Worst parts of my new job

Worst parts of my new job:

  1. No more personal bathroom
  2. Coordinating my attire
  3. Not being able to pick through leftovers for lunch
  4. I can’t (easily) hit the gym at say 11am.
  5. No laptop, no cell phone
  6. No one cared if I had bad breath when working from home!

Best parts of my new job:

  1. The people - incredibly smart, and unbelievable willing to take time out of their day to explain how something works or why something was done a certain way. The openness is infectious.
  2. Pair programming with really smart people, like David Black
  3. No email. OK not ZERO email, but with everyone working in the same place, email is rarely used.
  4. No conference calls. Literally none. I had one on my first day which was a “Welcome to Boeing” deal, but zero since.
  5. Ruby & Rails - No more Java, no more WebSphere Portal :)
  6. No laptop, no cell phone. My day is now done when I walk out the door. I can VPN in to check my mail, but see #3

It comes as no surprise to me that the toughest things am dealing with so far are all related to no longer working from home. I’m not completely over the fact that I now get up at 6 & get into the office at 7:30, but I think I am getting used to it. I feel like an old man sometimes going to bed before 10, but I could be doing worse. Of course the title of this post was written to make you want to read it. I’m really enjoying the new job but need gimmicks to get people to come read my stuff :)

New year, new job

A few weeks ago, after 10 fun years at IBM I left and took a new job with Skarven Enterprises, a Boeing Company. I call my years at IBM “fun”, because they were - I really did enjoy my time there. Tons of great projects, always playing with new technologies, building applications that targeted all 300,000 IBMers, and most of all, making so many good friends along the way. At IBM I did a lot of development, in what I now realize was in a non-traditional environment, for better or worse at times. Skaven is hardcore into Agile. It’s actually a fairly thin layer on top of what I was most doing at IBM (other people are worrying more about the semantics of Agile right now), but it adds enough structure & reporting to make me feel like management is aware of what’s going on. It’s kinda cool to be learning about Agile at the same time as a Sprint is already in progress - it’s a great way to pick up on things quickly. In my new position I’m going to be doing Ruby on Rails development, which means I have to actually learn it! I’m currently going through lotsa of learning: the system, the development environment, Agile, scrum… and the roads to get there! I’m really psyched, and I can’t wait to contribute some real work. That should be coming in the next few weeks after I “pass the Qualifications Board”. I’m going to start trying to blog more as I figure out exactly what I’m doing :)