50 Pence Chocolate

Things are starting to hot up. I had a really good meeting with my boss today and it confirmed the initial impression that I had of him during the interview process; he’s a very smart fella. I’m looking forward to working for him. He spent a lot of time with me and I am hopeful we’ll agree on most things, now it will just be up to me to make my targets.

The more time I spend there the more good things I see;

It’s abundantly clear that there is a huge amount of work to be done – I have always said that you need to go where the growth is, and I am pretty sure I’ve found that place – it’s a bit of a mad house at times.

That said people are however very friendly and they go out of their way to introduce themselves...I even managed to stumble across a couple of northerners today including one from Ponteland! If I was being cynical I would say that people are friendly because they are all on the lookout for others who might be able to help them with their own workload; in reality I suspect it is more because everyone is so new – I feel less and less like the new boy in the playground.

Something else that is nice is that the office is so small; if you have a problem then official laminated signs invite you to ring Aman, Shiva or Pavan (rather than ringing extension x44856 and then working your way through 37 different menu options). In reality you never ring Aman, Shiva or Pavan because they are sitting about 20 yards away, but it’s a nice cosy office where people do seem to know each other.

Other stuff which is really quite bizarre after 10 years of structure and procedure are no time reports, no WBS or job codes, expenses are only done once a month (or when you fancy really – it’s up to you), and it is clear that there is significantly less bureaucracy (even the process for getting Indian visas seems streamlined). At times it really does feel like a start up...e.g. my boss said to me at 2PM today that he would be keen for me to attend a meeting in Amsterdam on Friday at 9AM...that’s this Friday, in about 36 hours. I’ve also got a laptop that boots up and shuts down in under a minute. Bliss.

One of the best things however has to be the fact that there is a subsidised sweet machine...Snickers for 50 pence. Can’t say fairer than that!