After a fairly relaxing week off, Kelly began his new engineering job at eTranslate. Like Brian, I gave up my commute to the valley (50 miles each way) for a job in the city. The office is now a 7-minute bike ride away. eTranslate hopes to help people around the world communicate better by making the process of translating websites into many languages a lot less painful for businesses.
Our offices are at 18th and Folsom, in what used to be a laundry and coffee plant. The building was very recently retrofitted for office use. They put in a very nice private courtyard that we share with a couple of other businesses.
Unlike any other company I've ever heard of, eTranslate starts out by giving employees a three-day orientation. In a company of just over 100, this means we get to meet just about everyone and learn what each department is working on. The goal is to grow to 200+ people by the end of the year; with that kind of growth it's important every employee is on the same page. It ended up be a very worthwhile use of time.
Engineering is in a seperate office space, where the coffee used to be roasted. My cube is the one just before the exit. The cubes are deluxe now, but the building is full, we don't move for six months, and we'll probably add six more engineers before then... so it's going to get crowded soon. In any event, there's great energy here and I love it.
Above engineering is a small meeting room with foosball, band equipment, and pinball. A popular place ot hang out!
On my fourth day, we had the monthly all-hands meeting at a local pool hall. Here's Ken from the Tokyo office seranading the staff :).