new job- week one

Here's where I go to work each morning.

Per Wikipedia:  The Cleveland Play House facility, built in 1927, housed the Brooks Theatre and the Drury Theatre. Cleveland Play House purchased the Sears building and the world-renown architect Philip Johnson designed significant additions for the complex, including the Bolton Theatre. With the 1927 buildings, the Sears building and the Johnson buildings taken together, the complex for CPH became the largest regional theatre complex in the country.

The building house the MOCA (my friend Mark worked there for years!).  In 2009 it was purchased by the Cleveland Clinic.  There were fears it would be torn down, but instead they moved my company Explorys into the building.

The 3rd floor is abandoned with some broken windows and bird.  Yuk!

I climbed the spiral staircase & gave myself an anxiety attack, but it's a nice quiet loft at the top, perfect place to hide.

Here's my desk.  I use a MPB with 2 monitors and "Dr. Dre Beats" headphones.   These headphones are SWEET!

I'm totally going to try and ride one of these Razors! 

The Cleveland SWAT Team meets here to train. 

I'm reunited with goofy QA friend Joe, as well as 2 other guys from Within3.  Nice to be around old friends.  And my spinning instructor is there, and we're going to be travelling together sometime this summer.

The ice machine has a beautiful blue glow.

There's a shark balloon hanging around.

Ok, so more about the job.

The company:  from our website, "Explorys was founded in 2009 as an innovation spinoff from Cleveland Clinic. Explorys addresses the national imperative to leverage big data in healthcare for the improvement of medicine and delivery of care."  What does that mean?  It means we have access to billions of medical records, and we have found ways to take that information, and ethically use to to improve people's lives.  To give doctors and hospitals ways to track health trends, to see what patients need help before they get too sick.

My job:  My title is Exploratory Tester II.  I am on a team with 3 guys doing Test Automation.  My job is to test the system from a human aspect.  To understand how end users in the real world use our systems.  I'll get to observe client training in the next few months, to see what real people do with the software.  I'm also going to see where we can improve things.  I get to be creative and use my intuition!

My boss:  My boss is amazing.  He hired me to do the work I love to do, and supports me in anything I want to try.  He's also pushing me to learn about automation, so that I can see what our team is covering and what they're missing.  He's also funny, driven, and a juggler.

The culture:  There are close to 100 employees.  Almost all work onsite when they aren't travelling to work with customers.  We have 60 people on the development team.  Mostly guys.  A handful of women.  They provide us lunch 3 days a week, have fridges stocked with water, juice and snacks.  It's a young company.  People are passionate about the work.  And they know how to have fun.  There are scooters around for anyone to try.  Guitars and drums set up in a corner.  There's a lot of laughing.

Watch this video!  (It explains how big data works for real people.)

And this one!  (You can see our office and some people I sit with)

Here's an article if you don't want to watch videos.

There are also some cool old buildings in the neighborhood, so expect more pictures like this...

I wore my lucky wedding shoes for the first day, and they did the trick.  I'm loving this job and I'm feeling very lucky to have found myself doing the work I love with some amazing people.