Three Questions at 00:30

Yesterday I met up with an ex-coworker from 2019. We lost touch after I left Planhat, then ran into each other by chance in Prague in 2024. It was awkward: I stared at him for a good 5–10 minutes trying to work out whether it was really him. Now we meet once or twice a year.

But this post isn't about him or our walk through Vítkov hill. It's about a memory that walk woke up: the best interview I've ever had.

Two Weeks in Kyiv

Planhat gave me a great experience. It was a small, distributed startup team of people who performed like rockstars, and I got to see from the inside what smooth teamwork and well-built processes actually look like. Honestly, I was the least experienced person there, and I learned a lot just by trying to keep up.

I also have to give Planhat credit: for a Swedish company, it fit into Ukrainian business culture remarkably well. Unlike the famous Swedish work-life balance, it knew how to get the most out of its people, sparing no one.

In January 2020 we went on a two-week business trip to Kyiv. One week in, the CEO noticed my performance wasn't where it should be. And he was right: the pace was intense, and I was drowning in tasks. The company offered to cut my salary by 25%. I asked for a 25% raise. I mean, how do you expect me to work better if you cut my pay? Raise it and I'll jump out of my pants to stay.

We didn't agree, and I left. Technically I got fired, but I like to think it was my decision, since I could have stayed for a lower salary.

Sweet January 2020 and the vibes of being 22. You could act like that and not be afraid of not finding a job the next month.

The Hostel

For the trip we had two options: a hotel far from the coworking space, or a brand-new capsule hostel much closer. I picked the hostel and never regretted it.

After I left, I paid for it myself. I could have taken a bus back to my hometown, Odesa, but for some reason I stayed in that hostel for the next three months.

Why does the hostel matter? Because that's where, around 00:30, I had the best interview of my life.

As usual, I was a spam machine, applying to every job that paid money. I didn't count on this one at all. It looked like a scam, and in a way it was, just not an illegal one: the listing was designed to hide the real company name for security reasons. A sketchy website about security services said they needed a Vue.js frontend developer. I replied out of curiosity, and it turned my life in an unexpected direction and showed me the industry from a completely different angle.

It was a private social media company I'd rather not name. 20 million sessions a day, and serious high-traffic engineering.

The Interview

I'll keep this section as short as the interview itself. They asked three questions:

• How much do you want per hour?
• What do you like most about programming?

...my answers...

• When can you start?

Then we talked for another 40 minutes, mostly because of my questions. I felt I had to show engagement, so I asked about the stack, the processes, all the usual candidate questions.

And it worked. They invited me to start the next day, right there in the interview.

I asked: "But why? You didn't ask me a single technical question. How do you know I'm good?"

We have your CV. There's no point asking technical questions. The results of your first weeks will tell us much more than any interview or test task.

Sweet February 2020.

Too Good To Be True

I couldn't believe it. I was convinced I'd been scammed somehow. Maybe they'd slip malware in through the repo, or maybe they'd just never pay me. Even the timing was strange: the middle of the night. I'd never have expected a "big" company to hold an interview at that hour.

They also reached out the same evening I sent my CV. Suspicious AF TBH.

Then the first payment landed. Then another. The management was awesome. Everything was awesome. I once took down the dev environment for everyone by mistake, and the only comment I got was "No worries."

Looking back, even the salary was the highest I've had since.

The best part was the task descriptions and the team collaboration. I won't go into details, but it was the best management I've seen in all 16 companies I've worked for.

I deeply regret throwing that opportunity away for ambitions that never landed. It was the biggest mistake of my career.

How the Goal Is Supposed to Work

As Moris Gloriss, I write about my life and the moments I want to remember forever. That company doesn't need a blog post for me to remember it. It'll stay with me until Alzheimer's, for sure, and I already brag about working there in private conversations. So why write this?

Because of that walk. We talked about who we'd become since AI happened and what we could do with it, and he shared a brilliant thought. Short and simple, but deep and, I think, extremely useful:

Your goal should be your instrument.

A goal isn't a distant trophy to stare at. Every day you wake up and make decisions toward it, but if the goal itself has no value for your future, you'll abandon it. When you treat your goal as an instrument, every choice gets measured against it, and the goal stops being a wish and starts doing work for you.

And indeed, I left with a specific goal: I didn't want to settle down in one company, even a perfect one. The instrumental part was gaining the experience to run my own thing. So no life regrets, only career ones 😄

Until now, I didn't actually know why I wanted to become a public person. I want my own thing. But why? What problem of mine does it solve?

I'm cooking something to find that answer. Let's see how the seeds of this meeting grow. I plan to elaborate in future posts.

Let's remember this phrase on this blog. Because of it, I finally understand why I lost such a job for nothing, and now I feel like I know what to do next.

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With my bare fingers and AI fixing grammar and stylistics

- Moris Gloriss