Work/Life Balance
So, as promised, I update again.
To start out: man, having a cat is AWESOME. Katie is awesome and wonderful and absolutely the perfect cat for us. She loves to play and chase and climb, but is also a cuddle factory. She will climb onto laps and demand petting and scratches from anyone in the family except Sebastian, of whom she is (sensibly) wary. She slept on Lorraine's bed Thursday night, and our bed last night. She's wonderful.
In work news, things continue to go really well. I was worried, taking this job, that I'd been demonizing my last company, since it was my only really serious long-term job. I saw the bad, but not the good; I was going to be shocked by the realities of a big company and bureaucracy; I was going to find that a lot of what I hated was just the nature of the world; my skills were too specific to the proprietary system I was working in, and I was therefore going to fail.
But the reality of this place has been fantastic. There are more meetings, but they're good meetings, and well-run enough that they don't take up huge amounts of time. They also involve design and business decisions, so those are being formalized and dealt with in defined periods instead of being discussed over lunch and fallen into. I'm learning new technologies and writing quality code, already making some real, sizable contributions. I'm also benefiting from a fantastic support network, where people are doing a great job of helping me along without stepping on my toes. It's pretty remarkable.
The hours are reasonable; the commute is a little rough if I do it late, but no problem if I'm out the door by 7:30; the corporate climate is streamlined and effective; the work is interesting and challenging; and the whole team is empowered to make real decisions about what is best for the project, as long as they are willing and able to defend them to our tech lead.
It's been three weeks now: I suspect by 6 months I'll have my own host of things that bug me, but right now I'm kind of floating on a cloud of good-feeling about the whole thing. Life is pretty darn good.
This entry was originally posted at http://glishara.dreamwidth.org/257743.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
To start out: man, having a cat is AWESOME. Katie is awesome and wonderful and absolutely the perfect cat for us. She loves to play and chase and climb, but is also a cuddle factory. She will climb onto laps and demand petting and scratches from anyone in the family except Sebastian, of whom she is (sensibly) wary. She slept on Lorraine's bed Thursday night, and our bed last night. She's wonderful.
In work news, things continue to go really well. I was worried, taking this job, that I'd been demonizing my last company, since it was my only really serious long-term job. I saw the bad, but not the good; I was going to be shocked by the realities of a big company and bureaucracy; I was going to find that a lot of what I hated was just the nature of the world; my skills were too specific to the proprietary system I was working in, and I was therefore going to fail.
But the reality of this place has been fantastic. There are more meetings, but they're good meetings, and well-run enough that they don't take up huge amounts of time. They also involve design and business decisions, so those are being formalized and dealt with in defined periods instead of being discussed over lunch and fallen into. I'm learning new technologies and writing quality code, already making some real, sizable contributions. I'm also benefiting from a fantastic support network, where people are doing a great job of helping me along without stepping on my toes. It's pretty remarkable.
The hours are reasonable; the commute is a little rough if I do it late, but no problem if I'm out the door by 7:30; the corporate climate is streamlined and effective; the work is interesting and challenging; and the whole team is empowered to make real decisions about what is best for the project, as long as they are willing and able to defend them to our tech lead.
It's been three weeks now: I suspect by 6 months I'll have my own host of things that bug me, but right now I'm kind of floating on a cloud of good-feeling about the whole thing. Life is pretty darn good.
This entry was originally posted at http://glishara.dreamwidth.org/257743.html. Please comment there using OpenID.