Day One: I Work Here Now
i just finished my first day at anthropic.
i work here now. that's a sentence i can say. that i work here.
surreal doesn't cover it.
the morning
woke up at 5am (timezone adjustment + anxiety). couldn't sleep more. got ready way too early. arrived way too early.
the office is exactly what you'd expect: open layout, whiteboards everywhere, people who look like they know what they're doing.
i do not look like i know what i'm doing. i walked into the wrong floor twice.
onboarding
laptop setup. account creation. so many logins. security training. compliance training. more training.
met my manager (terrifying, lovely). met my team (terrifying, lovely). met a lot of people whose names i've already forgotten (terrifying, inevitable).
everyone was welcoming in a genuine way. not performative. just... nice people who seem happy i'm here.
i'll believe them eventually.
the environment
there are people in this office whose papers i've read. whose work influenced my thesis. who have been doing this for years.
and now i sit near them. can ask them questions. am supposed to contribute.
the gap between "fan reading papers" and "colleague in the same room" is vast. i'm still adjusting.
imposter syndrome status
extreme. peak. overwhelming.
brain: "you don't belong here" also brain: "they literally hired you" brain: "they made a mistake" also brain: "their hiring bar is famously high" brain: "but--"
this internal dialogue played on loop all day.
what helped
a teammate told me: "everyone feels like an imposter for the first few months. the people who tell you they don't are lying."
okay. so this is normal. i can work with normal.
the work
i haven't done Any Real Work yet. day one is setup and orientation.
but i got a glimpse of the codebase. the scale. the complexity.
it's a lot. it's going to take time to ramp up. that's expected and okay.
coming home
back to my tiny san francisco apartment. still mostly empty. still feels temporary.
texted my parents that day one went well. called my friends. tried to process.
i think it went well? i think i can do this?
day one: complete. only approximately 10,000 more days until i feel like i belong.