The worst part of any new job is the transition phase. That's when you have to mentally detach yourself from your old job completely and get into step with all of the responsibilities of your new job. When I joined my previous employer two years ago, I was under the gun to learn all that I could from the contractor I was replacing before his contract was up. That made for two weeks here I essentially listened, took notes and wondered when I'd start being productive. Over the past two weeks at my new job, I did spend time listening and taking notes, but I also did a considerable amount of development. I probably spent at least 80% of my time working on applications and writing code. Comparatively, I probably spent only 40% of my time coding at my last job. The rest of the time was eaten up by meetings, phone calls, waiting for decisions to be made, analyzing problems reported via help desk tickets, etc.
When I was out on assignment for NuTechs, I always spent most of my time working on code for the client. But that was two years ago. As a result, my transition over the past two weeks also involved getting used to coding for long stretches during the day. Don't get me wrong, I'll chose writing code over an endless parade of meetings every day of the week and twice on Sunday's. But I still needed to get used to working the way I used to work before I "went corporate". I felt like I caught my stride this week, though. I spent most of the week enhancing VBA code in a spreadsheet that generates quotes for orders. While I'll always have a soft spot for Java, I've also seen how using VBA to automate functions inside of MS Office documents can be a very powerful solution. Next week, I'll get the chance to modify some honest-to-God Visual Basic code. Should be cool!
Status of the new job08/25/2007 08:44 AM
