So, You Want to Be an Imagineer?

Ever since I was little, I wanted to work in the Disney parks designing the rides. I actually had a shot once...

In 2000, I was almost a year out of Penn State University. At this time, I was already working out in the software industry, writing code for a company in downtown Pittsburgh. During a trip to Walt Disney World, I got talking to the girl that drew in the Disney-MGM Studios Animation Tour. I was telling her about how I really wanted to work for Disney and she we exchanged email addresses and I began networking through her. About a month later, I actually had a interview with Walt Disney Imagineering in California for a software test position. This was it, what I had been waiting for.

This trip was my first time to California. I had previously interned at Microsoft in 1998, so I wasn't too shook up with taking a trip all by myself to the other coast. It was comforting that we had a few family friends that were living in Cali at that time - A mother with two daughters. The day before my interview, they were fantastic in showing me around. They took me around Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and finally to Disneyland for the first time. I was such a pro at going to WDW, but this was totally unique to me. I thought that the park was interesting - it definitely had a special touch to it, but it also had a feeling of being small time. After seeing Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom in WDW, the Sleeping Beauty castle pales in comparison, as does the shortened Main Street. Anyways, I rode Indiana Jones about 5 times and we had a great day together. I can remember them saying "I've NEVER seen someone so excited about Disneyland before". Just this past year, the oldest girl got married in Mickey ears ;)

So, the day of my interview, I had to drive to North Hollywood for my first part of the interview. I can hardly explain my feelings. I was excited, nervous, and a bit tired from not being able to sleep. While driving to the facility, I was in a bit of shock. I expected green lawns, beautiful foutains, flowers, etc. This was Hollywood, where movies are made. And this is the Disney Imagineering building, this was where the people who design the wonderful parks and resorts work. This place has got to be fantastic, right? The building that I interviewed at appears to have since been closed down as you can see from the picture (I'm not 100% sure this is correct by Google Maps, but it looks like what I remember). It had barbed wire all around it, an armed guard at the door, and was totally not what I expected. Even the building's interior itself had a warehouse feeling, with very little decoration/decor. If you look towards the right of the picture, you can see some rundown building with a decaying street sign. I'm assuming that this was area focused on engineering and the Team Disney building that I went to later in the day was where they kept the 'creative' folks. Hollywood wasn't quite what I expected either. In eyeshot of the famous Hollywood sign on Santa Monica Boulevard there were some very seedy establishments to say the least, with some real 'interesting' characters outside. This was not the vision that I had in my head. It was less than inspiring.

My first interview was with the head of software for this particular division. The first thing he tried to do was access my website that I had posted on the web. At this time, I didn't have my own URL and it was a long path name. It turns out that Disney used a program to scan in resumes, do character recognition on them to get them into their system. In scanning mine in, the font that I used didn't quite recognize correctly, so my URL was messed up, things were mispelled, etc. Not a good start.

As the interviews with the head engineer progressed, I'm not sure if it was a test, if I was just slow on this day, or if things in LA move much quicker, but before I could answer a question, he was asking another one. I was asked how I felt about moving to Japan to work on Tokyo DisneySea. I responded with "well, I really had my heart set on Orlando". After seeing the area around the building and most of Los Angeles, I was a bit worried that this wasn't an environment for me. I was a bit downed to learn that Orlando isn't where the major development is done. Orlando seemed to be more of a maintenance facility for software.

Two interviews later, I met with a gentleman who wrote some software for the Tarzan digital animation. Very interesting guy. Following this, the manager of the software group and one of his team members took me to lunch at a Hawaiian-themed burger joint in Hollywood, where the interview continued in-between bites. After lunch, I had to leave the North Hollywood building and head up to the Team Disney building that was right outside of Disneyland. Not being used to the craziness that is a California freeway, I got a little lost on the way and arrived 20 minutes late, totally frazzled from the day. This also couldn't help my chances.

The afternoon interview was the one that really threw me. It was with a guy who worked extensively on Test Track in the previous few years. To complete that attraction, he actually moved his family to Orlando for over a year and now he was getting ready to pack up soon and move to Tokyo for a while to help complete rides there. What an incredible amount of devotion. The thought of moving so frequently scared me a bit. Then came a statement that pretty much summed up the day. He said to me "It says here you worked at Microsoft, so WHY do you want to work here"? It was said as if he was envious of working at Microsoft. In my mind, I thought "are you kidding? You guys have the coolest job ever". I had expected the engineers to be the most friendly and energetic people, kinda like the cast members you see in the parks. I didn't see the gung ho enthusiasm that I had expected. Again, maybe this was a test of the interview.

After the last interview later in the day, I asked if I could be let into the park. I was led backstage to a door at the foot of a very tall facade. From over the wall, I could hear very cartoon-ish sounds, like "Zing!" and "Boing!" and I figured that we were at the limits of Toontown. Then, the gentleman who was escorting me opened the door, I went through, and just like that, two very interesting things happened. One, it had hit me that I didn't have a good interview and now it was over I had probably blown my chance. And two, I was standing outside a house inside of Toontown. Passing the threshold from backstage to onstage was incredible. Once through the door, the energy of the park was everywhere, where prior to going through the door, there was none. Really fascinating. It was just like Who Framed Roger Rabbit - I had passed the threshold from the real world into Toontown. I think this door is the one pictured here.

I spent the rest of my day walking through the park by myself, reflecting on the day's events. I had a suit and tie on, so I got some interesting looks. I chatted with a few cast members, and one of them working the Pirates of the Caribbean said "normally when we see those (pointing to my tie), we cut them off". Ah, that's more like the Disney employee that I know :)

A few days later I got a call saying that I didn't get the job. Being so green at the time, I probably didn't have many of the developed skills that they were looking for. Another thing that I was told was that I was pixie-dusted; a term for someone who loves the parks, but when they actually see the technology and the job itself, they're bored by it. That was spot-on; I wanted to work with cutting edge breakthrough technology and these guys were building rides that used tried and true technology from 5-10 years ago because safety is #1. I also wasn't interested in moving to LA where I knew almost no one and I felt like a fish out of water. I'm sure that came out in my interviews and contributed to my failure to impress.

So, my brush with being an Imagineer ended. In the end, I figure that it's probably best to let the magicians do their jobs without peeking behind the curtain and ruining the magic. I think it's just as well to work my fantastic job here in Pittsburgh, build my family in a calm laid back environment, and go visit and see the magic on display every year or so. However, if anyone in Walt Disney World needs a really really good software engineering lead, don't hesitate to call me :)