4 ms·

Ask HN: What was your first day at work like?

14 points by dayve 8y ago

What were the good or bad experiences you had taking on a new job?

mtmail 8y ago
People forgot I was about to start. No desk prepared, no computer, HR person was new (replaced) recently and asked for a copy of my contract because she couldn't find hers in the office. First task of the day was receiving the master domain password and create my own account. Full administrative rights on all servers before I even had a chair to sit on. A couple of weeks later another engineer quit and I got a substantial promotion because they worried I might look around having extra work load (I wasn't).
hluska 8y ago
This is my best 'first day at work' story. There was this company that really badly needed some ops help as they had some major projects on the go and really needed some help. Alas, my girlfriend was extremely pregnant, so I kept pushing my start date back and back. Meanwhile, my child just flat out refused to be born. We went to the hospital several times, but whenever we got there, the contractions would flat out stop. Eventually, I had to start. A couple of hours in, I was setting up my dev environment with some serious first day jitters, and I got a phone call. I remember standing up, putting my hands over my mouth and not being able to move. I was completely screwed and couldn't figure out what the heck to do. My boss had to tell me to go, get in my car and go. And, I drove at speeds so obscene that they likely would have lead to my arrest. Eighteen hours later, my daughter was born.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I was left to my own devices, which didn't change for the four years I worked there. Actually looking back over my career I think the first day for each job was pretty representative of what was to come. At my worst job I got a desk with moldy sandwiches in the drawer and a company car with bullet holes in it. The best had a spotless desk, new computer and welcome card along with plenty of attention to get me up and running.
croo 8y ago
No workstation, no desk, no administrative rights to anything. They handled me several thousand pages of documentation to read about telco stuff until my pc arrives. It arrived after 3 days. I had desk after 1 week. I received permissions after 3 week. I did not have real work to do for the first 2 months. As a first workplace where I wanted to prove myself it sure killed the mood.
icc97 8y ago
Switched about a month ago. Mostly ignored by the people in a relatively small office although they weren't on my direct team. Could use my own laptop and all desks are hot desks as people can choose where they work on a daily basis. Guy on the team eventually arrived and got up and running with dev work in half a day. Laptop had been ordered 6 weeks before but didn't arrive for a further 2 weeks and then had ridiculously restricted Windows on it. A month later I've convinced them to let me wipe Windows for Ubuntu, with some luck of finding a senior IT support guy who likes Linux.
kruczek 8y ago
Got asked to test certain feature. Being fresh out of the university, I wanted to make good first impression and asked if they want me to write some unit tests for it or what. Their answer: "nah, just click around, see if it works".
- borplk 8y ago
  The worst part is the same companies will stress and quiz you on testing during the interview as if they take testing so seriously in their company. It's mostly because shit is so neglected and broken and they are so deep in tech debt in their environment they think they need to get someone who is "really good with testing" to help them. "testing" for these companies forever remains a "right now we cant but wouldn't be nice if one day ...". I'd be more appreciative if these companies just owned the reality of their priorities.

14 points by dayve 8y ago

What were the good or bad experiences you had taking on a new job?

People forgot I was about to start. No desk prepared, no computer, HR person was new (replaced) recently and asked for a copy of my contract because she couldn't find hers in the office. First task of the day was receiving the master domain password and create my own account. Full administrative rights on all servers before I even had a chair to sit on. A couple of weeks later another engineer quit and I got a substantial promotion because they worried I might look around having extra work load (I wasn't).

hluska 8y ago

This is my best 'first day at work' story. There was this company that really badly needed some ops help as they had some major projects on the go and really needed some help. Alas, my girlfriend was extremely pregnant, so I kept pushing my start date back and back. Meanwhile, my child just flat out refused to be born. We went to the hospital several times, but whenever we got there, the contractions would flat out stop. Eventually, I had to start. A couple of hours in, I was setting up my dev environment with some serious first day jitters, and I got a phone call. I remember standing up, putting my hands over my mouth and not being able to move. I was completely screwed and couldn't figure out what the heck to do. My boss had to tell me to go, get in my car and go. And, I drove at speeds so obscene that they likely would have lead to my arrest. Eighteen hours later, my daughter was born.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

I was left to my own devices, which didn't change for the four years I worked there. Actually looking back over my career I think the first day for each job was pretty representative of what was to come. At my worst job I got a desk with moldy sandwiches in the drawer and a company car with bullet holes in it. The best had a spotless desk, new computer and welcome card along with plenty of attention to get me up and running.

croo 8y ago

No workstation, no desk, no administrative rights to anything. They handled me several thousand pages of documentation to read about telco stuff until my pc arrives. It arrived after 3 days. I had desk after 1 week. I received permissions after 3 week. I did not have real work to do for the first 2 months. As a first workplace where I wanted to prove myself it sure killed the mood.

icc97 8y ago

Switched about a month ago. Mostly ignored by the people in a relatively small office although they weren't on my direct team. Could use my own laptop and all desks are hot desks as people can choose where they work on a daily basis. Guy on the team eventually arrived and got up and running with dev work in half a day. Laptop had been ordered 6 weeks before but didn't arrive for a further 2 weeks and then had ridiculously restricted Windows on it. A month later I've convinced them to let me wipe Windows for Ubuntu, with some luck of finding a senior IT support guy who likes Linux.

kruczek 8y ago

Got asked to test certain feature. Being fresh out of the university, I wanted to make good first impression and asked if they want me to write some unit tests for it or what. Their answer: "nah, just click around, see if it works".

borplk 8y ago
The worst part is the same companies will stress and quiz you on testing during the interview as if they take testing so seriously in their company. It's mostly because shit is so neglected and broken and they are so deep in tech debt in their environment they think they need to get someone who is "really good with testing" to help them. "testing" for these companies forever remains a "right now we cant but wouldn't be nice if one day ...". I'd be more appreciative if these companies just owned the reality of their priorities.