I started work the week before Memorial Day, so it was a fairly relaxing time to come in. So far I like the people, and the work is interesting. My co-workers are a pretty tight-knit group and have some nice traditions. "The Phat Club" is an agreement among about a dozen people to bring in breakfast for everyone else once a week on a rotating basis. Every day at a certain time, everyone who isn't busy with something will take a short walk down to the "snack room" to stretch our legs and shoot the breeze. Some of us even took an afternoon off to see a Rockies game. That was a lot of fun!
One thing that's in stark contrast to my previous experiences is the level of isolation. Communication is restricted in order to protect proprietary information, so we can't have cell phones inside our building. It's a little unnerving, but it's a necessary evil and I'm learning to adapt. But there also seems to be some technological isolation. I don't know if it's just my project, but there's a lot less use of libraries and frameworks than even some of my school projects; instead, everything is built from scratch. It's well-built from what I can tell, but open-source frameworks have the advantage of public scrutiny, industry approval and large support communities. Working on this project could certainly be a learning opportunity in relying on my own design and coding ability, but I will need to spend time outside work to keep my finger on the pulse of the industry.
