Meeting everyone on a new team
annashipman.co.uk
Meeting everyone on a new team
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Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#2> When I joined the Financial Times as Technical Director for FT.com, I inherited a team of around 50 engineers. One of the first things I did was meet each of them for a one-to-one. I was initially resistant, but it was extremely valuable, I’m glad I did it, and I would definitely do it again in a future role.
I recently joined a startup, and I am glad I did not meet everyone (except learned a lot of faces in video meetings) because of COVID-19. More precisely, the second wave has been officially recognized by the government last week. Remote working is the status quo, and it will remain that way. Not my preference, normally, but it'll remain this way for the time being. Perhaps an interesting article in 2021.
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#3> When I joined the Financial Times as Technical Director for FT.com, I inherited a team of around 50 engineers. One of the first things I did was meet each of them for a one-to-one. I was initially resistant, but it was extremely valuable, I’m glad I did it, and I would definitely do it again in a future role. I recently joined a startup, and I am glad I did not meet everyone (except learned a lot of faces in video…
You can do this remotely.
If in a historic remote team or now, I still encourage this practice.
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#4> When I joined the Financial Times as Technical Director for FT.com, I inherited a team of around 50 engineers. One of the first things I did was meet each of them for a one-to-one. I was initially resistant, but it was extremely valuable, I’m glad I did it, and I would definitely do it again in a future role. I recently joined a startup, and I am glad I did not meet everyone (except learned a lot of faces in video…
why were you resistant at first?
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#5> When I joined the Financial Times as Technical Director for FT.com, I inherited a team of around 50 engineers. One of the first things I did was meet each of them for a one-to-one. I was initially resistant, but it was extremely valuable, I’m glad I did it, and I would definitely do it again in a future role. I recently joined a startup, and I am glad I did not meet everyone (except learned a lot of faces in video…
They joined FT in 2018 from what I can tell, so meeting everyone would have been entirely normal. In a remote working model, you could obviously do it over VC.
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#6> When I joined the Financial Times as Technical Director for FT.com, I inherited a team of around 50 engineers. One of the first things I did was meet each of them for a one-to-one. I was initially resistant, but it was extremely valuable, I’m glad I did it, and I would definitely do it again in a future role. I recently joined a startup, and I am glad I did not meet everyone (except learned a lot of faces in video…
why were you resistant at first?
The > in the first paragraph means they're quoting the article.
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#7I work remotely, where most of my team doesn't (well, didn't before Covid). I took the habit of initiating conversations with new employees, remotely or whenever I visit the office. It doesn't take much but it's worth it. It brings more trust and ease up future relations. Surprisingly, I've noticed some people can be isolated from their colleagues even when sharing the same office.
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#8I did something very similar when I joined my last team. I like Anna's questions. One of the questions I asked was 'who do you go to for advice and bouncing ideas off'. This gave me a great view of the key knowledge nexus points and how people are connected to each other in the team.
After I'd spoken to everyone, I created a report for the executive committee summarizing all topics that had come up multiple times, and highlighting individuals that were widely relied on.
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#9I did something very similar when I joined my last team. I like Anna's questions. One of the questions I asked was 'who do you go to for advice and bouncing ideas off'. This gave me a great view of the key knowledge nexus points and how people are connected to each other in the team. After I'd spoken to everyone, I created a report for the executive committee summarizing all topics that had come up multiple times, an…
Oh man, I love that “who do you go to for X?” question. I’m starting as an SWE on Monday, so that’s big on my mind.
Re: Meeting everyone on a new team
#10At a "lower" level, I've done something a bit along those lines when starting at my last job: I picked a bunch of people from each team at the company and reached out to them to schedule a one-on-one about them, the way they see things, their experience so far, their team, and a short introduction on my part.
It wasn't about trying to be ten steps ahead of anything or about taking any statement as absolute truth, but to understand different perspectives, to explain in quick and simple terms the reason why I had joined and in what ways I could help them, and to establish those contacts to facilitate future interactions. Every single discussion was worthwhile, because I understood a lot about the company really quickly (which helped me in my work) and every time an issue came up I could easily feel empowered to connect with those people and be put in touch with the right person, or to hear the non-official stuff that is sometimes harder to share across teams and therefore help the team with a little bit more personality than by slinging tickets across boards.
Assuming you're not working in a place with an overwhelming amount of psychopaths (which I assume is a reasonable goal for the majority of people), I would say that caring about other people does pay back quickly and significantly (as shallow as that might sound).