The Office: Pittsburgh

Sometimes I feel like my workplace is a lot like Office Space and other times I feel like it is a lot like The Office. These past two weeks have been a combination of both. Last week, our company had some layoffs. The Pittsburgh office only had one person "let go", but our NC office had 6 people while our New York office had 21 or so. This was a couple months after a "rousing" speech by corporate about how we're here to stay and we're "hiring like gangbusters". This made me a bit nervous as I was the newest hire, and I wasn't sure if there would be another round of layoffs or if this was it. So, last week was a pretty crappy week.

Yesterday, we had a VP from corporate come down to "officially" tell us that we were moving. As soon as I saw her and heard her speak, I thought of Jan from The Office. Except our VP was worse. She talked down to us as if we were nobodies. It was pretty enfuriating. At one point she asked us if we read. Ugh, I could go on with how it bothered me.

However, we did finally get confirmation that we're finally moving from our craptastic building on Moorewood and Baum to the Law and Finance building Downtown. We should be there anywhere between June 1 and July 1. The issue of moving has been thrown around for months now. There was never any official word as to where we were moving to until last week. But everyone pretty much already knew that it would be Downtown. On the one hand, it will be (supposedly) a much nicer location. On the other hand, I only live 20 minutes away from the current office, by foot, and moving Downtown would mean taking the bus...and I HATE the Pittsburgh bus system.

One of the big issues people have with moving Downtown is the parking situation. In our current location, everyone with a car is given parking passes for free. Seeing how Downtown parking is ridiculously expensive and corporate is trying to watch their spending, we might not get the same perks as here. We are supposedly getting a transportation stipend to help us out, but basically, most of us are going to be making less money due to having to pay our of pocket for transportation. I figure the stipend will be at least enough to cover a monthly bus pass, so I should be fine.

Over the last couple of days, we've been going over possible floor plans for the new office, since it is currently gutted, so we'll be having it built to our specifications. Originally, they wanted us to be a Cube Farm, but none of us wanted that, so another floor plan was submitted that had about 6 Developer's Suites and a couple single offices. I feel like this is a much better solution. Today, we went over a bunch of possible Developer Suite configurations.

In addition, these past couple of weeks have consisted of 4-6 hours of meetings per day for a new project that I'm a part of. I HATE meetings with a passion. They make me sleepy. Also, the conference room has no ventilation and it gets really hot. We've had to start bringing in some fans or leave the door open to cool off. I'm getting used to them day by day, but I would much rather be doing some coding than having meetings all day.

We'll see if there are any more developments throughout the weeks.