May 27, 2008 – First Day at IZEA

Today was my first day at Izea, and it’s definitely been an exciting start. Lot going down there in many different sectors of the company. Not too shabby considering there’s only about 50 people down there (or so? Maybe more that just weren’t there today). With a dev team of 15 strong, and a CEO who used to be a dev (but who is amazing in marketing and other things), they seem to have a bigger share in the company than any other place I’ve worked. At most places I’ve been IT has been more of a tool of a department used to get things done. Here it seems like they’re the business — and considering it’s a new media website it makes sense. They have the developer station setup down to a science. When I walked in I was handed a laptop and pointed to their wiki for how to get it setup just right. Feels surprisingly professional having a laptop that I can take home (now), but I’m sure later on it’ll hit me that it means I’ll be working more. The dev team is pretty cool, but I can’t say I got to know too many people right off the bat. They use Campfire at all times, so the development team is usually all in there socializing, so got to know people a little better because of that. The office is extremely quiet though. Since everyone has a laptop, when you need to work in pairs or groups, you grab one of the offices, close the door and go to work in there. Pretty cool system. I was a little scared about the losing 5 days off a year, and going down to only 10 vacation/sick a year — a little lower than most places I’ve seen. On the bright side though, they have 12 paid holidays. If you’re having trouble finding 12 days, add in the day after thanksgiving, good friday, martin luther king day and Cinco De Mayo. Yes, Cinco De Mayo is a paid holiday. Apparently at the meeting this friday I’m doing initiation shots at lunchtime — have to see how that goes. But yeah, fun, colorful place. The only issue would probably be that the team seems really worked. I’m not sure off the bat if a lot of the team is just introverts of if they have their heads down to keep low profiles. Everyone I talked to was nice though, and helpful in getting my PC set up. I signed up for .mac, so I should be able to sync my home and work pcs easily now. Lots going on for a first day, but I still don’t know what I’ll be working on. I did get some of their sites working locally at least, so I can start messing around and learning how things work. Hoping to start working on projects pretty soon. Anything I work on is going to be a learning experience so wondering where things will go next.