First Impressions from My #OnePerDayinMay Campaign
I’ve stayed committed to meeting one person at the company every day this month. It’s been less of a challenge to approach people than I would have expected, as I come in early and locate isolated people before their teams have fully filed in and gotten their daily groove on. I’ve found with no exceptions so far everyone I have met to be friendly, courteous, and interesting. I’ve tried my best to spread out the introductions to different departments, but the focal point of this exercise was truly for me to learn the names and roles of the various members of our 20 tech teams.
There is never going to be a tried and true set of criteria to define a group of folks, but one thing that has stood out from the few tech people I’ve approached as part of this project is their precision and attention to detail. I don’t linger while they do their work, but I would imagine that they bring the same precision to their coding and planning. It definitely comes out in my experience in how they talk about their work and the company as a whole. When I meet someone for the first time, I try to bridge the gaps of my knowledge by asking questions based on what I already know. Or suppose I know.
Since I know so little about technology and coding, my attempts to connect will miss. When they do, the programmers are there to explain where I have erred in my reasoning or education. I walk away more fully aware of what they do daily, and what kinds of maintenance goes into keeping a website operational. Their candor is refreshing and their willingness to take a few minutes to outline their work for me is appreciated. The best computer engineers are those who can speak both languages and turn away from their machines and describe in English how they fit into the bigger scheme of things.