The End of a Chapter
As most of you who know me probably already know, my time with Adaptavant has come to an end. It's been a terrific experience working there and I've met a lot of great people, but it is finally time to move on. Adaptavant has a lot of big things on the horizon and I'm sad to leave parts of my job, but I think the slight change in career path will ultimately make this the right decision for me.
Leaving no time for rest, Friday was my last day with Adaptavant and today I started my new position with Columbia Sportswear as a Programmer Analyst. I'm at the corporate headquarters and got to tour the facilities, which are very nice and much larger than I previously thought. Nothing much should change on the blog as a result of this major life change, except now none of my views or opinions are shared by Columbia Sportswear. Oh, I'm sorry. I mean to say that I now have to explicitly state that my views and opinions are not shared by Columbia Sportswear :-) So no, they're not. And they never have been.
Comments
Cameron,
After only a couple of days, you are already missed- professionally and personally.
So far, I've had Solestruck questions that I have to dig into unfamiliar code to answer, coffee runs that have been one person short, and most importantly a colleague that is no longer right down the hall.
You have done great work here at Adaptavant, and have also helped to form my own path in this crazy industry of ours.
Good luck out there bro, and I'm sure that we will run into each other soon.
We will miss you Cameron but are happy that you have found a new place to grow... and become better at whatever it was you actually did here :-)
Take Care Bro.
Men With Jobs
I work for a pretty young company. We're not only young in the number of years we've been around, but also the average age of employee. We have a youthful culture without a lot of hierarchy and things always seem pretty unformal. The dress code, work habits, and personalities around the office are a result of the people we've built the company on and it's created an atmosphere that makes it a really interesting place to work- there are definitely times when I feel like I'm on an episode of Kid Nation. I talked to my old manager after I had taken over for him and the subject of work atire came up. He said he remembered that I wore a suit on my interview and it made him feel uncomfortable. This is going to be different from manager to manager, of course, but it's a an example of the office culture.
For some reason, I seem to have gotten it into my head that every company is run this way. Anyway, I couldn't help but have a George moment today when I walked into a meeting with some guys from UPS. I guess I should have been expecting it but I walked into a room of three middle aged men in suits (because, you know, they were meeting with a client so what else would be appropriate atire?). And the thought ran through my head...
"They're men with jobs, Jerry! They wear suits and ties. They're married, they have secretaries." -George Constanza, The PitchSo I was intimidated for about two seconds and I managed to get over it, but it was a strange feeling.
I haven't been to a lot of big development companies but I think the dress code at least is probably similar, although the average age has got to be higher. Everyone at Valve has always dressed casual- Gabe Newell was wearing JNCO's one day (and they were about two sizes too big). But then whenever I met with IBM for my senior project, they were usually dressed in khakis and a collared shirt. Anyway, I feel like our youth and inexperience is something that hurts us a lot of times but also makes us more flexible (and agile!). Overall it makes the office a lot more energetic and interesting place to work. I've complained about having to set up the practices and processes of Adaptavant's Development Department from scratch (Continuous Integration? Should we do that? That sounds complicated.) but it's also been a once in a lifetime possibility. So even through all the stress of not really knowing what to do all the time, I'm thankful for the experience.
So I was at Adaptavant today...
I've been sick in bed over the past few days so I haven't had the typical wild and crazy time that I've been accustomed to since my arrival. On the other hand, the dullest day in India is still something to write home about, right? ...no actually, I slept about 15 hours on Sunday and spent the rest of the time watching Season 3 of 24, which doesn't even seem to be more interesting written down than it was to live through. So I'll skip that part.
Weekdays aren't usually very exciting. The shift (noon to 10:00) is not something I find fun and makes me appreciate my usual 7-4 day a lot. Here I usually wake up and hit the gym (every single day. ...aw who am I kidding, you've all seen the pictures) and maybe eat some leftovers for breakfast before heading to the office, possibly stopping at my computer to see if anyone has put the latest Finals game online (no one watches basketball here!). Then come home after a ten hour day, help Alec make something to eat and spend about an hour watching a DVD, writing email, etc. It seems like my free time has decreased tremendously, which is probably because instead of having my free time in one large block at the end of the day, it's split up between before work and after work. I don't really like it.
Speaking of my office, I took the time to make a short video. Feel free to watch it by clicking on it now:
The office building is very nice. The air conditioning never fails and there's a dedicated barista just serving the 5 offices on the floor.
But as Michael Scott put it, "What is the most important thing for a company? Is it the cash flow? Is it the inventory? Nuh-uh. It's the people." And I've gotten to know a lot of great people here. In fact, Friday we all went to lunch as an office. I managed to take 4 pictures at this lunch, each of which was worse than the one before it :-\ In fact, the pictures turned out so bad that I went so far as to create a collage (again, keeping it real). The first three prompt so many questions. What is Senthil so excited about? Why is Mahalkshmi so upset? And why am I making the hand motions to Little Bunny Foo Foo? The last one is just an example of bad timing. But don't let the pictures fool you, we all had a fun time. I had the Biryani, and so did everyone else.
Between work and sleep, I didn't do a whole lot this weekend. I hope to change that next weekend though, when I plan to do some shopping and sightseeing. I would also really like to see a movie while I'm here. There's a movie called Sivaji that everyone is talking about and opens on Friday. Unfortunately, the movie is so hyped that theaters are charging 1200 Rs for tickets during the first week. To give people some idea of how much that is, just based on my shopping here, that's the equivalent of 100 liters of bottled water, 150 packets of Top Ramen, or 120 standard sized Kit Kat bars. Wowzers! No thanks, I'll wait for the DVD...
