Day One: the retrospective.

So, back to being unemployed. As I plan to make the most out of this, ahem, sabbatical, it'd be worthwhile to look back and attempt to articulate just what, exactly, I've managed to pick up in my brief stint as a software tester.

Backstory

Azeus snagged me by chance - I had gone with some friends to the College of Engineering job fair, and submitted my resume along with them to more or less arbitrarily selected employers. I went through the application process without much event until the job offer materialized.

Stuck in the post-graduation mire, I was thankful, perhaps a little overly so, for any path that seemed clear. Research had yielded more reasons to accept Azeus' offer rather than to reject it, and I felt interested enough in the IT industry to take this opportunity to enter it.

So I accepted the job offer, and even got a freebie: a cap with the company logo on it. (It didn't fit me well, though.)

The Employment Experience: The Good

My previous employment experience was at Siemens, as a technical support representative (i.e., call center agent). Between the physically draining schedule and the unrewarding nature of the work, I found it bearable only because I knew it was project-based and would last only a couple of months - from summer vacation to before the start of the next semester. I believe I was barely (if at all) able to hold on to any part of what I earned.

From that first job, I learned the military alphabet, how quickly money can just disappear, and how to have beer for breakfast.

In comparison, of course, working at Azeus was a far better experience, for the following obvious and not-as-obvious reasons:

1. Normal hours

Though this meant contending with all the rest of the urban worker drones during the morning and afternoon commutes, this was also much easier on the body and on social scheduling.

2. An excellent training program

From scratch, we were taught all we needed to know to start doing our jobs. There were times when we were left idling due to our trainers' other tasks and commitments, but then again those were more of a logistical problem than a fault of the program. On the whole I enjoyed the training period: I learned a lot, and was able to put what I learned to satisfactory use during the various exercises.

3. Competent co-workers

As trainees, we could tell that our trainers really knew their stuff. Upon deployment, as we met and worked with more and more people, we found a general culture of competence and workmanship.

4. Quiet, work-and-let-work atmosphere

This is a personal preference, of course, but I really appreciated this. It would seem that IT attracts many introverts, and the office was relatively subdued.

5. Challenging, engaging work (or so I thought at the time).

More on this later.