Yesterday was my first day as an employee at craiglist. Several folks on Twitter asked how it was, so here are my thoughts.
First off, it was a bit like a first day anywhere. I had several new people to meet, a bunch of paperwork to fill out for benefits and payroll stuff, and started to get an overview of how things work.
Unlike jobs in larger organizations, I had the pleasure of un-boxing and setting up my chair, desktop, and laptop computers. There's no "IT group" to do this stuff and that's perfectly fine with me. That's just one of the ways the size difference between a company of less than 30 people becomes apparent when you're used to well over 10,000. Specialization just can't take hold in a smaller group like that.
Aside from a new job and new people and new computer(s), I'm also in a newish office that's referred to as "the annex." It's just down the street from the main craigslist office but isn't nearly as full yet.
Unlike Yahoo, there are many, many places to eat within a very short walk from the office. To get a sense of how dense an area I'm in, check out all the wifi networks visible from my desk. At Yahoo, we were in a corporate campus environment, so all you saw were Yahoo networks.
At the end of yesterday, I'd setup the bare minimum stuff on my new laptop (a 15.4" ThinkPad T61 running Ubuntu), desktop (also running Ubuntu), many accounts and passwords, email access, an IRC client for our internal channel, got wiki access, and a few other bits.
I'm looking forward to learning what makes things tick and how I can make the better. I'm already getting a sense for the challenges we face in running such a popular service with a small team.
Honestly, it's a refreshing change from the larger environments that I've worked in before. Plus, the commute wasn't as bad as I expected yesterday. Thanks to all the tips and advice I got last time, I headed up with the right expectations. That makes a difference.
Posted by jzawodn at July 22, 2008 07:20 AM
Bummer, it looks like you can't get a ThinkPad T61 without Windows pre-installed.
Oh, and congratulations on the new job!
My first day too - moved up to a bookstore in the seattle area. More soon.
How is the laptop working with Ubuntu? Specifically, the power stuff? I have a Dell D630 running Ubuntu and am having all kinds of problems with battery power and Hibernate.
I'd love to see a post about working with Ubuntu.
Thanks...
"Unlike Yahoo, there are many, many places to eat within a very short walk from the office. To get a sense of how dense an area I'm in, check out all the wifi networks visible from my desk. At Yahoo, we were in a corporate campus environment, so all you saw were Yahoo networks."
Dunno if you've ever used walkscore, but they attempt to calculate "walkability" of a location based on density, proximity of amenities, ped friendliness, etc.
Your new location ~ 9th & Irving scores an 89/100 (very walkable)
http://walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=irving+and+9th%2C+san+francisco&go=Go
Whereas the Yahoo HQ scores a paltry 15/100
http://walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=701+first+ave%2C+santa+clara&go=Go
Kinda fun site to play with sometime.
Enjoy the new digs.
Ubuntu, and network manager in particular, start to get frustrating after a while when things that used to "just work" yesterday, no longer work today.
With a reasonable powerful laptop like a T61, which can do dual displays with a dock, do you still feel the need for a desktop?
I currently have desktop and laptop and am annoyed at some of the syncing I need to do when I need to pick up and go. I'm thinking of making the laptop my primary, so I can just grab it and go (and its newer and faster than my desktop).
