Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Reason #57 To Love My Job

I work for a global enterprise. Literally: we have locations all over the globe. We have locations ranging from small, satellite offices of less than two dozen people up through datacenters hosting thousands of servers and office parks seating thousands of cube-rats.

I, myself, have three or four locations I work-locations that my badge(s) will get me into without having to file any additional paperwork. On top of it all, I can even sometimes work from home. I have my designated seat at one of our enterprise lab facilities. From that facility, I can reach production systems as well as the lab most of my engineering/test systems are in. My secondary work location is much closer to my house, but because it's at one of the "thousands of cube-rats" office parks, parking and traffic are a nightmare, so I generally avoid going there. Because my secondary work location is part of the core enterprise network, I can reach the production servers from there. I also have the ability to reach the resources at my primary work location.

Recently, I got put on a project that requires me to access assets at a secondary lab. This lab is more than double the distance from my house that my primary work location is. From there, I can reach assets in production, assets at that lab, and, depending on the workstation configuration, assets at my primary lab/work-location. However, given the distance an the nightmare that is traffic in Northern VA, I've gone to that facility once in the past 18 months.

Lastly, I have the ability to work from home. From here, I can reach either lab via VPN. However, because it's via VPN, I can only connect to one or the other at a time. Oh... and I can't connect to our production networks from home.

So, when I'm working three projects and supporting production, I end up having to split my day. Mornings are spent at either the main lab or the headquarters facility so that I can work on production networks. Afternoons and evenings are spent working from home so that I can reach each lab's resources.

On the plus side of time at home, the only things interrupting me are my dogs asking to go out to pee.