Little Brown Building

We woke up side by side at her cousins place in Issaquah WA, got up, put on our best interview clothes and drove to downtown Bellevue. Someone once said there is “no there there” about Oakland CA, but in 1992 there was really, really “no there there” for Bellevue. We  made sure to get there early and stopped at had plenty of time to stop at a strip mall for lunch. After lunch, we walked into a 30 story office building, up on a slight hill, brown the color of 80’s office building brown. We went up to a middle floor, briefcases in hand. Me, with my self bought $40 case, one I bought because I didn’t get one as a graduation gift. (You see, my older brother got such a gift, and when it was my turn the next year, with no equivalent gift, I felt a bit left out in the wind). She had a $1500 briefcase for such an occasion, a gift from someone with far too much money and far too few gifts for me. We got to the agency – it was typically head hunter – and met with a recruiter. Me, I was looking to move from my fortune 500 bank to a high tech company in the area. I wanted to move for many reasons. Work, for sure, getting into hard core development. Home for sure, get to the northwest which still seemed pure at least to us hated outsiders from CA. Life, for sure, escape from something that was already happening but we were too afraid to admit.

After the meeting we left to no job offers and no real idea that any would come. Many years later, in 2005, I had similar feelings meeting headhunters in Beijing and seeing that they did not know what to do with me. Doesn’t speak Chinese, isn’t an exec, wants to get paid.

And now, in 2010, I find myself back in Bellevue. The city is still just a town, but now has spades of 30 story towers for both work and living. It is still nowhere and going nowhere, but there is at least a hint of there. Strip malls are still there of course but also are full on luxury malls and all the typical restaurant chains. I am much, much older now – well 18 years to be exact – and no longer looking for a high tech job in that area. No, as I stand in a brand new tower, slightly further up the hill, I stare down at that 30 story brown office building. I think about that woman with the $1500 briefcase and how she is dead, dead, dead everywhere except for in me. And I think how I made it to my high tech job at the highest tech company in the world. That in some sense I’ve made it and that no one can ever take that away from me.

Except me.