Kitchen Reconquista

Ever since I started my first week at EA, it's been as if I've slowly wakened from a dream. I left my last job fairly burned out, and after a spell of a few months working on a web project (which I now think was largely an expression of pent up anxiety or something), I finally just stopped. By that, I mean I simply ran out of the desire to do any work whatever. That's when my vacation really started, and I traveled to see family, read some books, watched TV, went for walks, etc.

But, one morning I woke up and decided that I was ready to go back out there and get a new job. It was as though something simply clicked back on inside me. A few weeks later and I entered EA's doors.

However, rather than being more drained from work, and perhaps because I'm only working a 40 hour week to this point, I have been left with energy to take things on around the house during the weekends and now the holidays as well.

Funny that I didn't seem to have the energy to do these projects when I had absolutely nothing to do. Anyways, I have recently cleaned out my kitchen of many excess pots, pans, and containers, and have moved things around. Once done, I was struck with many new projects that needed doing, and I am now slowly dispatching one after another.

I conclude that the world looks much different when you perceive yourself to be waxing and not waning; building and not decaying.

A Pleasant Surprise

I have discovered one common element between the defense industry and EA: a week off around Christmas. I was almost certain that in leaving the defense industry I would be giving up this extended holiday time. My reasoning was that we government contractors got this time off because the government did, as they do many other holidays, Mondays, and Fridays.

So, it was a pleasant surprise to find that EA takes this time as well. It seems this is just part of a general culture where expectations of time off mirror expectations of "time on" when the crunch of a deadline hits - especially in the sports game world where there can be no schedule slips, but only feature cuts. Games with less features sell less, so it is incumbent upon a game manufacturer to do its utmost to get everything done on time.

Of course, as a contractor, I get the time but I don't get paid. Conversely, I would be paid for overtime were it required. Never fear, there is some justice in the world.

At any rate, I'm catching up on lots of interesting chores this holiday. Perhaps I'll squeeze in a non-fatal kayak adventure...

Shortest Day of the Year

I was reminded on the radio last night that the winter solstice occurred yesterday at 7:22 pm EST. This of course means that the northern hemisphere of the earth was tilted as far from the sun as it is going to go, that the sun is as far south in the sky as it is going to go, and that the day is as short as it is going to get. Oddly, we will now start to get more and more sunshine, even though the temperature is going to get colder as we head into the "dead" of winter. I guess its because even though we start getting more sun, it isn't enough to keep things warm, i.e. a little more of a little isn't a lot.

This weather report was brought to you by me.

That Would Be a "No"

I just got word from the Zürich company, which, for those of you who didn't know, was Google. They've determined that I'm not a fit for the position they have open. Oh, well. It would've been fun, but I've still got a pretty good thing going here. In a way, I'm kind of relieved, as a certain amount of anxiety and uncertainty, however hypothetical, has been removed from my life.

An Important Day

Today was the most important day yet in my new job. I got paid. This was the first paycheck I had received in:

* 12,096,000 seconds OR
* 201,600 minutes OR
* 3360 hours OR
* 140 days OR
* 20 weeks

Needless to say, it was about time.

BTW, if you don't have an emergency fund, you should get one.
(Nifty stats provided by http://timeanddate.com)

But, They're Not a Majority

I've written a lot about the opportunity I might have in Zürich, just because it is so out there that I can't help but consider all the ways my life would change if it came to pass.

In the second phone screen, I had my turn to ask questions. One of my questions was about the interviewer's background. He said he knew computer science from an electrical engineering background, got his Ph.D. and did two years of post-doctoral work before joining up with his current gig.

"Is that normal?", I ask.

"Well, there are a lot of Ph.D.s around here. But,", then a short pause, "I wouldn't say they are even a majority."

My dad suggested that they probably let the guys with just a B.S. take out the trash.

Still, I would be taking out the garbage in Zürich. ;-)

More of the EA / UCF Conspiracy

This may give you an idea of the sort of things that go on at EA.

So, Where Did You Go to School?

I was asked this question after having to dive far deeper into some library code than I wanted to. After wrestling it to at least a standstill, I had figured out a way to move a failure condition a little further down the road. I can only take it as a compliment, and I felt a little pleasure in saying, "Oh, UCF." I hope I represent them well.

Now, if only they would beat one of the dregs of a good conference in basketball. We are NOT that much worse than the Golden Gophers, we were just awed, and I predict we'll do better against Colorado or Utah.

You Have a Call from Zurich on Line One

This morning the company in Zürich called me for my second phone screen. Now, while my ability to predict the success of such interactions is highly suspect, I think it went pretty well. I call my predictive ability into question because I only had a second phone screen because I earned it in the first one.

Immediately after the first one, however, I felt I had bombed it. In fact, the more I thought about it, the worse I was sure I'd done. So, this time, I probably did bomb it, but at least I feel better about it.

I believe the next step, if I understood them correctly, would be a free trip to Zürich for a face to face interview. If that were to work out, I'd probably have to try and make that trip line up next to a weekend. I'd also need to buy a coat. Tchuss.

A 360 And Memory Problems - La Dolce Vita

I've finally got my XBox360 development kit. They were in very short supply for some reason, though not as rare as PS3s are. Some of you are thinking that I play video games all day, but that is not (yet) the case. As a matter of fact, I was looking forward to my new console because now I can actually run and test the code I have been writing. Of course, once I got things up to speed in the compile-run-debug cycle, it didn't take long before I was getting frustrated over some memory bug. That's when I knew I was actually performing valuable work.

(BTW, I believe the memory bugs have been squashed).
(BTW, we shouldn't say "bug", as that anthropomorphizes our mistakes, and allows us to treat them as if they are external phenomena that we are not responsible for.)
(So, I fixed my mistakes, and things worked better.)
;-)

Day 7

I am about to go to work for Day 7 of the EA Experience. This morning, I actually know what I'm going to do when I get there. (This is very refreshing.) Also, I may get an XBox360 this morning so I can actually start doing my real job.

On the way to and from work yesterday I listened to a Chinese language CD. Maybe I'll get serious about learning that language, but I'm not counting on it.

In other news, I got confirmation that my phone screen with Zürich is Thursday at 8 a.m. So, nobody call me at 8 a.m. ;-)

Zurich Continues...

Well, I had given up on the Zürich job, but it turns out that they want to continue moving forward. I am supposed to have another phone screen sometime soon. I was concerned about having to choose between this opportunity and honoring my commitment to EA, but the company in Zürich is not in a time crunch. In fact, and this amazed me, they have made an offer to someone recently for Sept. 2007.

Everywhere I have worked, they only hired when they absolutely had to put a warm body in a seat somewhere. Therefore, they only hired people who were available with very short lead times.

So, this is different.

A Modern Labor Force - Almost

I have started to run into some barriers that I only noticed in a cultural sense at the beginning of my time at EA. I suppose that as a contract employee, I should have expected to be regarded as "the other". However, despite people noticing that I do not have a permanent badge, or that my picture is not in the online phone directory, there hadn't been any real consequences.

Yesterday, however, I was not allowed to see an internal website due to my contract status, which inconvenienced me slightly (I hope slightly). Even at Northrup, (or I should probably say, especially at Northrop,) we had rules about what contractors could or couldn't do. It made sense to me at the time, because many of our contractors were engineering companies, and often times direct major competitors, like Lockheed, Boeing, or Raytheon.

In my case, however, I work for a staffing company. They do not actually sell anything. They have no engineering staff. My learning from EA is not in any way useful to my staffing firm.

So, from my perspective, it appears that EA trusts employees more than contractors, which in my case is merely a distinction of where the W2 comes from for tax purposes, and also the types of compensation given (benefits, overtime, etc.)

I know this is not unique to EA, and it tells me that our U.S. labor market is still not as free-wheeling and flexible as it should be. It seems reasonable to me that I should simply be able to sign a confidentiality agreement or a non-disclosure agreement, or whatever it is that employees sign that makes them trustworthy.

I have a feeling the problem lies in the bureaucracy being unable to distinguish between types of contractors. Since they do subcontract in some cases, subcontractor rules are being applied to me in a one-size-fits-all system.

Oh, well. I'll muddle through, as they say.

Day Three - First Signs of Normalcy

I knew things were getting normal when I got home from work at about 8 p.m. ;-)

Really, though, the good news is that today my manager was not sick, and so I was able to have a brief and (I won't lie) slightly overwhelming meeting where I was given my first assignment. Needless to say, I know virtually nothing about the code base I am working with, nor the people, nor the tools, libraries, etc. By the end of the day, though, I think I had a better idea of what I was supposed to be trying to accomplish, and tomorrow I'll begin to really dive in with a purpose.

The nice thing about today was that the world became bounded, and it started to dawn on me (as I hoped it eventually would) that I could actually become a real contributor and know what I am doing.

I'm still not entirely sure how to describe EA, but I'm working on it. It has a lot to do with Hollywood, I think... Hollywood, special effects, and marketing.

Brave New World

Well, I have now been to work for two days at EA. Unfortunately, my immediate supervisor has been sick for the last few days, and so I have been left in a bit of a vacuum. You might expect that I would be headed for severe inconvenience, but you would be wrong.

When I got there on Monday morning, I had two 19" Dell thin-screen monitors on my desk, and a super smart desk phone, but no computer. Within half an hour of noticing this, I did have a 2 processor workstation, with 3G of RAM. It is pretty massive. The computer came with almost everything I need (Visual Studio, CM tools, etc.) installed, but there were a few missing pieces (and I mean few - the default printer was even mapped correctly), which have been sorted out yesterday and today.

So, in two days, without a supervisor, they somehow have me set up and ready to go in terms of tools. (Also, and this really gets me, I am also subscribed on all the correct email lists relating to my team and its tools, as well as appearing correctly in an online map of the facility, and I am entered as part of the scheduling/collaboration tools with 3 days scheduled for "Ramp Up".) Remember, I am a contractor. I am not an EA employee. Remember, I interviewed on Thursday, and they made me an offer on Friday afternoon. They had half a weekday before I showed up.

Also, they have distributed builds, which share computers from all over the six floors they occupy. They give me free milk and cereal, tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. Sodas are $.25 each. They have a cafeteria with pretty good food. They have a parking garage - basically you don't ever have to walk in the rain. The facility has a park like fountain/lake area in front of a street covered in pavers. There are benches.

This morning, I came into work and noticed that I had a TV and DVD/VCR combo on my desk. I wasn't sure what it was for, but I soon found out that it is connected to close circuit cable television, and that I get CNN, ESPN News, ESPN, ESPNU, and some other channels. I will connect my test console systems to the TV when I get those.

They have apologized for the consoles. They have apologized for the sick manager. They have apologized for the one team Wiki page I do not have permissions for yet. I think this will be good.

More on EA

While details are still few, I now know more about what I will be doing at EA. Despite the efforts of a friend there to get me on his team, I will be working on the NASCAR racing game.

As to the actual mode of my employment, I am contracting through a staffing firm to EA. The contract is for six months, and at that time, we'll discuss what to do going forward. The possibilities include becoming a full time employee of EA, to finding a new contract somewhere else.

I had considered starting my own company to do contracting with, but I have to say I felt a little intimidated in doing that for my first contract, and also because so many (the vast majority, really) of the leads which I had in my job search came from staffing firms that provided the same services. I think it is really only practical to be an independent contractor when you are able to find the positions yourself. The advantage is that the profit the staffing firm makes goes to your bottom line instead.

Victory!

I had the pleasure of accepting a six month contract with Electronic Arts (EA) in Orlando, FL this morning. I had two excellent opportunities, and it was difficult to decide, because I had heard so many good things about both. At the end of the day, though, I felt like EA was a better opportunity for where I am in my career path.

For those of you who don't know, EA is a major power in video games, and owns titles such as Madden Football and The Sims. It seems like a very dynamic place to work, and I think it is a real honor to be hired there, since they told me during the interview that the have 600 resumes for every opening.

So, I'm happy.