New Job: Officially a Full-Time Employee at Sears
Happy to announce that I’ve got a new job! Well, technically it’s not new new, since I’ve been wroking here for about 6 months now. But I’m no longer just a contractor, and converted over to a full time employee as of Monday, July 29th.
I’m at a new desk, which is a little odd… as this new desk is directly behind where I used to sit, as a Contractor. So everything kind of still feels backwards to me. But it was fun to see this sign posted above my work area, on walking in.
Not a lot of photos of the workplace just yet. I’ve got a mountain of paperwork and things to look over still, and I’m not 100% on what the social media policies are yet within the company. I was given a great deal of latitude at my last place, in terms of blogging and documenting things… but I don’t know if that’ll be the case here or not.
I spent my first official day at an Orientation at the main offices (located out in the suburbs, and referred to as “Hoffman”). To call the place massive is a total understatement. I was tempted to take photos, but one of these days… I’ll snap some pics inside there. One tidbit I learned during orientation was that the Hoffman cafeteria was one of the largest in the nation, second only to the Pentagon. As I said, it’s a massive building.
Sears (technically Sears Holdings) has a ton of brands under its belt. I got hired on to work with Kmart and Sears related projects primarily, though my sense is that everyone kind of shifts around as needed.
I’ll be working as a FED (Front End Developer), which… I’ll be honest, is still a fairly daunting title to me. Compared to a lot of friends, I still feel very much like a dabbler. But I’ve gotten a great deal of experience these last few months, and I’m excited to take on this new job. In terms of the work I’ve done and the work I’ll be doing, I’m going to be getting a great deal of practice – and getting a lot of opportunities to learn.
One of the big factors that drew me to making the conversion to full-time is the group of folks I work with. All told, we’re a small group of about 10 folks (7 FTEs, 3 contractors). Everyone on the team is very kind, incredibly sharp, and really know their stuff. Not only are they good at what they do, IMO they’re also the type of folks who invest a certain amount of pride (and themselves) in the code they write.
The big company aspects of the job still catch me by surprise, sometimes. I’ve been working half a year now at the State location, and have maybe only interacted with, at best, about 20% of all the folks here. But despite the fact that Sears is a ginormous kind of company (and very different from smaller size of EI), the vibe I feel from the team I’m on is very much the same.
The jokes are different. The overall style and sense of humor is different. But the feel is very much the same. I’ve been very fortunate to have been surrounded by good people at every job I’ve had, and I’m happy to be continuing that streak.
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