From Server Farm to Cubicle Farm

This week I changed jobs - kinda. I still get paid by the same company, but I work at a new company - a gigantic financial services company (think: biggest bank in the world I believe). I've only been there for two days now and I can tell things are definitely different than my last job. Like, completely different.

Computer: My old boss wants my laptop back. My laptop was customized just how I liked it with all my bells and whistles and whatever email program and browswer I wanted (Thunderbird and Firefox, of course). Now, I have a cubicle desk, a cubicle phone, and a cubicle desktop PC that's so locked down that I can't even get internet access without requesting access. And no Firefox. And antiquated Outlook 2000 for email, one of the worst email programs in existence (in my humble opinion).

Coworkers: I have coworkers again! One of them is a lady who is married to a German and sits next to me. We call it our encrypted language since no one else in our group understands us. Plenty of eye candy at this job from the other departments in our giant building. My old job I worked by myself most of the time and there was one or two woman that I ever SAW in our neck of the woods - typical IT department!

Commute: Roughly a half hour door-to-door to my new job in Queens. Old job would be anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours each way in any of the five boroughs.

Structure: As structured as the cubicle I sit in. A form for this, a form for that, 9-5 but very stressful, hectic, and busy during those hours. There is a lot of uncertainty at the new job as they are now restructuring our recently-restructured department. Guess I'll need some more yoga therapy! Old job had pretty much no structure, and no one needed to know where I was at any time - worked from home sometimes!

I'm working in the Information Security department of said-company. But since this company is so huge, I am doing more work similar to that that I did when I was a consultant with E&Y in days of yorn. It's business work - reading boring policy documents and filling out questionnaire's with client answers. But I'm also getting a taste of some fun business-security stuff that will be incredible for the resume. And it's interesting stuff, too.

I have very limited email access right now and will probably for the foreseable future. And no instant messaging capabilities. If you want to email me during work hours, I recommend you email me and ask me for my work email address. But hopefully tomorrow I'll get internet access and will be able to use my alumni account, though response times will lag.

J. Riley, I realized that I've never worked in an environment like this before, should be interesting!