Journal Week 01 — My first impressions in a Big Tech

Brief

Heyo, I recently joined Oracle, and I am doing it as part of my semester at college. As part of my activities, I have to document my progress. This series of entries will be about it (I hope this will help me improve my writing skills).

Week at a glance

I joined a support team, where I have a real impact on customers around the world. Since I am starting this experience, I have not had coding interactions these days; I hope I will have more in the future. I have already had my first interactions with my team, which I have liked a lot. I have also finally been able to see Scrum/Agile methodologies being used in a large technology company.

So far, I think I can learn a lot about product management and the bureaucracy involved in professionally managing larger customers. This excites me a lot :).

Activities and notes

This week, I do not have a daily note of what I have done, mainly because my daily activities have been a little repetitive:

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant Me as Me
    participant Ticket as Ticket and Customer Context
    participant App as Application Area
    participant Team as Support Team

    Me->>Ticket: Research ticket details and customer context
    Me->>Ticket: Read about the reported problem
    Me->>App: Read the relevant application area
    Me->>App: Replicate the reported problem
    App-->>Me: Confirm the bug
    Me->>Team: Share the replication and follow the handling process

I use simplified steps, since customer data and real process are a sensitive subjects, but I think that should explain the idea of my day to day.

Learning and progress

Initially, the complete process of handling tickets seemed somewhat complex to me, mainly because there is not just one team for the application. Around the world, the application must be maintained, and fixes, replications, errors, etc., must be coordinated so that both teams do not handle the same error.

Challenges, feelings, and open questions

This was the first time I used professional Agile applications, and in this case, it was strange for me to become familiar with the interfaces within the company, the processes, and the fact that I had to look for the big picture around the ticket I was working on.

For example, on a couple of occasions, because I focused too much on the description of a ticket, I forgot to review related problems that the interface showed me and that I took for granted. I am still working on those soft skills, but I trust that I will improve them as I keep working on them.

Next steps

• In the coming weeks, I will be assigned more responsibilities, and I will continue with my onboarding.

• I will also continue reading the application’s documentation because I am still not familiar with it. I think that trying to fix problems in the future without reading about or using the app more would be like someone trying to repair a car without having seen one before.

Conclusion

I still have a lot to learn. This work experience promises to greatly improve my soft skills, and I hope I can share more updates soon. The process of being the new person at a company still feels strange, at least so far, but I think it is getting better. I did not feel as lost during this onboarding, and I hope I can be more descriptive and support anyone who is going through the process of joining a company, or something similar, for the first time.

I think that practicing and adding tools to my daily routine—not only applying them to one project, but in general—has helped me a lot to take notes and speed up progress during these onboarding processes.