After 20+ years working with PHP, I am switching to Java & Perl as I am starting with my new job at booking.com.

It’s incredibly good that big players like Google, Amazon and Booking don’t care about your particular background in dev, when considering your application and interviewing you. Learning a new programming language takes an experienced programmer a few months, during which they can already perform tasks and help the team.

This time, the process of finding a new job was particularly exhausting. I had interviews with a few smaller companies, then a whole rally at Amazon with a neutral feedback and no offer in the end, then a remarkably bad experience with a company called Gain.Pro in Amsterdam. Finally, a set of interviews with Booking engineers, and here I am, after 7 years since I first applied to a job vacancy there.

My family’s been very supportive, my girlfriend cheered me up when I was saying I wasn’t going to make it (and she brought me a nicest bottle of IPA ever, wrapped as a bunch of flowers in a local shop!).

Special thanks to Vladimir Shefer who conducted a fake job interview with me, for a position of a Java developer, which helped gain confidence. Val Scherbak, Alexey Nakonechny - your support means a lot, as does that of each and every friend!