How I almost worked for Pixar

A good pairing with my article about How I almost worked directly for Steve Jobs.

Prior to coming to Apple, I was browsing the Pixar jobs website. I would do this a couple times a year but I was honestly so unqualified for absolutely everything they had offered.

But in 1999, they had a job posted for someone to assist with migrating some of their traditional UNIX workstations to the Mac. Initially, it was more of an investigative role as Mac OS X had not yet shipped and they had no desire to switch the classic Mac OS.

At the time, I had a very scattered resume of support and consulting positions. However, this job was so right up my alley it almost made me laugh. It required experience in this eclectic mix of software that I either knew really well or I used the software of one of their competitors.

For reasons I no longer recall, I was in my car in a parking lot in the rain when I had my phone interview. Perhaps I briefly ducked away from my job. The interview was really brutal. For the …