Author: Michael Pellegrini

The last two weeks have been a professional roller coaster for me, which is why I’ve waited for a resolution before writing about it. Here’s what happened in a nutshell: two weeks ago I was pulled into my director’s office and informed that there have been major budget cuts in our organization at Amazon and that my contract is being terminated at the end of the week, which is a month early. As it turned out, over 100 contractors were let go, and other expenses like travel and team lunches were also cut in order to save money. I’m not sure what brought on all these budget cuts considering the size and stature of Amazon but that’s just how it is.

My original goal with taking a contract position was to make some connections at Amazon so that I could eventually transition into a full–time position, and although I was worried and frustrated about what had gone on, I realized that the original goal was still intact. Luckily my manager felt like I was an asset to the company, plus he felt bad about having to let me go, so he recommended me for a full–time position on another team. When I first saw the requirements for this position I was a little overwhelmed and felt like the job was beyond my qualifications. I actually even told myself that I wasn’t going to apply because I didn’t think I had a chance of getting hired, but the following day I received an email from one of Amazon’s internal recruiters asking if I’d like to setup a phone interview with the hiring manager. I figured I couldn’t say no since it would make my old manager look bad, so I decided to go for it.

My strategy for the phone interview was to be up front and honest about my current skill set and not pretend to be further along than I really am. Luckily the guy interviewing me really appreciated my honesty. He said that all to often, candidates are overstating their skills and that he appreciated my humility when describing my own. The phone interview went great so he invited me to come in for an in–person interview loop. I knew that this was a big deal and that I needed to prepare for it, so I started looking for interviews with other companies. I ended up having several phone and in–person interviews with various companies, and to be honest, most of them didn’t go that great. I got turned down for two of them, but felt confident on the third. Regardless, I felt more prepared for my Amazon interview, and that’s all that really mattered.

The Amazon interview was really long; like over 5 hours. I met with 6 different people and was asked a huge variety of questions. I was writing code on the white board and describing past experiences where I need to invent solutions, or adapt to change. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at me but I left feeling good. Of course there were parts that I wish I could have done over but overall I felt like I did the best I could and the rest was up to fate.

After leaving the interview with Amazon I returned a call from an outside recruiter I’d been working with and found out that I had been given an offer for a contract position at a chemical company. This company really wanted me so they raised the rate considerably in order to persuade me to join them. Although I was flattered by their offer, it wasn’t really what I was looking for due to the fact that it’s another contract, and I had just gotten burned by a contract. There is no stability in contracting and with another baby on the way I didn’t think it would be the best move. The chemical company knew that I was interviewing elsewhere so they gave me a 48 hour window to accept the offer, otherwise they were going with their second choice.

The next morning I called my recruiter at Amazon and told her that I had been extended an offer by another company but that Amazon was my first choice. I told her about the deadline they had given me and asked if there was any way she could give me some type of indication as to whether or not I would be receiving an offer from Amazon. She told me that she would be able to give me a yes or no answer by the end of the day, but that they wouldn’t know the specifics of the offer until receiving approval from the finance department later in the week. I said that would be totally fine, and proceeded to cross my fingers.

A couple hours later, while Jessica, Ava and I were at the grocery store, I got a call back saying that the answer is yes and that they are working on an offer! Obviously we were very excited about this news but still had to wait a few days until we knew what the specifics would be, which brings us to today. I received a call from Amazon today to go over the specifics of my offer, and while I won’t go into them publicly, I will say that they easily surpassed what I was hoping for. I had Amazon on speaker phone so Jessica could hear everything and she had to cover her mouth to contain herself when she heard what they were offering. Although I had planned on not accepting the offer on the spot, I couldn’t help it. Had it been a lower offer I may have asked for the weekend to consider it but I was in a bit of shock and my joy got the best of me.

The only remaining step now is to conduct a background check, which is totally fine, and then I’ll be starting work on Wednesday morning. I’m still shocked to have received this offer but it just goes to show what hard work and perseverance gets you. A little over a year and a half ago I re–dedicated myself to web development and have been studying 7 days a week ever since. There have been several milestones achieved along the way, but today is the culmination of all that hard work. Needless to say, I’m going to continue studying daily and working to advance my skill set, but for the first time since I was a buss boy at El Gaucho many years ago, I can stop thinking about what my next professional step is. From now on all I have to focus on is doing well at Amazon and the rest will be taken care of. I’m so happy to have this handled before our new addition arrives, and so thankful for the incredible support system that has gotten me through this entire process. It’s a great day for the Pellegrini house and I can’t wait to take Jessica out to a nice celebration dinner!

Tonight, while relaxing at home after working our Valentines shift at El Gaucho, Jessica felt our new little one’s first kicks! I remember this happening the first time around with Ava and being so excited, and I can easily say that it’s just as exciting the second time. We’ve already heard Baby E’s heartbeat but it’s nice to know that he/she is getting active in there. I remember when Jessica was pregnant with Ava, she would be calm all day but then would start kicking and doing somersaults when Jessica was getting ready for bed. Looks like we may have the same type of thing going on here. We’re still holding strong with not finding out the sex of our growing baby, although Jessica has mentioned a few times that she’s reserving the right to change her mind. I’m fine with it either way. Can’t wait for you to be here little one!

Just wanted to post a few pics we took of Ava in her new Valentine’s Day dress from Grandma. Jessica and I will be working at El Gaucho tonight so we have Kelsey, a new babysitter coming over to watch Ava. Kelsey comes highly recommended by our good friends Randall and Brie so I’m sure she’ll be great. It’s too bad that Jess and I are both working tonight but at least we’ll be together. Love to all our friends and family out there!

In an effort to keep growing my web development skill set, I’ve been working on creating simple JavaScript–based web applications. They’re just fun little projects that I like to work on in my free time, and they always end up teaching me something new during the development process. Between last night and this morning I built something I’m calling ‘Pellegrini Weather’, which is a basic version of a weather app on a phone. You input your zip code and it gives you the city and state name, current weather conditions, and an icon that is appropriate for those conditions. It’s available at: http://pellegriniportfolio.com/weather/.

I also recently did something I’m calling jsAlarm, which is a simple alarm clock programmed in JavaScript. It has the basic necessary functions to set and stop the alarm, plus I added a snooze button. For presentation purposes the snooze only lasts 5 seconds but I could easily set it to any time I wanted. That one is available at: http://pellegriniportfolio.com/jsAlarm/. I may eventually showcase these on my portfolio but for now its just a nerdy little hobby.

Last night Jessica and I took our nephew Kallan out to dinner at El Gaucho to celebrate his 18th birthday, then we saw Soundgarden at the Paramount Theater, which was his Christmas present from us. It was a great night that we’ve all been looking forward to for a while now. Kallan and I have a history of going to great concerts over the years, including Metallica and Alice in Chains, so it was only fitting that we go see Soundgarden when they came to town. Although this was my third time seeing them live, neither Kallan or Jessica had ever seen them, so that made it extra special. Thankfully Dana and Brad were available to watch our sweet little Ava while we were out.

As usual they took royal care of us at El Gaucho. After starting with a soup/salad course, Kallan had the 8oz filet mignon while Jessica and I shared the Chateaubriand for two. The fruit and cheese course is always great but we had to finish off with Bananas Foster, which is easily one of my favorite deserts, and something that Kallan had never had.

It’s hard to believe that he is already 18 years old. I vividly remember watching my Dad holding him and marveling over his first Grandchild. He’s always been a great kid but now he’s grown into a great young man that Jessica and I are so proud of. Every time we spend time with family we are quickly reminded about how happy we are to back home in Seattle.

I’ve been slacking lately on adding more photo galleries to our website, but tonight I decided it was about time that I added one for Ava. I knew this would be an ordeal because we have so many pictures of her, but it’s well worth the time. I went through and picked out my favorite photos of her and tried to keep them as close to chronological order as possible. The order isn’t perfect, but from here on out it should be. Here’s a couple pics that were taken by my good friend Leon when he and his wife babysat Ava last weekend. There are plenty more in the gallery. Enjoy!

Today I joined the Gracie Barra (pronounced ‘BaHa’) school in Bellevue, Wa. It’s a super famous school that was started by Carlos Gracie Jr. in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They have nearly 400 schools worldwide, including 6 within 30 minutes of my house. Although its a Gracie school, it’s from a different part of the family than the school I went to in San Diego and the two are not affiliated. While the school that I previously attended is known for self defense, this school is the most famous tournament jiu–jitsu school in the world so I’m excited about the idea of competing some day. For now, however, I need to focus on getting back in shape and getting up to speed with this curriculum.

Getting back on the mat tonight was great, but it was also very humbling. The Gracie Combatives program that I completed as a white belt in San Diego was all about self defense on the street, and was meant to defeat an ‘unskilled’ opponent. Unskilled just means that they don’t know jiu–jitsu. After competing that program you move onto the Master Cycle, which is much more advanced and teaches you how to deal with skilled opponents. Since we moved right after I received my blue belt, I never really got the chance to grapple with advanced opponents, which puts me at a disadvantage at my new school. I have no doubt that I’ll catch up quickly, but for now I need to be comfortable with the fact that I’m going to get tapped out a lot. It doesn’t really matter though, I’m just happy to be taking classes, meeting people, getting exercise, and learning lots of new techniques.

All else is going well. Looks like we won’t be able to visit with Jim, Brenda, Kristy and Madi this weekend but hopefully we’ll be able to get together with them soon. Still looking forward to the party at Butch and Carol’s on Sunday night. Here’s a picture of Ava sporting her fauxhawk today in the tub.

Yesterday Jessica and I took our niece Anna downtown to see ‘Rise of the Guardians’, followed by lunch at Il Fornio. We’ve been wanting to do this for a while in order to celebrate her belated birthday but haven’t been able to schedule anything sooner due to everyone’s busy schedule. It turned out to be a lot of fun for everyone. Dana and Brad watched Ava while we were gone, then we watched the Seahawks game once we got home. It was an incredible comeback followed by a last second loss from a long field goal. Tough way to end the season but they definitely overachieved this year and I’m glad we got back to Seattle in time to feel the excitement about them all around town.

Next weekend will be a busy one; I’m working a private party Saturday night at El Gaucho, then on Sunday we finally get to visit with Jim, Brenda, Kristy and Madi, which we’ve been wanting to do since getting back to Seattle. After that we’re attending a birthday party for Butch, which is also a coming home party for us that Carol is throwing. It should be a great weekend.

I worked from home today so the three of us could take a visit to the Eastside Birthing Center. This was our first activity related to our new baby and it went really well. We’re referring to the new baby as “Baby E” because we’ve decided that we don’t want to find out what we’re having, but we know its name will begin with an E. If it’s a boy his name will be Enzo, and if it’s a girl her name will be Eleanor, although she will probably go by Ellie or Elle. Although we had initially planned on finding out the sex as soon as possible, we have since decided to leave it as a surprise. We wouldn’t have been able to do it the first time around because everything was all so new, but we’re much more at ease this time through and like the idea of keeping it a surprise. I can’t think of too many greater surprises life will have in store for us and we wanted to keep this pregnancy unique from the first.

In the spirit of keeping this pregnancy unique, we’re leaning away from delivering at a hospital and are more interested in a birthing center. We certainly didn’t have a bad experience at the hospital in San Diego, and we wouldn’t have been interested in doing things any other way at that time, but this being our second time through we’re more interested in being in a comfortable environment with people that we’ve dealt with throughout the pregnancy. When Ava was born we only saw our doctor for about an hour throughout the entire process. The rest of the time was spent with various nurses that we had never met. Everyone we dealt with was great, but it would have been better to have some familiar faces around. There was a lot of pressure by the hospital staff to have a C–section, which thankfully we did not do, and Jessica spent the entire time in bed, which wasn’t very ideal.

We really enjoyed our visit to the Eastside Birthing Center today, and although we haven’t completely made up our minds quite yet, we feel that this may be the best place for us. We met with the owner, who is one of the three midwives that work there, and really liked her. Ava immediately ran up to her and jumped in her arms, which was a good sign. Ultimately this is Jessica’s decision but I gave her my honest opinion, which was that its a nice place with very warm and caring people. If she decides to go there I will be completely on board. We’re going to give it a couple days before making a decision but we’re feeling good about everything for now.

I’ve been planning on designing and building a new family website for a while now, but haven’t been able to make time until recently. Now that we’re all settled into our new jobs and home, and I’ve had a break from school, I decided to finally step up and get it done. My goal was to have this new site completed before starting back up at school, and classes begin tomorrow, so I’m just in time. Jessica and I came up with the color scheme and general layout a couple months ago while we were still living in San Diego, but I’ve only been able to work on it sporadically until these past two weeks. I really love the site, both for its design and its functionality.

One of my favorite new features of this site is the ability for visitors to leave comments on our posts. I say ‘our’ posts because Jessica will now finally be able to write posts along with me, which is really cool. Previously she would have had to learn HTML to write posts but this new site has an admin panel for her to login to and write posts in. Users will have the option to register an account with PellegriniPage.com or login with their existing Facebook, Twitter, or Google account. Even if you don’t have one of those accounts, and you don’t want to register with our site, you’ll still be able to leave comments if you wish.

One of the things that bothered me most about the old version of the site was that the entire site was on one page, which made it very slow to load. We really wanted an archiving system for this new site, so now you have the ability to browse older posts by month. There is also a search bar in the header which makes it easy to find specific posts. The other main thing I didn’t like about the old site was its lack of mobile support. There was only one version of the codebase, which was meant specifically for computer screens. If you visited it on a phone or tablet there was just a shrunk down version of the same site being served and it didn’t look very good. For this new site I have developed 3 versions: one for desktop and laptop computers, one for tablets and high resolution phones, and one for low resolution phones. Although the mobile versions don’t include the animated photo slider in the header, they are much cleaner and easier to read without requiring any zooming or orientation changes. I will point out that not all of the advanced functionality works on the mobile versions but you will certainly be able to read posts, comment on posts, search, and login from any device.

The new site also includes a photo gallery section which is still in progress. We have so many photos and I didn’t want to delay the launching of the site just because I didn’t have all of them optimized and ready for the web quite yet. I haven’t even attempted to tackle all of our baby photos yet but should be doing so fairly soon. The site will most likely be seeing some upgrades in the near future but already I’m extremely happy with it and consider it the best work I’ve ever done. It will certainly make a nice portfolio piece for me, but more importantly it will be much more user friendly and interactive for our visitors. Hope you all enjoy it as much as we do.