So on Friday, I finally went to work downtown where I’ll be permanently placed. In hindsight, the first two weeks in Burnaby were quite comfortable. At EAC, I knew the layout, had many friends there, and it all felt like putting on an old shirt again. Friday morning, as I strode into the lobby of the office building, I realized exactly how nervous I was.
I don’t think your first day at a new job is ever easy, no matter how many jobs you’ve had. After riding the elevator up to reception, I told a lady behind the desk that I was here for my first day. A security guy then gave me another pass so I could access all the restricted floors in the building. An HR person then took me in for a short orientation and a tour of all the floors. The way EAX is organized, four floors are contiguous, so if you’re on these floors, the stairs are really all you need. There’s a fifth floor that EA has in the building and that one is five floors away from the set of four. Does that make sense? Anyways, it turns out I’m on the isolated floor which means I gotta take the elevator up to get to the snacks, the store, and outdoor lounge.
As I went through the tour, it was clear that there’s a big difference between EAX and EAC when it comes to space. EAC is on several acres of land. They can do whatever they want and they have oodles of space to work with. That’s why in Burnaby, there’s lots of open space to use architecturally which leads to some nice work areas. At EAX, there’s no escaping that it’s essentially in an office building and people are being hired on a constant basis. It’s definitely crowded in there. An area where only two people would sit at EAC probably has three or four at EAX. There’s talk of taking over another floor but that can only happen if a tenant decides to vacate that floor.
Having said all that, the views are spectacular. Some windows face Burrard Inlet and over to North Van. Here’s the weird thing though… lots of people have screens down which cover their windows because they don’t want the glare on their monitor. These are mostly artists who really need to see their work in the proper light. As I walked past the artists though and went into a payroll and HR area, they all had their screens up and were enjoying a glorious view of the water.
At the end of the tour I was shown my desk, which turns out to be a temporary location until they can move me into my permanent location. My computer also wasn’t ready just yet, so I spent the morning and a bit of the afternoon reading documents. When my computer did show up though, oh boy was that a treat. Check out the monitor they gave me. Weighing in at 24″, this is the largest monitor I’ve ever used. It’s ridiculous. Maximizing applications is a waste, since so much of the screen is left over. I maximized a Word doc and two-thirds of the screen was just whitespace. This thing begs to have at least two applications on screen at all times.
With my computer at my desk, I started the process of setting up all my development tools and got all the latest code. Despite a small hiccup, I was even able to build the game. By that time, it was the end of the day.
As a contrast, you might want to read last summer’s day one.