Working at SoftServe

Yesterday was my second day in L’viv and my first day working at SoftServe. I must say everyone here is very welcoming and ready assist to me in anything that I need. Mar’yan, one of the managers at SoftServe was nice enough to pick me up on the way to work, which isn’t really on his way because I’m staying in the heart of downtown L’viv where no one wants to drive. Traffic here can get pretty bad and I’m thinking it has something to do with the lack of lines on the road or perhaps the fact that no one has a right away. You either go now, or you miss your opportunity to squeeze into the lane.

Now Mar’yan is a pretty good driver. He doesn’t drive like some of the other people on the road who pass people using the oncoming lane, or the shoulder, or the traintracks, or any other means to get around someone driving slow.

It took about 15 minutes to get from the hotel to the SoftServe location, which wasn’t too bad, but I think it’s too far to walk. I’ll probably be taking a taxi for remainder of my stay.

When arriving at SoftServe you wonder why anyone would want to work in a building like that. The building looks like something straight out of a WWII movie; tall, square building with chunks of cement missing from the sides, bars on the windows, a lack of paint, and just old looking. It’s pretty scary looking to be honest. But when you walk through the glass doors you enter a different zone. The inside of the building is brand new. Everything has been remodeled and it looks great.

The two security guards in the front are wearing some odd uniforms. Looks like a costume from a futuristic movie. Nonetheless, they hand me a badge and a key to my office (well there were a lot of steps before that, but those were handled by Mar’yan and I don’t speak Ukrainian, so I can’t help with the translation).

Once I pass the security gate (one of those rolling bar things that you pass through when walking into a baseball or football game) I head to my office and unpack my things. Unfortunately there is no phone and no ethernet cable to obtain that wonderful internet, so a ticket is filed and those items appear after lunch.

Mar’yan walks me through the different groups to meet and greet the members who work on IronPort products. Turns out there are almost 30 Engineers here working on one or many different IronPort products. After meeting all of them, I quickly forgot everyones name because I’m horrible with names.

Following that I did some work, some more work, and a few more work related items and then headed to lunch with Adriyan (SBU Manager and VP of IT). We head to a bistro of some sort where Adriyan reads me the menu so I can select something to eat. I end up having a mushroom soup, chicken, and rice. Overall the meal was quite good and it hit the spot.

After lunch I proceeded to do more work related things followed by a few meetings. Mar’yan gave me a ride back to the hotel around 8:00 PM. I stopped by McDonald’s for some dinner, which was rather interesting.

McDonald’s is more or less the same as you would see anywhere else. Same looking menu, same uniforms, but nothing is in English. I spoke to Bob and he said a cheeseburger is called a cheeseburger and fries are frees. So that was easy to order. The challenge comes when they ask for a size (well I assume they’re asking for a size because you say frees and then they start talking and give the look of… “so are you going to answer me question”). Luckily I can use the ol’ hand gestures to decide a size. This works, sort of. I believe I ended up getting a large fries. But the drink was a bit more confusing and the cashier couldn’t figure out what size I wanted. Luckily the Manager was standing there and he said “small, medium, or large?” Perfect, I know those works. A medium it was and BAM I had my self a sprite, which by the way is just called sprite.

Some things to note about McDonald’s here. There is no Super Size. A small drink is SMALL, 12 ounces at most. A medium is about 16 ounces, and a large about 20 ounces. The fries come in small packaging too. A small fries comes in a one of those old school paper bags (remember those days? Think happy meal), and a large fries comes in an American small fry box. I also learned that you don’t bus you own table. I thought I would be nice and toss my own stuff in the garbage, but the only thing that happens if everyone stares at you, even the employees. Apparently that is a no,no. Oops.