best tip I'd give you (started cross training in Max in case I needed it at Uni last year) is to get yourself a space navigator for around £35 (guessing $70ish) for the PE (personal edition) and a little more for the commercial one.
It takes away all the ballache of having to mess with relearning holding certain keys for moving around in the viewports in Max when you're used to using different ones in Maya.
I'm guessing they may have key mapping so you can imitate the other's keys by now but the last thing I saw that could do that was DRaster's switcher which at $50 looks good but I remember seeing that you need a separate licence for each machine installation. So unless everyone else has it then hotswapping machines can be a pain.

All you really have to get to understand quick is the modifier stack which seems a bit alien at first but in no time you'll find adding things to it can sometimes work better than Maya.

Si