Interesting first day

I spent most of the day just meeting people. First HR (new hire introduction, mostly paperwork and explanation of benefits), then people in my new organisation. A lot of faces, a lot of names. I can only remember a few.

My new manager invited me out for lunch. There were five of us; me, him, two more of his direct reports, and someone else whose role is still unclear to me. The invite was pitched as a once-off welcome lunch for me, but I believe that this clique regularly go off-site for lunch. It was pretty clear that they were testing, judging me.

I think I did ok. I might have been too cautious, hard to tell. I cracked enough jokes, but not too many. I asked enough questions to learn a little about the organisation, but I backed off when I sensed that I was getting into touchy territory.

One of my new peers, let's call him G.B., kept trying to get me to lose my cool. Trying to probe hard into my background, trying to provoke me on a personal level, trying to bait me into loaded discussions. I played the game for a little bit, and then put my foot down hard.

G.B. is the type of person who thinks that he can fool others into believeing that he's hard, that he's smart. His greatest fear is that someone will see through his facade. He won't be a problem. The others though? I don't know yet. Time will tell.

Otherwise, not much interesting happened. Towards the end of the day, I finally had a few minutes for myself in my new office. It's not big. I don't have a secretary. I don't have a window. But I do have a job again. Feels good.

Getting prepared...

I start my new job tomorrow. I'm nervous, already feel stressed out. I wish there was something I could do to relax.

I've spent the last few days preparing best as I can. It's hard to know where to start, how to spend my limited time, whom to please. I know I'll have a lot to learn about the company, about their projects, about the technology being used, about my part of the organisation, about the people.

I know that I need to spend the first week just learning. The first priority is to get a feel for the office politics. Who's really in charge? Who's the outcast? Who has ambitions? Whom should I ally with? Whom should I stay clear of? Whom do I need to suck up to, whom can I break down quickly?

I start at this place with no friends, no enemies, no reputation. Nobody fears me, nobody likes me. That means I have a lot of catching up to do. And at my age, I better catch up quick, and I better not make any mistakes now. Pissing off the wrong person or allying with a losing party, it'll cost too much time. So I'll take a week to survey the land, and then make my grand entrance.

I only have a short time to make my arrival known and make the impression I need. It wasn't easy to land this job; if I blow this opportunity, I might not get another.

Wish me luck.

I did it!

I did it!

I landed a job! Finally! It took some time - far too much, I guess - but not for lack of trying, and in the end I did it. On Monday, Feb 19th, I'll be restarting my career.

I submitted my CV just after New Years. It then took a while before I was contacted by HR and the interview cycle started. The interviews took place in four (!) iterations, and obviously some deliberation was required for shortlisting between each cycle. After each interview (twice phone, twice on-site), it took over a week before I heard anything back. Each time, I gave up hope. But every time, they asked to talk to me or see me again.

I had all but given up hope of finding a decent job again. When I started, I probably had an inflated sense of entitlement based on my previous experiences and the results I brought. Over time, I had to adjust my expectations downwards based on the reality I faced, and just a few months ago I was about to give up altogether.

I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am that I landed this job. Well, scratch that, I guess I just did begin to tell you. Why? Well, turns out that my role is managing a team of software developers. I realized early in hiring cycle that this is a very "open" company, where a large proportion of the employees maintain blogs and where blogging, communities, openness etc is valued highly. In later cycles of the interview loop, I pre-emptively claimed to embrace the same values.

Only, when I made these claims, I didn't even know what a "blog" was, or even how to spell it. But since "current" technology in all its forms apparently is amazingly important at this company/in this group, I better get up to speed on anything I can.

I now only have a weekend to prepare for my first day at my new job. Let me start preparing by creating a blog.

Who'll read this? Who cares.

Here goes nothing.

Cross my heart and hope to lose my job before my first paycheck.

Your's truly,
Anon 57.