up to Real-Life Update

Well, it was brief but exhausting. My job search has now come to a close. I interviewed at a large number of companies, got offers from a smaller number, and accepted an offer from Yelp. I'll be starting in June on the Infrastructure team, doing something between software engineering and system administration. Which sounds, you know, awesome.

For the unaware, Yelp is a local search company based out of San Francisco, CA. They've got a pretty large userbase, and lots of views, and, in general, interesting problems to work on. There's already a Mudder there. Plus, it's a really small company. Should be a great atmosphere to work in coming out of Mudd's tight-knit community. And, of course, San Francisco is an awesome city.

It was a pretty tough decision. In the end, I narrowed it down to the two companies that I'd interviewed with a couple of weeks ago: Yelp and NVIDIA. The two offers were sort of opposites. Where Yelp would be more mixed development and administration work, NVIDIA would be hardcore, low-level programming. I wasn't sure which one I wanted to go into. There were also issues of size and location — NVIDIA's a company with thousands of engineers, in an office complex in Santa Clara, whereas Yelp is a company with a couple dozen engineers in a building in downtown San Francisco. For a while, I was leaning toward the greater impression of stability that NVIDIA lent. But I really don't think writing C all day is for me. The whole “startup” thing at Yelp is also a big plus. Small, personal environment. Sounds like fun.

I'm looking forward to it: living in the city, working at a fun company, doing interesting work. Making gobs of money, then spending it all on, well, living in the city. Just one more semester to finish up and I'm there. For now, dear reader, ciao.

Currently listening to: “Hurry Locomotive” by Sophie Madeleine