Uh, What Am I Supposed to Do?

The day started off well. I went to work later than the first day and actually got a space on the closest side of the third farthest (but not the farthest) parking lot, made it to my cubicle on the first try, and was greeted warmly and shown to the free coffee by the other person who does what I do....uh, will do. I even got my laptop docked without breaking anything.

If I had gone home then, I would have avoided a the "job starting up roller coaster." Unfortunately, I stayed.

First, I sat met with my manager who is a good guy. He just wants me to do my job and worry about the details so he doesn't have to. At this meeting he was supposed to explain to me what I'm supposed to do. Instead we wound up talking about the structure of the company and all the different groups and what they do. I had a ton of notes and I think we were about to get to my job when someone knocked on the door and said "Can Jay come to my meeting on ***?" My manager said, of course, and I walked awat with a group of guys whose names I forgot right after I heard them.

We walked around some part of the building I hadn't been in, then took the elevator to the basement where there were more cubes and a medium size meeting room. About a half dozen people were in there and more straggled in....their meetings start five minutes late too. I was introduced and everyone introduced themselves---nice people, very intent on their jobs but friendly.

Someone asked "And what is your role in the project?"
Crap.
"Quality lead."
"You'll organize the capacity and performance testing?"
Crap
The guy leading the meeting says, "Oh he'll do what *** usually does." Everyone shook their head and were happy.
Saved.

I managed to understand almost everything that was said and was not asked any more questions, although the top project manager (among all the other project managers) gave me an "action item."

I then spent a while locating my password and loading software from some servers to my PC. This was the kind of software they wouldn't buy at my last job (Visio, new version of Project), software we wish we had had (good bug tracking software) and source control software. The whole process was well documented and almost idiot proof--yes, my last build failed and I have to follow up tomorrow.

My manager came over with a pile of Powerpoint printouts and said he couldn't talk today but I should read these and we could talk about it tomorrow. He tried to show me where the sample project docs where but he couldn't find them.

My peer came over and found the missing documents (they were actually in the right place) and then talked to me for an hour in great detail about how she does the job. I was about to start weeping by the time she left, having no hope of ever understanding all the testing/quality/process/department terminology I had just heard.

My only chance was a caffeine-induced learning binge. I stopped by the inhouse Reindeer coffee shop, turned on Gilberto Gil on my iPod and started trying to decipher ppts, spreadsheets, and word docs. By the end of the day I had some hope of not looking like an idiot at my next new project meeting on Thursday.

Why, you ask, would anyone take a job not knowing what they were going to do? Well, I did kind of know what I was going to do generally, kind of but mainly I like the challenge of speed learning enough stuff to get by at a job (filling in the details later). This is, in fact, the third job I've walked into not really knowing what I was going to do. The bad part is when you stop learning and then I have to move on.

Still, I can't believe it's only Tuesday night.