I was at the ESPN offices today getting to know my new coworkers. Amazing offices. I got to see one of the studios.
There was a wall dedicated to college football. I’m looking and there’s Zippy! (U. Akron) As a bonus, there are touch screens at both ends of the wall and you can tap a school logo and listen to that school’s fight song (OSU’s was played a couple times).
A coworker gave me a ride to the hotel in his Tesla model 3. I would not mind geeking out in that car. Also the acceleration in it was amazing – my coworker wasn’t even driving hard but the car just pulls and pulls – no pauses for gear shifts…
Day 2 at ESPN. Sorry, no indoor pictures this time. I did get to see the satellite transmission control room (couldn’t take pictures – sorry!). So here are some pics of the building I was working out of along with the satellite dishes. Fun fact: In the satellite dish photos, one dish is NOT like the others. It is apparently 1 of 3 antennas of this size and type in the world (it can handle ~100+ signals simultaneously).
The first photo is of a tower. This is the Otis elevator cable tension strength testing tower. My new coworkers told me they were hanging out at social hour and ran into the Otis guys. They did a tour swap – Otis gave the ESPN guys a tour of the tower and the ESPN guys gave a tour of ESPN.
Some have asked if I’m working for ESPN. Sort of? I was originally hired into Disney/ABC to work on the ABC News native apps (iOS + AppleTV + Android). Disney is reorganizing the tech teams and has created the Disney Direct to Consumer International segment (https://dcpi.disney.com/the-walt-disney-company-announces-…/). So the mobile developers are getting moved into a single group regardless of what brand they were working on. The initial members of the mobile team are from ESPN. So I’m joining them. This means I get to work on not only ABC News, but the ESPN collection of iOS apps (ESPN, Fantasy, Tournament). In the future, I may have the opportunity to work on ABC and Disney mobile apps too. ESPN has an entire crew of smart and talented mobile developers so I’m looking forward to working with and learning from them. I’m still at Disney and my office will continue to be at ABC News in NYC.
