Archive for October, 2011

Hazing With A New Job?

Day 2 is complete, and I still have pending tickets from day one, when I did not even have enough time to know where the ticketing system was located.  I finished one ticket yesterday after being given root access to all their systems, and being asked to resize a volume on the netapp.  It blows my mind.  I feel I am missing something, and it is keeping me up, as I am bothered by how this is playing out, I must be bothered, because the scenarios keep on looping in my head, and it is keeping me up.  In the final interview, Adam said that in the past they just gave employees a login and let them go, and that was a mistake, so they had a better way to bring new hires up to speed.  For all I know, this could be that new way, which is start assigning the new hire tickets about systems he knows nothing about yet, in a ticketing system he has not had a chance to even visit yet, because it is his second day and has not had a chance to setup his Mac which he has never had to use, which is using outlook, which he has never had to use, let alone on a MacBook Pro.  Also, it did not help being without a phone the first and part of the second day, or needing a USB headset that I do not have.

They have enough systems that the first week should be settling into the new office, new computer, and new surroundings with a simple check list of what is needed for a new hire in that position, so that all of the systems can be logged into and at least bookmarked.  They have all kinds of information for new hires, but if they do not give the new hires a chance to read it, what good is any documentation at all.  All I have to say is, I am so glad they had a search on their wiki, otherwise many of the work task things that they asked me to do would have been near impossible until I had had a chance to read through several sections of information relevant to new hires.

It has been a hard 2 days, and in a way, I am glad, but on the other hand, it would have been nice to at least be given a breakdown of the training attack, and it would have been very helpful to have been given a few days to settle into the new systems, with a simple list of the main management systems I will be using on a daily basis.

God please give me strength, because though this is probably my dream job, it is not starting out reasonably enough for me to realize it though experience.

So, do I ask Adam for a few days (or even a day) to get familiar with their documentation, the systems that they use, to get settled into my new system and daily applications, finish setting the passwords, and familiarize myself with basic procedures so I can function best as an employee?  I think that would be good.  Putting in 12 hour days just to fit in those needed basic steps that I did not have the chance to do is a bit hard.  Considering that I worked 8 hours above the average work day, I do not find it unreasonable to ask for a day where I can do all those things, and make sure I am well founded in all that I need to be, as it has been presented so far.

Please Lord, help me though this process, help me know what is good to ask for and what is not, please, I just want to do well in this position, and being burnt out the first week does not seem to be part of that picture.  Please be with Adam, help him to understand, and give me what I need.  Thank you for giving me what I need, and then some.

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New Job

God has pulled some strings, and I am so grateful, and one thing to note is the stress.  Even wonderful things can take their tole.  I never knew this when I was younger, and even when people explained it, I was still not understanding how a person could have good things happen to them, and be stressed about it.  But living life, you tend to realize when true things are true, and this is one.

It is around 4 in the morning, and I am having trouble sleeping, the day after the interview, I have too much buzzing around in my head, and I need to take it down on “paper”, or at least the best medium for the time  .I type faster than I write on paper, and edits are so much easier, spell check is a very nice learning tool, and this way I have backups and can easily share the content if I choose to.

There is a lot of paperwork with a new job.  I have the formal offer they sent, and then application, benefits, disclosure and the employee agreement.  So much legal terminology and formatting.  In this world, I understand why they need to legally bind you, and clearly outlined terms are very helpful, even if nothing more than a reminder of what you already know, but it is hardly a quick and easy process to work through.

I am really looking forward to the job, I mean, REALLY looking forward to working with them.  I have never had an opportunity like this come up, one that is such a wonderful fit for how I work.  It still blows my mind!  But I think I need to take some time to unblow my mind, hence the private blog where I can simply dump my thoughts.  There is such a deluge of new technologies for me to take in, I really do hope they have a good system to bringing me up to speed with what they have to work with.  I suppose I have even learned a ton from simply the interview process.  I just need to keep my sleep and good food and other stress relievers going, and take in the information as quickly as possible.  Dear Lord, strengthen my body through this process, and bring me to use all the good tools you have taught me, and teach me some more.  I need to learn as many stress relief tools as possible, as my body is not what it used to be.  I now feel the stress as physical symptoms, how retarded.  With God’s help, I can do anything though, so Lord, I am counting on you!

I will need to blog many more times I am sure, because more stuff will continue to cycle through my head as I go, so I will be back.  But right now, I am going to first, Thank You God for the job!!!, now back to sleep.  70k, that still blows my mind……  I prayed for it though, freedom from this debt!  He is totally listening, and totally caring!

 

So it seems I am back, still have some more stuff to take down, and Kathy got up horrendously early, at like 5:30am.  I was still having trouble sleeping anyway.  I was thinking about the Sabbath timing.  I have not taken the time yet to talk to them about it, and I am not sure it would have been the right time to do it.  I think it should be a fairly simple thing to work out, and I do not expect resistance to it, but the complication for me is how to treat the pager.  I would not be working per-say, but on call if shit went down and services needed to be restored or addressed.  These would be emergency types of situations.  I have always looked at that as an OX in ditch situation.  Not planning to work, but for the good of people, and I suppose business would benefit as well, so that we have jobs the next day, I would take care of what needed to be taken care of, and then call it good.

There is such a hard to define line between being a lawyer, following the letter of the law rather than the intended heart or purpose behind the law, and justifying doing something that might not be right to the intent of the law.  Boy that is a hard one to explain at 5:30am.  We could be stupid blind law followers totally missing God’s point for making the law, or we can take the time and effort to work it out with God, find out what He meant it to be, and go with that.  Right now, as I understand it, I still hold to the Ox in a ditch perspective, it is doing good, it is working for the livelihood of other people, for their good, as to not ruin their means for living by causing the valid tools to not be able to be depended upon at all times.  You could even go deeper and see if the tools are valid to be used apart from work on the Sabbath, but really as you cross that line, it turns into control and considering taking away other people’s choices for what you feel is best for them, and I do not believe that is a line that should be crossed.  It would almost be like God putting a fence around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, preventing Adam and Eve from being able to eat from it.  They now do not have a choice, and with the all or nothing reality I understand choice to be, this would negate choice, and without choice, it would negate love, because how much can a puppet love it’s creator.  I believe He created us with an intent for us to have the capacity to love Him, our creator.  By God’s own actions, He shows us that He is a God of love, and in fact, by His actions, He shows us what love looks like, and in turn what love is and how to love.

I will be stubborn to find truth, rather than taking the simplest mindless approach of the letter of the law, or the loophole approach of a lawyer.  Intent and heart are worth searching for, as they are the expressions of one’s spirit, and if we say that the expressions of a being’s spirit do not matter, then we are worthless, and nothing but garbage by our own definition.  I mean what is a person if you take away their intent, their will?  They would have no direction to make a choice, no more than a rock or plant does.

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