My surroundings (discussed)

via Parm , originating from Lori, a description of my current surroundings.

In the office slightly early, there’s only four other people in at the moment. The air-con and fans are on (the office isn’t overly well ventilated, so the fans make life a lot more bearable) but other than that it’s currently quiet. I’m sat at the front of the office, by the windows, looking out over the street. It’s not a bad little vantage point – I’m thinking of setting up my camera so I can take photos of people when they don’t realise it’s happening – and I can see people heading down the main street, plus the cars. It’s amazing how many drivers don’t see the “no-entry” sign just to my right, go coasting past it with brains in neutral, then have to reverse back out to continue round the one-way system without facing down other vehicles. I’d reckon at least ten to fifteen per day fuck it up like this. Worrying, really.

The office itself is pretty new – well, it’s new to this company anyway. It’s a big one, about 1,500 sq. ft. Everyone has workstations with dual monitors, and some very serious PCs, which certainly helps with what we’re doing. (better than the “no expense spent” attitude at CrapCo, anyway) In the middle of the office is a pool table – which I initially thought might be a bit of a waste of time/money/whatever, but has actually turned out to be pretty good in both the “mental distraction when stuff doesn’t work” aspect, and also in a “team-building” kind of way.

The walls are still fairly bare – I suspect that won’t be the case for long – although the meeting room at the back of the office seems to be just about covered in whiteboards and pinned-up bits of flipchart paper. For the moment we’re still fairly new, and the decor is functional/austere rather than “hacker on a mission”. No bad thing, really.

Most of the guys here are C++ coders who are doing the main body of the stuff we’re working on. Tech-wise I’m probably low man on the totem, as I’m doing all the web stuff, and work in PHP and mySQL rather than C++ and “proper” coding. But at the same time while I can’t do what they do, neither can they do what I can. So I guess it’s all just horses for courses – we all have our specialisations, and all that jazz.

Soon everyone else will come in – the place will fill up a bit, and the sound of pounded keyboards will start rattling round the room. ‘Til then it’s time to catch up on some writing, and to read Slashdot.