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Meeting everyone on a new team

annashipman.co.uk

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Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#71

Post by dv35z »

zvorygin wrote: post #20
dv35z wrote: post #11

Perfect timing. I just joined a company this past week as a software engineer. Day one, I knew 5 people, only topically. By the end of week 1, I have introductions/1:1s scheduled for 30+ top-notch people at the organization. Here's the method I used to do this: I created a really comprehensive intro email about myself (work stuff, personal stuff, passions, etc). I wrote this in Google Docs, so it would be easy to pas…

Thank you for posting this! I'm going to be starting a new job sometime soon, and this is giving me all sorts of ideas! Especially thank you for being so comprehensive in your comment. Some questions: What size is your company, and what level of SWE are you? Did your referrals tend to move up the org chart, or stay at the same level? Is your role very broad? I ask this last one because a question like "How do you env…

The company is pretty big. Traditionally, the engineers have been contractors, but the company is now bringing more development in-house. As such, the teams are going to be growing quickly, and there is a lot of the engineer practice which is undefined. I'm newer to being a software engineer as my "day job" (my previous roles have been in product management, and a few customer-facing roles, like "pre-sales engineer").

The referrals seem to be all over the place! Since I interviewed with a few "levels" of people (engineer, product manager, engineer leadership), everyone has introduced me to a couple different "flavors" of who they consider great in the company. Different departments, titles. So far, they have all been really fun and interesting conversations - hasn't SEEMED to be a chore to folks, but I could be missing something.

"how to you envision us working together" - At the beginning of my personal intro email, I introduced my role and team/group. Since - in the end - its a technology role, I believe that everyone can envision how technology would make their life a little better. There's always something to be automated, an annoying process fixed. I write down the interesting questions people ask, and do my best to research them and follow up, or connect with someone who knows more than I do. Hoping it could help get their problem some attention, and I get to learn about "real" problems in the process.

While my role is not overly broad, I know that since we are planning to grow the team rapidly, there is expectation (I believe) to have an impact and to help scale/onboard the new team members. I am hoping to do a lot of this front-loading NOW, so when I inevitably need to help onboard a new engineer in a few months, I'll hopefully have a bunch of "you need to know this" info handy, and can help introduce them to people I found helpful when joining.

Did that fully answer your question? If not, pile on!

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#72

Post by dv35z »

jeffrallen wrote: post #62
orf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’m just imagining receiving this demanding message out of the blue on a typical busy day from a new joiner in a different team. Most of these questions seem more suited for your direct colleagues or team lead.

I think I might have replied politely, but also kept a mental note, "careful: possible insane colleague". Those mental notes are helpful.

Yikes! Good to know that's how it comes across (a little too late!) . I'm a pretty friendly person "IRL" - sometimes it's tough to get your writing voice to sound close to your mental/speaking voice...

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#73

Post by dv35z »

ShroudedNight wrote: post #27
dv35z wrote: post #11

Perfect timing. I just joined a company this past week as a software engineer. Day one, I knew 5 people, only topically. By the end of week 1, I have introductions/1:1s scheduled for 30+ top-notch people at the organization. Here's the method I used to do this: I created a really comprehensive intro email about myself (work stuff, personal stuff, passions, etc). I wrote this in Google Docs, so it would be easy to pas…

As this currently reads, this evokes intense feelings of vitriol at the mere hypothetical of a peer attempting to coerce me to engage in a pathologically transactional relationship I would want zero part of. In the most satisfying job roles, I would expect to endure hardship for the sake of others' success, and this would immediately put me on notice that such endurance would likely be wasteful and painful in its lac…

Wow, thanks for this comment. (as a quick aside, you have an incredible command of the language). A couple questions...

(1) "attempting to coerce", "pathologically transactional" - maybe it's tough to see it in my own writing, but that is definitely not what I'm intended. My goal was to actually build a mutually beneficial relationship with the people I reached out to. In previous jobs, I've always made lots of colleague friends, helped each other out in the workplace, and in many cases, became friends outside of the workplace. What language did I use which made it feel coercive or transactional? What would you have suggested instead (again, if you had followed this approach). If you had similar goals, what other approach would you try?

(2) "means to an end" vs "inherent fascination". I actually DO have a personal interest in how all the puzzle pieces fit together in an organization, and code-wise (system-wise?), I am more effective in my job when I have a good understanding of how things work under the hood (I learn a lot by "doing"). I suppose that one "means to an end" is "connect with someone I can learn from" - for this specific email/intro, I'm hoping to build some awesome colleague relationships as soon as I can. But it's less for "resource extraction" and more for developing good, mutually beneficial relationships with colleagues over the course of a career with intentionality. Again, is there different language or phrasing which would convey that better, and trigger less skepticism?

Again, thanks again for your insightful feedback. It stung the ego, but that's where the learning happens!

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#74

Post by jeffrallen »

dv35z wrote: post #72
jeffrallen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I might have replied politely, but also kept a mental note, "careful: possible insane colleague". Those mental notes are helpful.

Yikes! Good to know that's how it comes across (a little too late!) . I'm a pretty friendly person "IRL" - sometimes it's tough to get your writing voice to sound close to your mental/speaking voice...

Look, first impressions can change, so probably no harm done. I think possibly this is a case of "trying too hard" out of sincerely good intentions. Just take it easy, try to earn people's attention and advice by finding ways to give to them first.

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#77

Post by Balgair »

varispeed wrote: post #68
jan_g wrote: post #40

> This is confidential. If you say something about someone else I’m not going to go and tell them. Warning to all of you in non-managerial position: be very wary of confidentiality proclamations. It happened to me that my manager ran immediately to the CEO, when I said I'm going to start looking for a new job in 3-6 months time. I told him that I specifically don't want this information to leak, but yeah, everybody k…

Workplace these days is a minefield. If you have to talk to someone, only talk about what needs to be talked about and nothing more. Preferably also try to record every interaction or at least run a diary - location, time, who, few bullet points describing the encounter plus some additional facts - what was in the room? was there anyone else? how they looked like? in what manner the person talked to you? and so on. Y…

Yeah, this stinks. I've known a few people that got pregnant at 'the wrong time', and things could have gone a lot better.

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#78

Post by dv35z »

jeffrallen wrote: post #74
dv35z wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes! Good to know that's how it comes across (a little too late!) . I'm a pretty friendly person "IRL" - sometimes it's tough to get your writing voice to sound close to your mental/speaking voice...

Look, first impressions can change, so probably no harm done. I think possibly this is a case of "trying too hard" out of sincerely good intentions. Just take it easy, try to earn people's attention and advice by finding ways to give to them first.

Thanks - appreciate it!

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#79

Post by meristem »

jan_g wrote: post #40

> This is confidential. If you say something about someone else I’m not going to go and tell them. Warning to all of you in non-managerial position: be very wary of confidentiality proclamations. It happened to me that my manager ran immediately to the CEO, when I said I'm going to start looking for a new job in 3-6 months time. I told him that I specifically don't want this information to leak, but yeah, everybody k…

From a managerial perspective, here is my issue: I want people to feel comfortable coming to me with issues and concerns. That is important in terms of doing good management. Yet if someone revealed something to me that is highly reportable, I may need to act on it. I'm primarily thinking HR issues, but can easily think of others.

One way to manage this is to have the casual conversation, and then in a separate 'official' conversation broach only that issue with the employee.

But yeah--highly recommend building relationships with managers before talking about career plans outside company. Career plans inside your company is a different deal. If you have a useful manager who actually is invested in the growth of the team, it is a great opportunity. (growth = expertise, not growth = number of direct reports)

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#80

Post by torvald »

wcerfgba wrote: post #61
NateThePirate wrote: post #19

With remote working becoming so prevalent the thought has crossed my mind about what it might be like to start a new job without having much contact with most people who work there. Seems like it would be harder to become friends with coworkers, or easy feel isolated in your work (particularly outside of software development).

My company is fully remote. I schedule a 30 minute 1:1 social call with a random colleague once a week. I find this is a good balance for me personally -- it ensures I get enough social contact (in addition to my other meetings and 1:1s with my managers) but it's not a huge chunk of my work week taken up. On the calls we talk about random stuff like our hobbies, what's going on in our lives, what we did this week. Oc…

We do as well, we use a slack bot that pairs people that are member of a specific together every Monday.

I think it's this one http://www.randomcoffees.com/>.

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