July 28, 2011
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running start
So my new 50% project still hasn’t been announced within my department, but things are already off to a running start. I think I’m going to finally have to learn how to ride a bike, because it’s getting absurd driving back and forth between the Legal building and the other building for meetings every day or two. My dog will have to learn how to ride in a bike basket with my laptop, I suppose.
This is my second day officially on the team, and I’ve hit a couple of personal firsts already:
- First Engineering meeting (my meetings till now have mostly been with people from Legal or Business). This is kind of obvious, but Engineering meetings are all dudes. There were maybe 55 people in the room, and only five women. That was an unsurprising surprise.
- First meeting with one of the founders. The founders are their own kind of geek celebrities on campus, so it was sort of like walking into a room and finding out that the star of your favorite TV show is there. And he’s going to be there every week. What was interesting over the course of the meeting was noticing that he does what the rest of us wish we could do in meetings without fear of repercussions. He fidgets, he interrupts people if they’re taking too long to get to the point, he interjects with random questions, he plays with the demo, he tunes in and out, but whatever he does, it’s all OK. It’s a pretty good gig, being a rich genius.
- First assignment on the “product counsel” side. I’ve been doing commercial work up until now (drafting and negotiating contracts), but this new role is a hybrid position, and my advice is no longer limited to the boundaries of the contracts I draft. Now I have to give advice on whether we can launch certain features in various countries, or what we need to do so that a product complies with all applicable laws, or what we do if everything goes horribly wrong. I kind of thought there would be more time before this happened. Initial thoughts: intriguing but terrifying.
