[narraturgy]

The process described here is one that would honestly have me walking out the door. I don't say that from a place of "this isn't worth my time" or a similar feeling grounded in self-worth and healthy ego--the aimless, direction-less, utter lack of structure or clear direction on how to proceed while being deluged in busywork would leave me so anxious and adrift that I know I wouldn't be able to return to that place. The concept of "working" for three days before my direct supervisor even noticed my presence is so foreign to me that I truly have no idea how I'd function, unless it was to sit in a corner and panic about not knowing how to start doing the job I was (supposedly) hired for.

As someone trying to figure out how to turn my diploma into a job despite intense impostor syndrome, this tale is absolutely harrowing.

[laurentdc]

> The concept of "working" for three days before my direct supervisor even noticed my presence is so foreign to me

I left my old company for the same reasons. I didn't know who my boss was or who I should report to for months.

Everyone was clueless. You asked for help or directions by pinging some guy you didn't know on Slack and the best you'd get was "yeeeeeah I worked on this project long ago, I forgot, sorry, nice to meet you though wanna go grab a coffee sometime?"

Clients left hanging because somewhere in the sales process someone forgot about them in the pipeline. When some work actually got through nobody did anything for weeks until someone would promote himself to project manager out of good will (which you could do by putting your name in the project charter bullshit and on the Trello board of course) and assigned some teams (uiux, dev, qa ecc) to it. When you needed e.g. design files for something your best guess was to look in the Gdrive folder, find who has shared access, and ask them who worked on the design if by any chance they know something about it.

The result of this was the worst time to market I've seen. Like 2-3 year delays were the norm. I have no idea how companies like this manage to survive. They weren't doing that bad economically either (they won lots of government funding mostly)

[pmiller2]

Wow. Did you work with a guy named Milton who had a red stapler by any chance? That's just terrible.

Before I finally landed at a decent company, I used to have this concept of the "Dilbert coefficient." Basically, if there were too many Dilbert cartoons on display, it was a red flag, and if there were none, it was a potential red flag, because I thought it implied people might be afraid to put them up.

I'm happy to say office I'll be going back to when it's safe to do so has zero Dilbert cartoons, but several memes and semi-permanent pieces of whiteboard art.

[sadfklsjlkjwt]

9 months. I've been somewhere where it took 9 months before I realized that my bossy colleague was not my boss and another person was! Amazingly it was a profitable small business that had happy customers and employees.

[clarry]

How did you find out, eventually? That sounds like it might've been a very awkward moment...

[gonehome]

I think this is a bit of an overreaction.

In practice the first day or two doesn't matter that much, you're getting your laptop - meeting some people, signing into some accounts.

I don't think this is really that big of a deal in the scheme of things.

[tonyedgecombe]

It's a pretty strong indicator, the best companies I've worked for were really good at welcoming me. The worst were awful.

[pmiller2]

I agree with this. I've had everything from "here's a laptop, have fun setting everything up," to a comprehensive intro to the company and basic systems that took about half a day, along with an assigned new hire mentor and a set of starter tickets to work on for my first couple of weeks. At the first place, it took me 3 weeks to get to the point where I could submit my first pull request. At the second, I obviously wasn't fully productive right away, but I wrote real code and merged it into production within my first week.

[meddlin]

The type of corporate-heavy experience the author described is less "directionless" and more draconian. It's just flat boring and borderline useless. You sit through it because you need the paycheck.

[itronitron]

Part of the onboarding process typically involves going through various HR paperwork (tax forms, benefit selections, etc.) with either the Head of HR if you are lucky or the most 'shit upon' HR staff member if you are unlucky. Most people make it past this hurdle by recalling the $ amount on their offer letter.

[wdb]

Yes, and most of the time after the onboarding your manager will pick you up and show where you will be working if you haven't met your manager before the onboarding. That's my experience.

[austhrow743]

There was clear structure, OP disregarded it. Direct supervisor would have thought OP was doing the general onboarding like every body else.

[narraturgy]

That's a good point. On rereading it I realize that I got caught up in the part where OP's friends showed up to assist OP in getting started and I was trying to sort how you'd do that without knowing people there already (the situation I'll be in, as I've moved to another state entirely since graduating), but I suppose the onboarding process would hopefully have eventually dropped OP off somewhere on the right track.

[austhrow743]

Yeah I think the real problem here is that either the company was screwing up by putting very senior devs who don't need hand holding in with the noobs, or OP has a higher opinion of herself than warranted. Probably the former given how much of her stuff I've seen on here.

So yeah you would have been good. Probably worth keeping the lesson in mind though of if you're stuck between doing something the standard company way or listening to some grey beard saying "hey kid, do this instead", probably stick to the company way. It has built in training wheels the grey beard either just doesn't need or considers a hinderance.