Well, the first week back at work is in the bag. After a day or two of logistical issues, I am back in the Big Blue fold and it's almost like I never left. My new team is going to be an interesting one, and I received my first actual work assignment on Wednesday. I'll be working on the Business Infrastructure and Tools Services team of the ITD group within IBM. Basically that means that we provide tools and services for use by internal IBMers - either for the IBM Intranet or for field personnel out on customer sites. My current project is to help with the conversion of an old Lotus-based application to a WebSphere/DB2 application that is a little more efficient and user-friendly.
The new team seems to be pretty cool, although I find myself being in a situation that I did not want to be in - that of coming into this position on a project that is already somewhat under the gun because my predecessor couldn't do the job. So now I feel that I not only have something to prove (e.g. that I can actually do the job where the previous guy failed) but also that I need to be able to ramp up super quickly and get some production going. I don't really have a benchmark for how long a ramp-up operation should take in my particular case: on the one I hand, I already know the IBM system and don't have to mess around with learning Notes or the ins and outs of the internal machinations; on the other hand, I'm not familiar with the base technology that the site design is using and therefore am having to learn a lot of new terms and systems in order to make my part of the project actually do something.
I'm also still trying to get a feel for the level of work that is expected, and how much overtime people actually put in. My team is almost 100% remote - not necessarily all outside of Austin, but definitely outside the office - and so far I've only met two of the eleven team members in person. It's hard to get to know somebody remotely, and it can be especially hard to find out someone's legitimate work habits because it's easy to appear working when you can just leave yourself online and answer emails in a timely fashion. It's a cultural thing but with the culture removed from the picture, it becomes something that is ridiculously hard to define. Just because someone is online at 11pm, does that mean that they've been working 12-hour days? Probably not. Or maybe so. I can't tell.
Speaking of hours, the whole contracting/hourly thing is kind of a new idea. It would seem that I don't get paid for lunch time and that means in order to get my 40 hours in I am going to need to put in an extra hour somewhere. This isn't a new idea where hourly work is concerned, but it's definitely a different feel for me because that means that if I have a 9-5 core time, let's say, that means I either have to work through lunch or come in at 8 or stay until 6 just to get in an 8-hour day. This is a lot different than my salaried existence, and it is going to take a pretty significant adjustment to my line of thinking. As I have mentioned before, I'm really wary of immediately jumping back into the "I'm so busy I can't even think straight" mentality going from work straight into the evening's activities and then to bed and then right back to repeat the next day, so this idea of thinking about what (to me) seems to be an "extra" hour already is going to take some work.
But, overall, I'm glad to be back working and having a daily purpose. I'm learning quite a bit already and I'm sure I'll learn a ton more in the next couple of weeks and months, so it will definitely be a positive experience in the long run.
