New Job

I started my new job on Monday.

It's been a stressful last month or so, not knowing if I'd be able to find a job here in the DC area. But the timing worked out perfectly and my dad and I started driving from Dallas on Friday night and arrived at home on Sunday afternoon.

As often happens in my life, a million things could have gone wrong on the trip but none of them did.

Now I know what the difference is between working at a small company and a big company (or at least the difference between a shitty small company and a good, stable big company). People are much more focused on their jobs, and managers are much more focused on understanding the big picture rather than micromanaging.

It's also kind of ridiculous that all most engineers need to do their jobs is a cell phone and laptop and they're good to go.

What I'm not used to:
- No one checking to see if I'm in my seat at a certain time
- Not really having a seat - I was assigned a cubicle, but since most of the people I'll be working with for the next couple weeks are in a different building, I was told that I could move to a temporary cubicle - 2 cubes, what?
- Free coffee, which I need to take advantage of ASAP
- Off-work conversation focused on kids - um, yeah I have nothing to add to this conversation, but did you see that waitress, she was hot! no, nothing? ok, I'll be quiet now, tell me more about how your 3-year-old spit up on you yesterday...
- Co-workers busting out the Hindi randomly in meetings