The corporate apartment was a 48 minute walk from the office according to Google maps and taking public transport was about 33 minutes, so I decided to walk. My onboarding was supposed to start at 10 am but we were expected at 9 am according to the email (a bit of conflicting information there), but I decided to play it safe and arrive there at 9 am sharp.

The route to work was pretty boring, but I guess that’s because San Leandro is pretty suburban. It was nevertheless, nice to get some sunlight and “exercise” (if I can call walking to and from work exercise). It was quite a walk and I actually got a bit confused because I had to turn right at this giant brewery, and wasn’t sure I was at the right spot at first. I did make it in time though!

I was trying to decide whether or not to bring a laptop because even though most companies do provide a corporate laptop, I have heard of companies not having their sh*t together and not having laptops ready. The onboarding process went relatively smoothly, where Ash helped guide us through starting up all our accounts and whatnot. We did however not immediately have access to all the training that we needed but most of it got sorted out later in the week.

After the onboarding, we had a newcomer’s lunch to welcome the new employees. I started together with two other interns, Eryn and Joon, who are third-year bachelor's and first (or second?) year master's students respectively, as well as Hannah, a freelancer that lives in Dallas.

A small thing that I found funny, was that Eric (People Director at Cuberg) asked us if we had any preferences for lunch and I mentioned I’d prefer something healthy, with vegetables, and he said, “we usually do pizza, I can get a vegetarian one”. This resulted in a lunch that consisted of two ginormous meat-filled American-style (very thick and cheesy) pizzas along with a pizza margarita and a smaller vegetarian pizza for me. I don’t know why I always secretly hope sustainability-oriented companies are going to go for more vegetarian options.

In the afternoon, after a very filling lunch, I had a sit-down with Rizwan, my manager and the strategy manager at Cuberg. He gave me an intro to Cuberg and what he’s working on and what he thinks might be interesting for me to have a look at. Before joining Cuberg I spoke to him once, and he seemed like a pretty chill and relaxed guy, and that’s how he also came off in person.

I spent the rest of my day just orienting through the accounts and trying to figure stuff out. Nothing really interesting. Overall though, I was pretty positively surprised on my first day! Maybe I was being a bit pessimistic and skeptical before starting to try and be less disappointed if I didn’t like it, but I got a really good first impression.