My first week at ES was long and all over the place... my kind of week.
I spent most of my first day getting my computer set up for ES's dev environment. After that, I spent a lot of time exploring the database and codebases that I'll be working on. Finally, I started picking up some easy cards.
While that part seemed pretty straight-forward, everything around me seemed fairly chaotic. In particular, my team (Billing) was having a lot of meetings related to a large deployment that went out at the end of the week. Also, the whole engineering department has been having broader discussions on the technical direction of the entire company. All the while, the Columbia, MO headquarters that I've been working at is undergoing non-stop construction work. The sounds at HQ are a non-stop collage of scissor lifts, drills, and hammers.
I like the environment a lot, though. I love the busy-ness of it all. I'm surrounded by a bunch of smart, productive people working in an organization that is experiencing great growth.
With growth comes growing pains, however. Without getting into the specifics of the code, I'll say that the structure of the code and infrastructure has outgrown the current scale. Luckily, the business cares deeply about engineering and has allocated A LOT of time to improve it in 2020.
I'm excited to see what my role will be in all of this. For now, my role is to ask "as many questions as possible" -- not only to learn the ropes, but also as a mechanism to drive these large-scale organizational improvements. That's more or less what my team lead told me. I naturally question everything, so it's nice to be in an environment where that's a part of my actual job.
The physical environment is also nice. I have my own standing desk, and the engineering tables are right next to the break space where there is an infinite supply of healthy snacks and foods. In addition, breakfast and lunch are made for employees literally every day. And it's all free. It's unbelievable. You can see some pictures of the workspace on this company blog post.
It's an exciting time to be there!
Saturday, November 23 is the last home football game of 2019. It's also going to be my last day working at Shakespeares. As I mentioned here, because of health reasons, I think it's time for me to move on. I may end my last shift working in the dish room. I started as a driver/dishwasher almost six years ago now. Hard to believe it's been that long. I've enjoyed it.