James in Hyderabad

 W ell, one week down.      This week was a bit of a learning week, and next week will continue this.     Many who are not in tech, or hope to one day be in tech, don't know what an actual tech office is like, or the daily routine. You might find this unbelievable, but it's true. For the uninitiated, the tech world is a shadowy play where one goes to an office and does.... things. What things, in what order, are all a mystery. The office that I am in is quite large. think of two or three school classrooms together. It is open, meaning there are no cubicles, everyone can see everyone, talk and collaborate.     The first day I met with the head of the group. This group handles the tech needs large lab company in India. This company is responsible for blood tests and lab work. It is a very large company processing hundreds of thousands of tests per day. The room probably has forty or so people, clusters it seems like. Each cluster is working on a different aspect of the company

 Hi! My name is James and this blog is something of a weekly journal of my adventures as Associate Software Engineer in Hyderabad. How did I get to Hyderabad? That itself is a little bit of an adventure. I am a former teacher and the programming bug hit me after I took a class at CCSF in C++.  In 2022 I completed a coding bootcamp and right at the end: massive layoffs. Twitter, LinkedIn, Meta, all the big tech companies. What could I do? Throw resumes into a black hole and hope for the best? But an opportunity presented itself... I was offered a position as an associate software engineer in Hyderabad. Short term, working on a couple projects. The options were working remotely and working in person. I chose the latter. The best way to expand my skillset, learn new tools, and become a better engineer is to work next to experts, asking questions, making mistakes. So that is where I am today. I have just arrived in Hyderabad, through Mumbai. The weather is nice, not too hot yet. I start Mo