Chronology of my team transfer:
- Started contributing code.
- Implemented fairly complex protocol state machine (see interview below) which will be used by our devices in production.
- Met team members in person.
- Met with group VP.
- interviewed for job (question: implement a trivial three-state state machine in pseudocode. I think "relevant to the type of work you'll be doing in this group" is an understatement)
- (Yesterday) Approval by hiring committee.
- (Today) Talked to recruiter for the first time.
- (Coming soon) approval by aforementioned VP.
- (Coming soon) click on link in HR system to apply for job.

That sequence is almost the perfect reverse of what one might, naively, have expected to happen. Yet it works anyway. Is our recruiting system a palindrome?