New Job - Week One.

Wow!

This first week at the new job has completely flown by. I guess that's how it works when you actually have work to do during the day. Hours just fly by, and so do days. And that's just fine by me, dude.

Last month, all I did was sit there for 8 hours reading news online and writing. Now I spend my days actually making somewhat important decisions.

So, even though it is only the first week, I have accomplished a few things. Including:

1. Re-launched campaigns in both MSN and Ask.
2. Explored 3rd-tier engines to run campaigns in.
3. Initiated a HUGE re-org project for all the words in the campaign that will run all the engines. (This will take me a few weeks to completely iron out.)
4. In the works of finalizing a deal to outsource the SEO work.

Things are definitely different working in-house somewhere doing search as opposed to being at an agency.

• There is almost no hierarchy. (Seriously, no one has an office here. We all work on laptops at tables.)
• I have not experienced any "time-sucks" yet. (You know... Completely pointless meetings that really serve no purpose but to feed the ego of management wanting to look like they are "contributing" something to the masses that work under them.)
• No one watches you come and go. (This is very nice. Quite different from an agency.)
• People keep giving me candy. (It's almost like it's grade school again. I mean, all it took back then to make me feel welcome was candy. How'd they know?)
• No one cares what you wear or what you do to your hair. (I told my boss I was gonna dye a hot pink streak in my hair... And his reaction was "Cool.")
• People actually rely on AND use my opinions. (This is kinda new. At an agency, they ask my opinion like it is a matter of urgency... Then they would "tailor" it to fit in with whatever else we were doing for the client. So, for example, if our creative team built a client an entire micro-site using Flash; and I told them not to do that... They would just go ahead and do it and tell the client, "Yeah, it optimized for organic search.")

So, again, so far, it's been a good week. And I have even managed to make it to yoga twice so far. So this continues to look promising.