Well, on Tuesday I will have worked at Securities America for one entire year. Sadly, or  perhaps awesomely, this is the first time I've been employed at a company for an entire year. I was close to a year at Genesis Systems, but fell short by a month or two.

What have I learned?

My supervisor, Keith, introduced me to his laws of life back when I started. They're pretty hilarious and applicable to most situations.

Keith's Indisputable Laws:

1. Anything free = crap (unless it's illegal).
2. It's all about the money (AKA, all about the benjamins).
3. If they say it's not about the money, see point #2.
4. If they say it's about the money, it's not really about the money.

Nice, Keith, you give me high hopes for humanity...

Banter, Chatting, and Hanging With Your Homeboy Coworkers

Getting along and actually having fun with your coworkers makes my job so much better it's not even funny. I can't stress the importance of this enough. I love my coworkers because we discuss/employ: South Park, Various bad ass movies, Trash talking each other, practical jokes, cursing, etc. If management made us stare at our monitors 8 hours a day, I would have either quit or shot myself after about a week. Having a relaxed workosphere attitude does wonders for productivity and creativity. Not like research hasn't proven this one already. So, management and my coworkers have mostly the right attitude. What I wish could change? Our cubicle farms. They're anti-productive--again with the research.

Thoughts On Getting Things Done...

Over the course of this last year, I've come to the conclusion that if you want something done in the corporate world, don't let the corporate red tape stop you.

Also, if you're waiting on someone else to complete some task for you so you can continue your work (Database Administration, Tester, Documentation, etc.), either do it yourself (my preferred method--but not always possible) or bother someone until it gets done. 

I won't cite any examples, but if you've ever worked in a large corporation as a lowly employee, you've probably been held back by all manner of procedures, guidelines, rules, and red tape that not only impede your progress, but also prevent the company from being profitable. My experience tells me: try not to break the rules, but if you have justifiable means to do so, then the rules will either change or an exception will be granted. That just seems to be how Corporate America works (I offer no guarantees or promises, though).

Technical Works...

I'm going to make another post detailing out some of the projects I've worked on next. They won't be real specific, as that would probably get me into trouble.