MY FIRST WEEK AT R3!

25 Sep 2017

It’s early on a Friday morning and it is my first day at R3 Communications. Perhaps I tried too hard? Only Jasper had already arrived at 8 am…!

Before my first day, I only had vague ideas what to expect from a small company like R3 Communications. “Will my expectations of the startup be met?” I was asking myself. Well, the potential affirmative answer to this question was promising, as it is a tradition at the company to offer a coffee to the newbie (and what an amazing coffee!!). However, I later understood that it is the newbie providing the coffee to the others… ^^’

As the rest of the office started to come in, I experienced a very warm welcome from all staff! Specially from Mathias and Christian, who were investing a lot of time giving me instructions and explaining me all the administrative stuff. Then the day was over! And I guess you are thinking: “Starting on Friday? What a chill and short starting week!”. But as Nelson (The Simpsons) would say… “Ha, ha!” Let’s put it this way, I was familiar with EchoRing – I already worked on and with an earlier version of the EchoRing system during my studies at RWTH Aachen university –  but since then a lot has changed… Therefore, I experienced one of the most famous startup clichés: working during the weekend! But do not freak out, I just wanted to get acquainted asap with the technology  Who am I trying to fool?! I like complicated stuff! Which made EchoRing a perfect date for that weekend.

The following week I could see that the team takes work extremely seriously, but we still have a lot of fun! The colleagues are helpful (even when you ask too many things). We have fresh fruit weekly delivered, did I mention the coffee?

However, the day-by-day is quite different from the atmosphere at university, there is a flat hierarchy… And yes, we work a LOT! But the nice environment and exciting topics make it much easier! 

I almost forgot! Every day after lunch we let our competitiveness arise and we make each other “explode” playing “Exploding Kittens”! Highly recommended game to let some tension out 

Something tells me that you should stay tuned in two weeks!

Sebastian

PS: I leave you with a picture they took of me… And as you can imagine the joke of “Tell the newbie that the camera has a lense” was already in place ^^’