I just finished my first week on the job. I don't know how typical an experience it was, but I'll run down a quick overview of how it went for me.
It was "Team Week," which means that everyone who works in offices around the country all get together in Chicago for a week of project planning (during the day) and partying (at night). As a general rule I would have jumped on the partying train after work, but I'm adapting to a new lifestyle -- one that involves waking up early and commuting to work -- and have been pretty tired. I don't want to throw a hangover on top of that process. It's already hard enough to prevent myself from drinking coffee.
I really like the team I'm working with, so it's a bit of a shame that they've now all gone back to their respective homes and we'll have to work remotely. But they've been successfully doing it for a while, so I'll just have to slide right in and contribute.
And on that note, I was completely unable to "slide right in." I expected it to take a day, maybe a day and a half, before everything was set up and I would be working. Alas, no. There were numerous problems with waiting for IT, and one entire day was lost because the one guy who knew what we needed to take a step forward missed a day (spent it with his son in the ER -- apparently everything's okay now). I spent most of the week reading source code, but with no access to the repository or a development server, nor any direction on what to do. Finally, on Thursday, I was assigned projects, and on Friday, I was told what they actually want. But I'm still waiting on CVS access.
In my first week on the job, the vast majority of my time was spent on non-work tasks. I don't think that's very unusual, but it feels weird to have to "wait" like that after you've started the job. From the reactions of the rest of the team, they seemed to expect that it would take 2-3 days. By the end of the week they were getting as frustrated as I was that I still couldn't work.
Hopefully everything gets set up quickly, and next week goes a bit better.
It was "Team Week," which means that everyone who works in offices around the country all get together in Chicago for a week of project planning (during the day) and partying (at night). As a general rule I would have jumped on the partying train after work, but I'm adapting to a new lifestyle -- one that involves waking up early and commuting to work -- and have been pretty tired. I don't want to throw a hangover on top of that process. It's already hard enough to prevent myself from drinking coffee.
I really like the team I'm working with, so it's a bit of a shame that they've now all gone back to their respective homes and we'll have to work remotely. But they've been successfully doing it for a while, so I'll just have to slide right in and contribute.
And on that note, I was completely unable to "slide right in." I expected it to take a day, maybe a day and a half, before everything was set up and I would be working. Alas, no. There were numerous problems with waiting for IT, and one entire day was lost because the one guy who knew what we needed to take a step forward missed a day (spent it with his son in the ER -- apparently everything's okay now). I spent most of the week reading source code, but with no access to the repository or a development server, nor any direction on what to do. Finally, on Thursday, I was assigned projects, and on Friday, I was told what they actually want. But I'm still waiting on CVS access.
In my first week on the job, the vast majority of my time was spent on non-work tasks. I don't think that's very unusual, but it feels weird to have to "wait" like that after you've started the job. From the reactions of the rest of the team, they seemed to expect that it would take 2-3 days. By the end of the week they were getting as frustrated as I was that I still couldn't work.
Hopefully everything gets set up quickly, and next week goes a bit better.
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