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Meeting everyone on a new team

annashipman.co.uk

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Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#81
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's stupid in hindsight, but I just wanted to give him a chance to better prepare for me leaving, like start looking for new developer(s) or shift plans, etc.

I don’t think it’s stupid at all, it just shows you had a not so great manager. They could have used this information to start preparing without revealing the specifics. Unfortunately it’s these types of incidents that make people weary of engaging in this level of candidness. At the company I just left, I felt extremely comfortable telling my direct manager I was interviewing. By the time I got an offer we had a pla…

> I don’t think it’s stupid at all, it just shows you had a not so great manager.

No, it was epically stupid. The manager was actually very good at their job for reporting that a key team member was planning on leaving and the process for replacement and knowledge transfer needed to begin ASAP.

What both you and the GP haven't figured out is your manager is not your friend, their duty is to the company and you can be friendly but you can't ever let yourself forget you're both their for a paycheck.

If either of you slip information to the other that jeopardizes that person's paycheck you've done them a disservice and force them to choose between financial stability and perceived loyalty to you.

The most pernicious propaganda I've seen in startups and small companies is that _we're a family_ and you can come to me at any time about anything. That's absolute dogshit and you need to put the coolaid down, family doesn't negotiate pay raises and equity, families don't quit or fire each other.

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#82
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 colle…

In fairness, a lot of what you described is probably what ambitious and extraverted hopeful executives are doing implicitly and instinctively in their heads. It's just that in the context of you being an engineer and "saying the quiet part out loud" (so to speak), it does come off as a bit overbearing and maybe mad-scientist.

I think it's possible for you to execute it well, but it will require real empathy for the people who are your "targets". It sounds like you are aware of that though, so good luck with the plan!

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#83
post #66
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's a matter of introversion, it all sounds so tiresome and I would most likely ignore the email. At most I'd selectively answer a few things in email but decline any actual meeting. I'd probably bucket the sender as a promotion-seeking hustler I don't really want to work with, though all the best to them in achieving their more social oriented goals. I share your opinion on a job being there to do actual wor…

Thanks for responding. For what it's worth, I did get a few people who did reply inline to the email, which I appreciated too. Honestly, the reason I even sent the "questions" ahead of time was so that the intro/1:1 would be a valuable use of time for both people (as we could prepare ahead of time). As I am re-reading the questions I sent, which part felt "social oriented goals"? Because that is definitely NOT what I…

> which part felt "social oriented goals"?

Every part, especially the gestalt of all the parts together. Your entire outlook expressed by your post and your replies to me and others here makes you come across as a person with a "socially oriented goals" mindset. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, perhaps it's even a very good thing once all the trade-offs are considered, but to me it's something I don't typically get along with (there are always exceptions). The aspect of it that most turns me off is a sense that you're a people-person (validation and enjoyment comes much more from people than things, you value impact over creation/discovery) who also will use people for self-serving ends and in the context of work perhaps at the cost of doing your best work.

Don't take this as harsh criticism -- we all are self-serving in various ways, many ways are innocent (I get it, some people really like socializing and talking to as many people as possible), and we use various means including sometimes other people to get our kicks. That's all usually fine, there's plenty of room in the industry for many kinds of people, even those who don't naturally get along well with each other or have much in common in shared interests or philosophies -- professionalism lets us build things together anyway. My negative reaction is 1) first impression based without getting to know you and 2) colored as a matter of introversion and other personality traits and my own feelings about programming. Neither one is going to be "correct".

There's also some dependence on the kind of company we're talking about. From my understanding Facebook puts new hires into a generic pool for a while and the newbies sort of have to find their own way to a team. Your approach would make more sense there. Reading your reply on the type of company you found yourself in also seems like this approach could be more appropriate, though still one I wouldn't take (especially the chumming-up bits) because again it's tiresome, presumably not much related to why I was hired, I don't want to unnecessarily take up others' time, and I would probably think such info gathering (especially the mass synthesis) a lot lower-value than many other things I could be doing as a newbie... Other companies though will hire you onto a specific team to do somewhat specific things, and in that case many of your questions are sort of nonsensical. (e.g. how do you envision us working together -- if you're on a totally unrelated team in a different department, honestly I don't have a vision, because both of our teams' roadmaps are likely fixed for the foreseeable future and being unrelated now aren't a priori likely to become related later. Perhaps as I get to know you we find a common interest to do a hackday together on, but this is not something I can envision from just meeting you. Create/join some interest groups and maybe we'll find each other more organically, there's no need to optimize for this sort of relationship building now and in any case I'm here primarily to work.)

Another comment had the reaction of "who is this, someone trying to be a manager?" but I would sooner see it, in the context of my previous company, as "where is this person's manager or mentor?" I would not have sent such an email. Instead, I would direct some questions to my manager/mentor/direct team members (and in written form they can be answered in kind, no need for a meeting), and in a way that doesn't require them to spend much time on me. I'd also have an expectation that a lot of that would be answered by them for me ahead of time before I have to ask, as part of their responsibilities to new hires. Depending on the company much can be looked up on your own time, I'd reserve meetings for things that benefit from synchronous interactivity. For other questions I would have asked or inferred before even taking the job.

The first team I joined at my last job had a nice process for new members that would satisfy your goal of improving the onboarding experience. There was a short 1-2 page onboarding doc that acted as a checklist of things to do, not so well advertised policies to take advantage of (e.g. home internet reimbursement), groups/chat channels to join, links to things you should read... the newest person who joined the team was responsible for going through the doc and if needed adding/editing/updating anything they discovered was useful over their first month, without turning it into a long doc, and making sure the next new person sees the doc and understands their responsibility. My final team didn't have that, though by then the company-wide onboarding material wasn't so bad so we could just link to that. For more team-specific stuff there was a master README linking to everything of importance across a handful of hosts, but in my own reaching out to newer people on our team or sister teams to see how things were going I'd frequently find no one had sent it to them yet. So to be sure, sometimes the self-directed requests for guidance and other things you're doing is needed, even when you have a reasonable expectation that someone is looking out for you. When you're pinging tens of people about this stuff though, I think there's more going on in your motivations than just improving your own and perhaps others' future onboarding. Maybe you'll join me in adding http://elephantinthebrain.com/ to the reading list queue in order to better notice or think about those things...

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#84
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You joined as an engineer, not a manager. Why are you asking people how you can help with their challenges when it’s very unlikely you have the power to do so? I’d find this entire email process very bizarre, demanding and power-seeking (you want me to tell you who the bigshots are so you can meet them and what you should do to get promoted, and you’re pretending it’s for my benefit? Who are you trying to kid?). I’d…

Thanks for responding, and for the feedback. I really appreciate it (hard to get a 3rd person perspective sometimes!) Some of what you have said is hard to hear because (from my viewpoint), the emails/intros are in good faith. For example, you say "big shots" / "power seeking" - certainly, in any organization, there are just some incredibly talented & experienced people, who are always down with providing useful know…

Sorry for the harsh feedback. As a new starter, I’d expect you to be making it clear how you’re useful to me - not the other way around! It seems fairly clear that your motives are self-directed (how can I connect to talented people? What can I learn? What should I be doing? I want context.) and that you believe you deserve other people’s time. Following up on people who don’t answer your cold emails is really quite pushy in that regard. Yes, you ask how you can help, but you’re still putting much of the burden of figuring out what you can do on the other person rather than figuring it out yourself.

I want to work with people on a project, not help people with their grand mission of self-improvement. One of the points in How to Win Friends is to truly consider and appeal to the other person’s interest. Do you think everyone you email is interested in you and wants to spend their time answering questions about how you should conduct your learning and career, essentially having an interview with you? (You might also want to consider how some people will feel if they know you’ve only selected “awesome” people to interrogate, and they weren’t on the list...)

I don’t think you have to stop doing this if it works for you, but I’d suggest at least letting people off the hook if they don’t reply!

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s stupid at all, it just shows you had a not so great manager. They could have used this information to start preparing without revealing the specifics. Unfortunately it’s these types of incidents that make people weary of engaging in this level of candidness. At the company I just left, I felt extremely comfortable telling my direct manager I was interviewing. By the time I got an offer we had a pla…

> I don’t think it’s stupid at all, it just shows you had a not so great manager. No, it was epically stupid. The manager was actually very good at their job for reporting that a key team member was planning on leaving and the process for replacement and knowledge transfer needed to begin ASAP. What both you and the GP haven't figured out is your manager is not your friend, their duty is to the company and you can be…

I disagree with almost everything you've said. That remark about financial stability is laughable at best.

Look, I don't have any problem with my coworker(s) being more loyal to the company than to me. I do have problem with lying, though. Lie to me once and I'll never want to deal with you again.

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#86
post #83
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for responding. For what it's worth, I did get a few people who did reply inline to the email, which I appreciated too. Honestly, the reason I even sent the "questions" ahead of time was so that the intro/1:1 would be a valuable use of time for both people (as we could prepare ahead of time). As I am re-reading the questions I sent, which part felt "social oriented goals"? Because that is definitely NOT what I…

> which part felt "social oriented goals"? Every part, especially the gestalt of all the parts together. Your entire outlook expressed by your post and your replies to me and others here makes you come across as a person with a "socially oriented goals" mindset. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, perhaps it's even a very good thing once all the trade-offs are considered, but to me it's something I don't typically ge…

Thanks! The book looks interesting, thanks for the recommendation. This stuff is right up my alley right now.

Re: Meeting everyone on a new team

#87
post #50
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. For me saying this conversation is confidential has a negative connotation. It raises some flags like: 1. Are we going to talk about something which we can't broadly address? 2. How do I trust someone new on the team to actually keep things confidential, what have they done to earn my trust? 3. I'm going to be more guarded about what I say, because now I'm thinking this person will probably want to miscons…

It's stupid in hindsight, but I just wanted to give him a chance to better prepare for me leaving, like start looking for new developer(s) or shift plans, etc.

That's an extended courtesy. As a manager, one needs to continuously be planning on how to not let all the tribal knowledge collect with a select few. Pairing people, coming up with processes for documentation and presentations, etc are part of being a successful manager.
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