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First day of work or first day of college?

June 4, 2018 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Today was the first day of *hopefully* many days at Epic Systems Corporation. And let me tell ya, this place is something else. This is going to be a very long log but I promise I will not do this every day. Frankly none of you reading this (including me) gaf about the details of my every day at work, but today was my first and only First Day so I gotta tell y'all how it went.

Ok so I arrive at the place I am supposed to be at 7:30am and it immediately feels like I am stepping on a college campus for the first day of orientation. First, I meet my mentor how is going to be my guy showing me the ropes and everything to help me be successful. His name is Bart and he is on my development team. Let me tell you about Bart...

So When we first met, we immediately hit it off. He's been with the company for the past 10 years and graduated from the University of Tennessee. So for a good ten minutes we bullshat about college football. It is going to be really fun bantering him in the fall about the disaster that it Tennessee football. He told me that he the QB for a team in some local flag football league that plays on Fridays and wants me to join. that would be fun. I also found out that DEADASS THIS MAN BART LIVES LITERALLY 2 BLOCKS DOWN FROM ME. What a coincidence.

So my day goes on just attending presentations in large lecture halls. There were a total of 358 new hires today, but only about 30 of them were software devs like me. Quick plug: regardless of your major, if you are smart enough and have a high enough gpa (I think their threshold is like 3.7?) you can work at Epic as either a project manager or technical problem solver. Seriously, Epic cares so much about all their employees being intelligent, that even their facilities people and cafeteria workers have to pass Epic's aptitude tests. A second wave of new hires will be coming in July and a third wave in August. During these lectures/presentations I saw some guy that I recognized from MSU. He definitely wasn't a software dev, but I SWORE I had seen this guy at parties multiple times. Absolutely no clue what his name is, and I was too beta to go up to him and ask. Maybe if he was a girl I would have. Wait I don't like girls never mind.

I then later met the software development team I am going to be working with. Out of the 5 people on the team, I am the only new hire (next youngest guy has been with Epic for 3 years). The application I am going to be working on is Epic's Identity application, which is arguably the most important thing that Epic has in its software suite in that it touches just about every single application that Epic has. "Identity" is essentially the "data integrity" of all of the patients in hospitals that use Epic. Basically, my team handles all patient data and makes sure that there are no errors such as duplicates and stuff like that. It's obviously more complex than that but I am not going to go into the details. Whenever you go to check in at doctor's office or make an appointment, the Identity application is being used in some way.

I also checked out my office and as of right now I should be having my own private closed one. Every employee at Epic has either their own private office or they share one. Each building at Epic has a special theme and I am in the Library building of the Hogwarts campus which is pretty dope. The cafeteria in my campus (btw there are a total of 4 cafeterias) is called King's Cross Station. Yeah, Epic goes all out on the themes of their buildings. As part of the Hogwarts campus there is also the Fortress building which literally looks like a castle on the outside. Bart took me up to the top of the castle and showed me the castle. Another plug: if you are ever in the area, lmk and I'll give you a tour of the whole place. Epic loves visitors and I promise you will not regret it.

So I then go on to meet my manager. This guy is a straight capital G. Imagine your stereotypical rich asian person. That is this man. He has this one like flaming tattoo on his arm and I swear he looks like he owns some luxury night club in Tokyo.

The day goes on and I realize I made a critical error. As many of you know, I am an Eagle Scout which should mean that I took the Scout Motto "Be Prepared" to heart. Unfortunately, I failed to live up to that today because I forgot to bring snacks. My body burns calories like a furnace, and by about 3:00pm I was starving. I wanted to just pass out but I couldn't obviously. I then had a meeting with Bart from 4 to 5 and just wanted to die. So tonight I went out to target and bough $100 worth of snacks and drinks. Never again will I feel as miserable as I did today.

In summary, these are the following reasons it felt like first day of college:
-358 new people stepping onto a very large campus that they all had to pass some exam to get into
-Epic's dress code is "you must wear clothes." Literally there is not one person out of the 9500 employees at the campus that is wearing a tie. Epic's philosophy is that people are most productive when they are comfortable, so you are encouraged to wear whatever you want. I saw a guy walking around barefoot in the cafeteria today. I felt SO out of place when I showed up for my interview last fall wearing a full suit. So everybody was just wearing regular clothes today like normal college kids would.
-Lots of people had backpacks
-We were given a book called "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and told to finish it in 4 weeks.
-All the new hires were going around meeting each other but instead "what's your major?" it was "what's your role?"
-Crowded cafeterias
-Day full of presentations in lecture halls.
-Meeting with Bart at the end of the day for an hour was like having a tutoring session as you would in college

So yeah, just wild. I'm all stocked up on snacks and am ready to go for tomorrow!

Oh, one more thing: I don't get any cellular service in my office so if for whatever reason you need to contact me (why would you?), FB messenger is the best way.