21–30 of 58 posts
Make sure your desk is set up correctly ergonomically speaking. Start early and your back and neck will thank you later. Don't hesitate to request a different keyboard and mouse if what you are provided isn't comfortable.
2) Invest in both technical and productivity learning.
3) Until you’ve built a reputation, show up a little early and stay a little late. First impressions disproportionately matter, and this is all they can judge you on.
4) Know how your internal and external customers use your product to hit their goals.
5) Be as nice to the security guards and admins as you are to the CEO.
6) Write lots of Thank You notes. Email people’s bosses when you send.
Here are my tips: https://erkanerol.github.io/post/adapting-a-project/ Quote from the blog post: "Last but not least. Feel responsible from day one. You are a part of the team and you are responsible for every failure and every success. More or less. If there is a pain in somewhere in your team, feel it in your heart. In companies, there are always some “local people” and “tourists”. Tourists are only interested in “…
There's a bunch of research of what elicits citizenship behaviours (high commitment, identifying with the company, etc) and what doesn't.
Lots of stuff in the HR literature!
Congrats on starting! One bit of advice I would personally give is to remember that work is just work. You will have responsibilities, deadlines, arguments, critisms and one day you might find yourself anxious and stressed out. When that happens, it's nice to remind yourself that the critical bug or whatever you're working on is meanigless in the grand scheme of things. No matter how passionate you are about your com…
Once you see CEOs say "Everything's fine" one day, and 2 weeks later lay off 10% of the company (or 70% of my current team) with no real warning beforehand, then it starts becoming REAL obvious.
Being a freelance contractor, working 4 to 12 month projects at a time with different companies, I've seen quite a bit of crap.
But being a freelancer / contractor, I've built a client network plus a "radar" for potential trouble (e.g. company is re-organizing the whole tech team for the 3rd time in 3 years, or a new round of financing is coming up and the last 2 quarterlies were below forecast).
Congrats on starting! One bit of advice I would personally give is to remember that work is just work. You will have responsibilities, deadlines, arguments, critisms and one day you might find yourself anxious and stressed out. When that happens, it's nice to remind yourself that the critical bug or whatever you're working on is meanigless in the grand scheme of things. No matter how passionate you are about your com…
+1. I need to remind myself about this almost weekly.
Looking back at it it's mind boggling how I didn't quit sooner.
If you are in a similar position consider if you're actually happy at your workplace. It's easy to tell yourself that "it's just a phase" and to "hold out a little longer" - more often than not these phases become the norm.
Productivity, for me, has a strong "momentum" component to it. Once you get going, it's easy to keep going as long as you can keep distractions down. But if you start on a news site, that sets your momentum for the morning in the wrong place.
Another thing along these lines are to leave a task unfinished in the evening so that you have a place to jump right back to in the morning (balance this with the ability to not think about work after work).
Set aside some time at the beginning of each day to buff your tools and skills. Over time these sessions compound like interest and make you wealthier in human capital and a more valuable employee. I do it for one pomodoro, 25 minutes. For me an example might be installing and learning a new vim addon or scripting a common task or focusing on a tough corner of a programming language. Something useful to the job but n…
Sometimes I take time from some task to do things like this, but as this time off isn't a regular ocurrence, once it does happen, it ends up taking a lot of time, making me feel like I'm delaying an assignment. Small but regular steps like this could help with this feeling.