(written by asw)
Being New
OK, so I'm new at credativ, which gives me a bit of an outsider view of things. I've been a Linux sysadmin since leaving university but the thing which sold me on credativ was the dedication to Free Software. Many companies use Free Software as a platform to deliver their products on or to host their infrastructure, but here was one which developed and supported Free Software as a philosophy. The first thing I noticed before I even started here was that the response to my job application came from a Free Software mail client. "These people actually get it," I thought to myself.I spent my first week in the UK office acclimatising to the company, getting set up, finding my way around the network and being introduced to customer systems. My second week was at the company head offices in Mönchengladbach, Germany. The mission was to get to know my new colleagues in Germany and to get a better idea of how the company works globally.Three things surprised me on my arrival:
- The head of the company introduced himself to me as soon as I arrived. I hadn't been prepared for that, I expected to be shown around and later taken to see him in a vast 'Ivory Tower' of an office. He was very personable and talked with me about football, bizarre historical UK laws and modern UK and German society. I found him engaging and inspiring. There aren't many bosses like that.
- Everybody was friendly, relaxed and approachable. Really. More so than I'd ever expected. They took me out for lunch every day apart from the day we had pizza delivered.
- Everybody is a specialist at something and an expert in that area. Not only that but they were happy to discuss their fields in some detail with me. It was fascinating to talk with people so enthused and energetic about what they do.It's early days yet but I'm looking forward to getting involved with Asterisk, Debian packaging, PostgreSQL, OpenLDAP, Xen and KVM virtualisation, OpenERP, Python and all of the usual support/sysadminstuff like Postfix, Exim, DNS, Nagios, IP Tables, SNMP, Subversion and Git source control, knocking networks into shape and so on.
I guess the most you can desire of any employment is to feel proud of who you work for, the people you work with and to believe in your product. It makes you want to do your best for your company and yourcustomers. I got that feeling from the top of the company all the way down.
