work

Here's the view from my hotel balcony yesterday evening:



So far the Netherlands is a great experience, my colleagues are friendly and its a lovely country to visit.

For once it'll probably be pretty quiet around here next week. That's because I'm catching a ludicrously early plane to Amsterdam in the morning to spend a couple of days in the Ibuildings Vlissingen office, and then flying direct to London to work there the rest of the week.

There are going to be a lot of firsts, I don't fly a lot and haven't flown outside the UK alone before - so flying through both Schipol and Heathrow in the space of a few days is going to be probably a bit scary! I don't visit London much either (haven't been for almost a year in fact) but I have an Oyster card and an underground map to assist me. I'm also delivering training for Ibuildings which is a new career step for me but one that I'm very excited about (as well as hyperventilation-inducingly anxious) so all in all its going to be a pretty exciting week! I'm also getting to meet colleagues from both offices and practice my dutch for real :)

(Of course, there will be lots of blog action if I find myself at a loose end and with internet connection!)

On Monday I start my new job and I'll be mostly working from home which will be nice, but quite a change. I have a lot of online friends that I have yet to meet in real life but to have a whole set of colleagues, some of them in another country (IBuildings is a Dutch company) is all new to me. It'll be nice to avoid the annoyances of sharing an office, with other people's music and cleaning up after others too. I know I am organised and self-motivated enough to manage the working patterns as well, which is one less thing to worry about. If I had needed to be in the office every day, I simply couldn't have managed it as they are based in London. In preparation for next week, I thought I'd share some photos of my home office. To the left are my flower pictures that I found in a box when we moved, they came from another house we previously rented.



I also have some essential accessories for any office: A map of the world and a nabaztag. This one is called Tag and is our second one of these rabbits.



Finally, check out my lovely big office chair, modelled here by my Christmas bear, now named Busibear as he lives in the office and oversees business. The chair was a birthday present from my parents, thanks mum and dad :)




I have a nice new notebook and a futon for any visitors that pop in, I think I'm all set...

Following on from my post about needing a new job, the observant among you may have noticed that I have yet to post the promised sequel about myself and my skills. That's because I don't need to - I have a job! I will soon start a job with IBuildings, an amazing and energetic set of people, and I'm wildly excited. They are based in London but I'll be telecommuting most of the time.

Its been a funny few months, I've been very active in the PHP community, mostly because I've needed some professional support and they are a wonderful set of people. They have been graceful to accept my attempts to contribute to the community and have supported and encouraged me every step of the way. Through this I came to do a PHP|Abstract podcast, a talk at a BarCamp, quickly followed by being stalked and offered a job by a very good local-ish employer. I ended up passing on the opportunity because it was the kind of local that is too far and awkward to do in the rush hour for every day, however the experience was amazing and I met some great people in the process. I studied for and managed to pass my ZCE exam, and in the same week parted company with my employers of almost a year. In the last five days I have communicated with some superstars from my industry, looked over my shoulder to find the other lornajane that surely they are actually looking for, received two excellent job offers from two uber cool companies, and accepted one of those offers. I owe thanks to many, many people for the moral support, listening and general egging-on they supplied - guys, you know who you are.

After all that - I need a nice cup of tea and a sit down ... :)

I'd like to announce that today I parted company with my employers Coolpink to the satisfaction (and probably benefit) of both sides.

To answer the first three questions: Yes, I am fine. Yes, they are paying me my notice period so I won't starve. And yes, I need a new job! I'll put up a coherent post on me and my skills soon.

The thing with a blog is that its public, so sometimes there are things that happen in my life that I don't write about here - especially when these are work-related. So instead I'd like to chatter about people I have met in my professional life who have influenced me.

Mentors

Mentors come in two flavours - official and unofficial. An official mentor is part of a formal agreement and may even be regulated by your employer, and an unofficial one is someone you adopt and turn to for advice; I have one of each.

My offical mentor is Lig. my "Big Sis" from phpwomen.org where we run a Big Sis, Little Sis scheme. I expected this to involve a lot of technical input but the biggest thing I've got out of this relationship is moral support and an introduction to the wider php community - who in turn provide more of the aforementioned moral support in addition to the raft of technical information you'd expect, and serveral more rafts that you wouldn't!

My unofficial mentor Mark is an ex-colleague from Snowdrop. Whilst we've only met a handful of times in person I took over the Oracle DBA stuff at Snowdrop from Mark and spent a lot of time on the phone/jabber/email with him with that and various other projects. Although we're both now working elsewhere, live far away from one another, and have other distractions in our lives we still stay in touch. Mark is my "professional" mentor - although we work in different fields of technology, I tap into his business experiences to inform my own choices and deal with situations that are new.

Models

Models are people whose behaviour you learn from or emulate in order to extend your own skill set, either by being actively coached by that person or by learning by observation. I have learned from a senior manager that to stutter endearingly while delivering bad news can work surprisingly well (not an approach to use every day!). When I worked as an administrational temp one summer, I was told to smile when on the phone - something which came in very handy when I worked on a technical helpdesk a few years later. I've also learned numerous tricks and techniques from the old hands in the technical departments in the various places that I've worked. These battle-hardened geeks can be hard nuts to crack, but they have so many stories to tell its worth it - and some have grown to be real-life friends.

Sometimes you have to ask to be taught something, this can be tricky to do if the person is busy or you are shy. On other occasions you may be able to learn from observation or the other person may mentor you of their own accord. However it happens, I try to make the most of the positive role models and coaches around me. From these people I have learned so many of the skills that I use day-to-day to perform my role and I'm grateful!