Work Starts!

This post is only half about one of the topics that I said I was going to post about last time. That's because there has been plenty going on this week to write about, so I'm going to let most of the stuff go.

The one topic that I do want to mention though is Professionalism. I was going to write a whole post about the professionalism (or lack thereof) of my peers during our orientation, but I'll just gloss over it quickly. In short, I was much less than impressed with the profession conduct of many of my peers. The most noticeable problem was punctuality. Training was scheduled to start at 8:00AM sharp everyday, yet people (who were staying in the same hotel as the training) were utterly unable to arrive on time. Additionally, throughout the day we would have breaks to go to the bathroom, get coffee, etc.. These breaks were usually 10-15 minutes, but invariable turned into 20-30 minute breaks when people simply did not return to the training. Not only were many people terrible at arriving on time, they also enjoyed going out drinking on some nights. This resulted in more than one morning where there was a sizable portion of the group that was hung over for training the next day. All in all, I was disappointed in my peers and a bit worried how my workplace would actually work when I arrived there. Fortunately, when I arrived at work on Monday I was greeted with a very professional and respectful group. Everyone in the team has been welcoming and helpful as I try to rapidly learn all the systems, acronyms, and processes that are already in place.

Which brings me to the other half of this post, my thoughts on my new job. So far it has been a lot of fun, but really crazy. My team is stretched a bit thin right now as we just had a very good employee (coincidentally the guy who hired me) take a different job within the firm. We are also in the process of developing a new system while still trying to support the existing systems. So, I've been learning a lot, but much of it has been sort of trial by fire. I'm simply given small tasks and projects and told to do them. The good thing is, unlike engineering where I would have to learn a proprietary programming language or figure out the proper equation to use, much of my job is looking at a system and determining what needs to be changed or updated to make it easier to use. This is good because I am generally good at looking at a project and seeing what needs to be changed, but I tend not to be quite as good at actually implementing the change. In short, the job seems to be exactly what I thought it would, and what I hoped it would. The strange thing though is how little I understand about the system as a whole, or the firm for that matter. My degree doesn't give me any background in software, finance, or business analysis. The main applicable skill is that I know how to learn and think critically. That part I am making very good use of. To make a long story short, my job has been great so far and I'm looking forward to learning lots more about the industry.

Just don't get me started on having a consistent place to sit...over the past 4 days I've sat at 3 different desks in two different buildings. Another story for another post though.

~Alex