An Intern’s Guide to Surviving Your First Week At Thrust Interactive

By: Nick     May 27th, 2011

Work Hard

The first thing that was clear to me when coming to Thrust was that everyone is here to get stuff done. Everyone here is serious about the work that they do and devoted to creating a final product of quality. Even from the layout of the office alone, I knew that it would be hard to goof off while on the clock:

Because we’re all in the same room together, it’s rather difficult to browse the web or fire up a game of minesweeper without having someone else notice. On the other hand, the room layout also provides the great benefit of placing everyone within arm’s reach of each other. So, when I can’t figure something out or I need a small bit of information related to one of the many projects that Thrust is working on at any given time, I can have access to the best sources of that information: my coworkers. Which brings me to the second rule for success at Thrust:

Play Well With Others

 

The office has a strong atmosphere of community about it. Again, this is partially reinforced by the close quarters approach to project based game development. But, the community of Thrust is evidenced most strongly by its employees. Daily lunch outings always happen in groups, and no one gets excluded from these chances to hang out outside of the office.

Sometimes it is hard for a new guy like myself to integrate into this kind of group, but this was not the case at Thrust.  Myself and the other new intern were almost immediately treated like any other employee. Our input and ideas are given equal consideration with anyone else’s and our assigned tasks are never menial or unimportant. It would actually take a great deal of effort on someone’s part to remain an outsider while working at Thrust.

Community building is further encouraged by the frequent events which happen outside of working hours. Monthly game developer meet ups hosted by Thrust encourage networking with other companies and give everyone at Thrust another chance to gather in a more casual setting.

I would be remiss if I didn’t quickly mention one of my favorite community-building activities at Thrust, Waffle Fridays. Each Friday, before work, Thrust’s founder, Jesse Lindsley, cooks everyone else waffles for breakfast.

Who doesn’t want to come in to the sight of those golden-brown waffles beckoning them every Friday morning? Nobody, that’s who.

In conclusion, I can safely say that I’m looking forward to the rest of this Summer and all the work, group outings, and waffles I can gorge myself on between now and the end of my time here.

Tags: Blog

• Zonda
• 2011-07-11 20:33:18
• I wanted to use the rss-Feed but the feed url showing me some XML errors..