We can get attached to the funniest things in the funniest ways.

Last Friday, they moved me away from my old cube to a new cube.

The old cube looks...forlorn...

                      

I was in that cube just short of four years - four years sitting in the same chair, in the same twenty-five (or so) square feet of the universe. Every inch has been permeated with Puckett-essence, and I was completely at home there. I've not had any troubles in this cube that lasted longer than a day; I've eaten there, prayed there, been chewed out by Ethel on the phone there. I broke my Alaska coffee mug there, had boxes of Promax bars disappear there,

I went through the phone calls, emails, and faxes of buying two houses while sitting in that cube. I shopped for and bought a motorcycle, a car, and a 65" Mitsubishi while sitting in that cube.

I've had friends that came to work at GoDaddy, were there for years, and left, all while I was sitting in that cube. I've had one...two...three...four...oh, heck, I can't count how many people have moved into the cube directly across from me, and then moved on, while I sat right there in the same cube.

I was there for four years. I've had marriages that didn't last that long.

Now I'm at the other end of the building - far, far away from all of my friends. The people that sit around me now are nice, but they are quiet - the loudest sound that I hear is them typing. I find that I don't say a word, because I don't want to be the noisy one.

I think that I had some of the same concerns four years ago, when I first came to sit in my OLD cube - but, at that time, I was the Brand New Guy. Now, I think that I'm one of the longest-term employees in my cube farm, but I still find myself feeling insecure, because the others are all busy being quietly efficient, and I'm noisily inefficient. (in my own productive way) so I want to keep a low profile.

I'm in a new environment. And no matter how many times you do that, it can be scary; in fact, I suspect that having done that MANY times makes it a bit more stressful, because I have had failures - places in which I really didn't fit -so I know that things can go bad, and that it's no fun.

(I once went to a brand new company, and was put into a group that was very diverse indeed - the software was written in a proprietary language¹, and the original development was done in French. I never had a comfortable day at that company, and I was only there for six months)

I'm changing to a new cube, in a new area, surrounded by new people, and one small aspect of my "job" is to make sure that I don't irritate these folks to the point where they want me to leave (it's really hard for a boss to say "Well, Jim, all of your co-workers want you to be moved to another area, and - oh, yeah - here's your raise") - that, by itself, would be a challenge.

But one thing that has always been true, for as many years as I've been in this business - I've always been surrounded by DEVELOPERS - programmers, nerds, geeks, socially-challenged folks who forget hygiene and basic social skills, but can code up a mean algorithm. Now, I'm surrounded by ENGINEERS - people who are sharp, organized, dress-right-dress and clean desk policy. Programmers put up with a lot, because they dish out a lot - these folks don't radiate that kind of warm welcome.

Ethel! Time to pack up the kid and dogs and head for Pagosa Springs!

                                            NOTE: The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone
                                           and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]
¹Okay, the proprietary language was written by my brother; but that actually makes it worse. It was written by a Puckett, and I still couldn't understand it :)