Third Day on the Job

Discussion in 'Employment & Jobs' started by tripwire45, Oct 2, 2008.

  1. tripwire45
    Honorary Member

    tripwire45 Zettabyte Poster

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    Where to I begin? When you go to work for a huge, enterprise-level company, there's just a ton that happens.

    First off, three days doesn't even scratch the surface. I was hired with another person and our initial training will take two weeks. At Day 3, we're barely into things.

    The people are nice. Very friendly and helpful...and they laugh at my jokes, which is a plus. So far, being a contractor (contingent worker) doesn't seem to have created a "caste system".

    I'm still not fully setup on my laptop. The thing had to be reimaged from Vista to XP since Vista isn't compatible with most of the applications I'll be using. There was a lot of fun and games getting a hold of the right image and then joining the computer to the domain. I was just able to login to the domain on XP for the first time this morning. Haven't even had time to setup Outlook yet.

    Like most large organizations, this place is driven by meetings. Even though I was scheduled for a full day's training today, I was still pulled into 2 meetings, one I knew about ahead of time and the other, I was just pulled into. To give you an idea of the scope of the team, my manager's boss is in Amsterdam.

    So far I've seen two people I know from prior jobs. I suspect others lurk about but the physical site is vast, so if they work in another building, it might be months before we run into each other, if at all.

    It looks like my initial job will be to work with our content vendors, reviewing their work for a wide variety of issues, but the job will probably expand from there. Our group is a global group, so what we do impacts all support docs for at least 14 HP products worldwide. I've been able to leverage information I've learned on other jobs to ask "intelligent" questions so I can at least appear somewhat bright.

    Sorry to make it sound so uninteresting (it's not), but we're kept pretty busy all the time we're on site. The agency I contract through is pretty much "hands off" at this point except for paying me, so all of my direction will come from my manager and the various supervisors in the team.

    I suppose in a couple of weeks, I'll have the beginning of a handle on what I'm supposed to do, although I was told I won't be an "expert" for about 5 months. Right now, I'm still trying to pick up on all the acronyms everyone uses. It's worse than a text on TCP/IP and trying to memorize all of the various protocols that live in the different levels of the OSI.

    I'll probably have to "file this report" again in a week or so when I can be more informative. Right now (as everyone predicted), I'm on "information overload".
     
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  2. Bluerinse
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    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    Thanks James.. good luck with it all, it sounds like a really amazing adventure 8)
     
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  3. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    Sounds great, man! :)
     
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  4. onoski

    onoski Terabyte Poster

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    Best wishes and well done for being persistent. Cheerio:)
     
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  5. Markyboyt

    Markyboyt Kilobyte Poster

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    I'm not really experienced in job changes too much but I can imagine it is probably a lot more exciting learning the new stuff and challenging yourself then if you had gone into a job your up to speed on.
     
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  6. craigie

    craigie Terabyte Poster

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    Sounds like your having fun!
     
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  7. BosonJosh

    BosonJosh Gigabyte Poster

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    Sounds like your 3-day report might need to be a 3-week report! Best of luck at the new job.
     
  8. The Zig

    The Zig Kilobyte Poster

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    Sounds like a good challenge. Good luck!
     
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  9. tripwire45
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    tripwire45 Zettabyte Poster

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    I've got a headache.

    Another full day plus of training. I think I've finally got everything installed on my laptop that I'll need. I won't go into the specifics of the applications we were trained on (just scratching the surface, actually), but they have to do with accessing HP's worldwide document repository and being able to manage the document workflow from beginning to end. We also worked on a related tool that's the default XML editor for the system.

    There's yet another tool that tests for the type of English the document is written in. Since our docs needs to be translated into multiple languages, it needs to be in "global clean English" for the sake of consistency and to make them easier to translate.

    It's about a billion times more involved than I'm describing here and managing documents as developmental editors is only the beginning of the job in store for my counterpart and me.

    Have to be in the office by 7 tomorrow morning (yawn). At least it'll be Friday. I'm looking forward to staying in bed past 5 in the morning. :wink:
     
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  10. wizard

    wizard Petabyte Poster

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    The big question is:

    Are you enjoying the job? :D
     
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  11. tripwire45
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    tripwire45 Zettabyte Poster

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    Sort of. I don't really know enough yet to enjoy the entire experience. Friday was kind of a bummer because my recruiter told me that there was some snafu with getting me access to the system that would let me enter my hours. She assured me that I'd get paid no matter what, but that afternoon when my manager asked where my timesheet was, I had to tell him I didn't have it yet. He said he'd sign it Monday (assuming it's available by then). Hey. I'm a nice guy and all that...but I want to be paid.

    Showed up for work at 7 as requested and added a bunch of other apps (NetMeeting, Virtual Rooms, etc...) to my laptop. No meetings fortunately, but a lot of "busy work" to get our systems up to speed. We had to install some software on a few of the laptops in the training room for next week, so our afternoon covered that. I think once we get past this "prep work" stage, things will get more interesting. I'll be in meetings with our vendors (writing agencies we contract with to generate our content) next week (some of whom I've worked for before) which will be interesting.

    Friday ended on a bit of a down note. I got my docking station and got it set up and working, but spent most of my time in the training room. When I plugged my laptop back into the docking station about 30 minutes before close of business, I noticed that it wasn't getting power from the station but was running off the battery. Everything else seemed to work OK. It was too late in the day to do anything about it, so it'll be the first thing I have to deal with Monday morning. Oh well...
     
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  12. Leehaa

    Leehaa Gigabyte Poster

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    Hope today's going a bit better and that you managed to sort the power issue out!
     
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  13. tripwire45
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    tripwire45 Zettabyte Poster

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    "Let's do the time warp again...." LOL. My work day hasn't started yet. Just a little after 7 in the morning here. It's a Monday and that always makes me a little nervous. :wink:

    Thanks. I'll let you know how it goes.
     
    Certifications: A+ and Network+
  14. Leehaa

    Leehaa Gigabyte Poster

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    Whoops - forgot about that! :)

    Well take it as a pre-work 'hope it all goes well' wish,

    Lee
     
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  15. tripwire45
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    tripwire45 Zettabyte Poster

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    Thanks. The docking station will need to be replaced but the person that would handle it was off today (go figure). Learned about metadata in the morning and then did a brainstorming session in the afternoon. Lots of good conversation but while we're encouraged to think outside the box and actually speak outside the box, we're still (more or less) in the box. :wink:
     
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  16. sunn

    sunn Gigabyte Poster

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    I missed this whole topic - starting with new job...
    Last I remember, you were hoping to get called back (or something like that)...

    Very late, but congrats...
    As for the 3-day report, sounds like a big enterprise with lots of processes and procedures. Some people love the rigid structure some don't. Nonetheless, hope you're enjoying the overall experience.
     
  17. nugget
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    nugget Junior toady

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    Sounds like you're off to a flying start Trip. :thumbleft
     
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  18. tripwire45
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    tripwire45 Zettabyte Poster

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    For the past two days I've been involved in a special project. I can't say too much about it but as part of the project, I've lent my hands to some videos showing how various tasks are done with some of the products. Normally, this is sent out to video professionals, but for the sake of this task, I was "volunteered". My counterpart is behind the camera and occasionally, someone on the HP staff acts as "director". I was also asked my first SharePoint question yesterday.
     
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