The first week

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I know the "tradition" isn't to report on a new job until day three, but the tradition isn't very old and I figured, what the heck.

I met my recruiter at the new place a little before 8:30 am as scheduled. We went to the front desk and asked for the head guy (well, my head guy, anyway). The recruiter gave him his business card and bid a hasty retreat. I got the standard tour including where the bathrooms were, where the lunch room was (the soda's are free) and all that. I'm in a different cube than the person who came before me, so I got to move all of her stuff (now my stuff) to the new cube, plus set up one older PC for development and my new PC for my desktop.

I didn't see the instructions on setting up the new machine until after I'd set it up, which caused a few issues but a lot of the problem is that my manager forgot to give me my login credentials until the end of the day. I was finally able to login to the domain and retain admin rights on my two boxes.

You'll get a kick out of this...we have daily (morning for us) conference calls with our counter parts in Bristol. That's right. In your neck of the woods. They have a different way of doing software development called "agile development". I'm not sure how much of the process I'm supposed to talk about, but it seems like it has a much more frequent feedback loop between the developers and the customers so that there are no surprises. That's the reason for us to call Bristol every morning.

Over lunch, I took a walk in my old "stomping grounds" since my previous job is located in the same industrial park. Fall has really kicked in and it was a very nice walk.

I studied the documentation on the product in the afternoon until my eyes started to cross. No, it's good documentation, but you can only read so much before you start looking for someplace to take a nap.

My manager came by late in the day to check on me. I explained my issues with setting up Domino Lotus. The IT guys got my domain password reset when I told them I didn't have one and after that I reset it to something no one knows. I could get my emails via webmail but the Domino system passwords aren't updated by the same system as the domain passwords.

He printed out the original info he forgot to give me that morning and it solved the problem. Tasks to do include getting up and running on Subversion and Bugzilla. My "mentor" will do a "braindump" (not the kind we normally mention here) with me, probably tomorrow, to show me how my part of the system works.

Basically, my role will be to sit in with the developers at every phase and I'll be considered just another one of them except they produce code and I produce documentation. It looks to be a really great product and if this all works out right, it'll turn into a really great job.

I can't count my chickens yet, though. Only the first day. At least I got my "official" badge so I can come in the back way.

 

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You rebel! Down with tradition!

 

I hope you do

 

Sounds good Trip. Bristol isn't very far from me... Good luck on your new venture

Simon

 

Good Luck with the new job.

 

Sounds like a typical 1st day on a new job

 

Agile Development is all the rage these days. We have been using it here for some time.

A starter article can be found here.

Harry.

 

Nice to hear Trip, hope there's more exciting days and months to come

 

Day two: Halloween. These guys take it seriously. One group built a mini-haunted house down the isle between their cubes with black plastic curtains and lots and lots of white boards...complete with lights and creepy music (which was distracting as heck when I was trying to work. They won the team award and the guy dressed as the Tin Woodsman (Wizard of Oz) won the individual award (free pizza and movie passes respectively). It wasn't so bad until about 4 when everyone's kids came in and started trick or treating. Natch, I had no decorations and no candy so bid a hasty retreat at abotu 4:30.

I did attend the regular morning meeting and the "end of iteration" demo meeting (content a total secret).

 

Day three: This is when CF "tradition" says I should post to describe the job. Each day is a different adventure, but today went the farthest in adding a context to what I'm supposed to be doing of any of the three days.

I talked to my "mentor" about the whole RoboHelp/Subversion thing and after playing around with it some, it's pretty straightforward. I had to reacquaint myself with RoboHelp since it's been well over a year since I've actually used the thing. I'm getting all of my memories back about it (for good and for ill).

I got pulled into a meeting where the Toronto team was demoing the product on a different handheld than we normally work with (sorry...no details).

In the afternoon, I was handed my own (borrowed) Samsung SmartPhone to play with. I'll install the client application tomorrow morning with no more instructions than what the ordinary end user gets. Part of what I'm doing is documenting how well the current end-user docs describe the process...what works, what doesn't...that sort of thing.

Later on, I got a high-level description of the current product and the version currently under development, including what I can leverage from older docs and what I'll need to create from scratch.

Information is coming out of the woodwork in terms of what needs to be done and as I'm pulling it all together, my conceptual framework for the job is taking shape. I also got my first piece of information about what the company's like to work with (good) and a little behind-the-scenes stuff.

Tomorrow, we have a "working lunch" from 11 to 1 to plan the next iteration (they provide the food) so I guess I won't get a workout for lunch like I did today (I can easily zip home over lunch and hop on the exercise machine to a "quicky").

Next week, I'll create some small help documents and commit them to subversion, then have my mentor check my process to make sure I've got it down. I also have to reconsider how I'm going to organize help files relative to some of the stuff I learned in the meeting earlier today.

Looks like they're going to keep me busy which is a good thing. I guess that concludes my "day three traditional report". Back to you, Chet.

 

Sounds like your gonna be busy.

Beats doing nothing though.

 

I forgot to mention that a gal from marketing came over to introduce herself to me. Seems we'll be working together on the branding changes for the product as it affects my documentation. Geez. I'm all over the map.