One Month!

One month!

Yesterday was my one month anniversary at Shutterfly.  The time is going by really quickly!  I'm enjoying it a lot.  For example today I had my head buried in automation code... the time flies by which is kinda nice.  Got my first regular paycheck today (with all the deductions, health insurance, 401K etc. in place).  I upped my 401K withholding by 3% and I'm coming out about the same almost as at Intel (though I will def. miss those bonuses!).

Unfortunately Shutterfly does not do any matching at all for 401K, so I am going to have to work harder to save for retirement.  To be fair, Intel did not match 401K either, but they had a separate Intel plan that they put money into as well.  Since I was there for 8 years I am vested in that as far as it goes.  I guess this means that like a lot of Americans my age, my retirement income will come from a lot of different sources.

I've pretty much adapted to schedule and so forth, now I'm just trying to get my skating life back in some sort of order AND get my butt to the gym.  So far that's not happening.

New Job

I started my new job April 14th.  I am working at Shutterfly!  My job title is Senior Software Development Engineer in Test.  Pretty fancy-schmancy, eh?  Basically I am doing software QA, back to the kind of stuff I was doing before Intel.  We are using Agile methodology so there's been a learning curve for that as well as our tools  and environment.  Now that I've completed my 4th week I'm feeling like I'm starting to settle in a bit.  I even managed to help one of the other "new guys" today, which was a good feeling.

It's hard to explain how excited I am about this job.  My coworkers are a lot of fun and pretty supportive.  My boss is great.  I feel like I'm learning a lot of cool stuff that will make me more valuable in the future and it's challenging and gets me thinking.

Things I like more than Intel:

• very few meetings!  Most days I have just ONE 15-minute meeting (our "scrum").  I can't tell you how good it feels to have uninterrupted time to get things done
• cool coworkers
• great boss
• good benefits -- free product, they take us out to lunch pretty regularly, we have a variety of treats in the break room
• willingness to spend money on tools etc.
• regular work from home day (Thursdays)

Things I like less than Intel:

• commute -- okay, I was pretty spoiled living a mile from work.  Now I'm commuting into west Tempe/east Phoenix with a million other people.  Still it will get better -- we will be moving in 2015 to a site closer to my house and with a less daunting commute
• no air shuttle -- okay, so now when I want to go to Oregon I have to pay for it on my own dime.. oh well!
• a bit less flexible on scheduling.  I am pretty much expected to be in the office 9-5; I can't really come in much later than that so I am having to get up earlier to skate.  On the positive side I think I am a bit more productive this way so long term it will probably be better for me
• Mac OS learning curve -- I'm sure I'll be over this before long, but having to learn to do things the Mac way has been a lot to deal with.  Of course the upside is I'll be "bilingual" in the future.