On Monday, I start a new job. For the first time in many years, I'll be coding perl full time. My entire career I've been told that the first few days/weeks/months are critical. You know the drill, you want to prove yourself and set the tone early on. It's a balancing act: I want to prove that I'm not a slacker, but at the same time I want to show that I won't work an 80-hour week unless there's a really good reason.

The specifics of the job are intriguing. There's a foot-high stack of testcases that need to be automated, and I presume that I'll need to develop a harness of some kind. I'm familiar with the software and platform, but I haven't been briefed on the specifics of the test environment and test procedures. Can anyone suggest a strategy for the first month on the job?

20050520 Edit by castaway: Changed title from 'OT: The New Job'