How to be amazing in your first weeks

i.e., what makes me really happy as a manager

Today's Tour

• Context setting
• Questions
• Honesty
• Optimism
• Documentation
• Improving everything you encounter
• Feedback! 
  • Asking for and sharing
• Connecting with coworkers
• Ask your manager
• What's worked for you?

Who wrote this?

• Preston Parry- just a colored-pants-wearing, biking & climbing & dancing, data & machine-learning addicted human
• Pertinently for this, I've managed technical teams in 3 different organizations
• Reach out! I love connecting:
  • ​prestonparry.com
  • ClimbsBytes@gmail.com
  • github.com/ClimbsRocks

Questions

• Action:
  • Ask your manager to set aside 15 minutes at the end of each day for questions
• Why:
  • Forces you to be engaged enough to have good questions to ask
  • Lets you build a relationship with your manager
  • Gets you unstuck/avoiding potential pitfalls

Honesty

• Action:
  • ​Be upfront about what you do or don't know.
  • "Oh cool, I haven't had a chance to play with this technology before."
• ​Why:
  • ​Sets expectations properly
  • Allows you to seek help and progress rapidly
  • Alerts them that they'll have to pay a bit more attention to your work in this area

Optimism

• Action:
• • ​Greet each new challenge or tech you have to learn with optimism
  • "Oh sweet, I've been wanting to dive into this for a while; I'm glad I'll finally have the chance to!"
• Why:
  • You'll actually be better at these tasks if you approach them with optimism
  • Your coworkers will like you more
  • Turns each area from a mark against your incoming knowledge into a positive mark for your enthusiasm/optimism

Documentation

• Action:
  • ​Document everything you encounter!
• ​Why:
  • ​It signals, in a very powerful way, that you're invested in the environment around you
  • Nobody else has been through this recently- you're the most qualified in your entire organization to perform this task
  • When the next hires come on, you get to mentor them either directly or through your materials- both count strongly in your favor
  • It sets you apart from everyone else who did the same process in a passive way

Improving Everything You See

• Action:
  • ​Improve everything you encounter!
• ​Why:
  • ​As a new developer, you are not yet burdened with larger tasks yet, so you have a unique opportunity to fix all the small things
  • Everyone else is just so used to these errors that they don't think about them anymore
  • Super powerful signal that you care and are engaged and will do more than just the letter of what you're told
  • It's just nice to help everyone else out this way

Connecting with Coworkers

• Action:
  • Go out of your way to build relationships with coworkers
    • Invite each of them out to coffee/happy hour/lunch/a bike ride, etc
    • Join all the team food breaks & coffee breaks, even if you're not eating or drinking coffee
• Why:
  • You'll all enjoy coming into the office more!
  • Team output is dominated by how well the team communicates and gets along
  • Your coworkers are much more likely to help you and share useful information with you ("oh yeah, that API documentation is WAY out of date- here's how it actually works") if they like you

Ask Your Manager

• Action:
  • Ask your manager what they've seen really successful people in similar roles do during onboarding previously 
• Why:
  • You'll learn useful habits! 
  • You'll signal that you have ambitions and are seeking to be highly successful
  • It's a chance to connect with your manager as they reminisce over their career and draw patterns from it

That's the end!

• What's worked for you?

Gratitude

Thanks for listening, for being engaged enough in your career to care, and for improving the world around you both for your own benefit and the benefit of everyone else