"Hello, senior SDE! Welcome to $MEGACORP. We value your years of industry experience and look forward to the unique perspective you will bring to our engineering efforts. We know our systems aren't like the ones you're used to, so please feel free to take initiative and ask lots of questions as you learn. To begin, please repaint this bikeshed."

Well, okay. Um... I guess I'll start by finding some brushes and picking out some paint, then.

"Oh no, the paint has been selected by a committee, and we only use brushes bought in bulk from our contractor. You'll need to wait a week for the grounds crew to deliver all the relevant supplies to the bikeshed in question."

Well, okay, I guess I'll wait then, and try to figure out a bit more about what's going on in the meantime.

- So... I've been looking around; you guys have dozens of these bikesheds, and there doesn't seem to be any process for actually inspecting them to determine how often they need to be repainted; it's just a fixed maintenance schedule. Seems like we could be wasting a ton of work here; why don't I set up a tracking system so we can be more efficient about all this repainting work?

"Huh? Why are you bothering the ops people? You're in facilities. There's a cross-division communication process involving very senior members of ops and facilities; if what you're talking about were important, they'd be working on it. Maybe they already are. Stop worrying about it and just paint your bikeshed."

Well... okay. So what's the job exactly? You want me to take this specific can of grey paint and that specific paintbrush and apply its contents to this specific bikeshed, and that's it...? You sure an intern couldn't be doing this?

"Of course not, we value your years of experience and expect great things from you - but just because we hired you doesn't mean we actually believe you're capable of doing anything useful. You have to start over from the beginning and prove yourself first, by demonstrating extreme competence with a trivial make-work "starter project", so go paint that bikeshed and do it fast. Look, you have total creative control - you can decide whether to make the brushstrokes go horizontally or vertically, and you can totally set your own schedule, as long as you're working at the pace demanded by our weekly meetings and stay on course to have it delivered at the end of this three-month sprint."

Seriously. Applying brush to shed. That's what I'm here for? Well, I guess here we go.

- Hey, you know, I was thinking, and why the hell are we still using wooden bikesheds at all? Instead of wasting our time with these antiques by smearing latex paint over them every six months, we could just swap 'em out for a simple modern shed made out of resin, and then it'd be colorfast and we'd never have to paint it again. How about it?

"Well, yes, my supervisor's supervisor is in touch with a group over in long-term research who is developing a really big 3D-printer which will theoretically be capable of emitting all the polymer structures we could need, and in a couple of years once they're set up, we'll be able to start implementing a rolling update program where we'll piece-by-piece analyze the current volume and usage patterns of each wooden bikeshed and generate an RFP for a replacement, and it would all then become Procurement's problem. But that's years away. Why, do you want to transfer? You're really going to have to demonstrate your skills first, nobody's going to take a risk on a newbie for a transfer, especially not a transfer into a division so elite as the 3D Materials Process Investigation Lab, so you'll need to get to it with this painting project and prove that you're the skilled, experienced, senior engineer we thought you were when we hired you. Come on, hurry up."

- Well, no, actually, um, are you aware that there are lots of commercial manufacturers producing all kinds of prefab resin sheds at totally reasonable prices? I put one together over the weekend, in my back yard, which was bigger and sturdier and actually cost less at retail than you spent on just the one bucket of special custom paint for this project, and I could seriously just bring that shed in here and set it up in place of the old shed and it would take less time than this goddamn painting project is going to consume. How about it? Let me just do this thing, we'll beat the schedule and save a whole lot of future maintenance; it's going to be better for everyone.

"We don't know what you're talking about and it is so manifestly obvious that nothing going on outside our exalted walls could possibly have any relevance to the spectacularly advanced technology we are building here, elites that we are, that we now think you must be a little bit insane for even suggesting a commercial solution. Of course you can't build a shed in a weekend, that's impossible! It takes a whole team. Stop nattering on about this nonsense - if you put your head down and keep on doing what you're told for 5-10 years maybe you can then become senior enough to join the group of elite architects who contemplate these sorts of problems."

Ah. Well. Okay, so I'm just smearing paint on this old shed, then.

"Why the fuck are you painting it in diagonals? What is wrong with you? What, you think it's going to be more efficient that way? Nobody paints sheds in diagonals, nobody's going to be able to maintain this thing if you do it that way. Everybody at this company paints sheds with vertical stripes, get on with it."

OK. So my job, then, is to move around this shed, starting strictly at this end, applying strictly vertical strokes, using this exact paint, until I have circumambulated the structure clockwise and therefore satisfied each of the bullet points in the task description. Is that correct?

"Well, no, you also have to attend daily progress meetings, but otherwise, yes. You have complete creative control. Are your strokes going to go up-to-down, or are they going to go down-to-up? Exercise your ingenuity! Go to it! And hurry up already, all this discussion has eaten up half the time budget for this project. And of course you know I'm on your side, that's what I'm here for, but I have to say that people are starting to ask questions about your productivity, I mean of course I can't say who, but you know, you need to manage your professional image here, so step it up."