First few days

My new job is definitely quite different from the previous one. I am expected to work 8 hours per day and not encouraged to do overtime. If a project requires extra hours, permanent employees can bank the time, I still have to determine how contractors handle this (I would assume we charge for the time!). There is a lot more structure around the work and many more processes and procedures to understand (checking in documents, getting part numbers, and so on). I guess this is to be expected, as the company is large (1200 or so in the Lower Mainland, 4000 in total).

The working environment is nice, I work in an office with a glass sliding door (like a patio door) that I share with another employee (he's a software developer). It's very easy to get lost, my building has five floors and many long corridors (and labs!). There's a huge skylight just outside my door, so I get a lot of natural light (and we have a window in our office). There's free coffee and tea close by and yummy cafeteria lunches for $5.50. People, although you can tell they work hard, also have lives beyond the office. And you're allowed to bring your dog to work. Yup, doggies in the office. I met a Golden Retriever, a Whippet (or some other skinny, racing type of dog), a Jack Russell and a Boxer. All well-behaved and mostly quiet (I heard one bark today, but I think it was a 5 o'clock bark, as in "ok, miss, the day's over, can we get out of here..."). Apparently, a couple of employees also had cats at one point, but the combination didn't work out so well. I guess the dog people won.

This week is quite busy. The person I am replacing is leaving on Friday and she's the only one working on the documentation that I will be responsible for. Basically, after this week, I'm on my own. Well, not entirely, lots of people have called or sent e-mails to tell me that I should not hesitate to ask for help and they would gladly give me a hand, should a problem arise. Isn't that nice? I think it's nice. On Friday, I was initially scheduled to work all day (to get as much training as I could absorb in five days), but finally I'm only going in for half a day. The old office is having a farewell BBQ for the staff and I wanted to attend. Although I'm not going to miss the work, I'm going to miss the people.

And the weather is simply gorgeous out here. Sunny and warm.