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Discussion on: How long does it typically take to be productive in a new job?

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ferricoxide profile image
Thomas H Jones II

Most recent customer sent me a laptop to VPN in with. It arrived in the post, I unloaded it and fired it up and I'm like "where's my login information? This thing's bound to your domain and my credentials aren't cached on it".

Had to send it back so they could put it on the network so I could Citrix into it to get my credentials cached. Once that was done, they had to post it back to me.

Did the unbox-and-login dance and discovered, "this has no software on it, I have no access to repositories and, even if I did, I don't have sufficient privs to install any". Called support desk and was told "you'll need to request the software you want and we'll remotely install it". They send me a link to the request system: had to make 15 discrete requests to get each of the packages installed that I sorta just assumed would have been pre-installed to it. Oh... And "remote install" was "guy sends an email, asking for contact info, arranges a time to temp-delegate admin privileges so he can RDP to the laptop over the VPN and install the software via desktop-sharing". Bonus, because each software was its own ticket, did remote install dance 15 different times (more if you count the "uh... what you installed doesn't actually work: fixitplz".

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ferricoxide profile image
Thomas H Jones II

I should probably note that my primary duties are helping customers automate. So, when I hop on a project, there's either no automation in place or the automation that's in place needs a crap-ton of work. So, a big part of that six months is solving the various bootstrap-problems endemic to their organizations.

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Anthony Gushu

This sounds like hell