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Ask HN: How to effectively start in a new (software engineering) role?
I've just finished a job search and going to be starting in ~4 weeks.
I thought it would be good to get some general advice from the community about people's strategies for the first few days/weeks at a new company, as a software engineer in a non-leadership position.
- itamarst 9y agoHere's my checklist (originally included in an email sent out to my mailing list - https://softwareclown.com https://softwareclown.com): Understand the big picture direction of the organization, team, and product I’m working on: management, marketing, sales, and engineering. * Talk to relevant managers about where we’re going, and what they’d consider success or failure. Also a chance to meet managers I didn’t talk to during interview process. * See if anyone’s done a pre-mortem, or if not try to informally or formally do one: “it’s one year in the future and the project has failed. What did we do wrong?” Usally I’ve started mentally creating a list of big picture risks, but many of those are probably irrelevant, and I’m probably missing quite a few. * Learn meeting schedule, start forming opinions about existing ones (useful/needs improvement/useless) and what meetings might be missing. * Get to know co-workers: names, roles, who knows what. * Wander around introducing myself, and asking people what they are working on. * Figure out lunch and snack culture. * Join social chat rooms / email lists. Set up work environment. * Standing desk, with keyboard and monitor correct height. * Kinesis Advantage keyboard. * Mat for standing desk. * Install Linux on laptop. * Editor configuration (using my dotfiles repo). * Setup email, chat, other communication methods. Start learning the development process, code base, tool chain, and relevant technologies. * Get code checked out, figure out how to build and run it. * Figure out how to file tickets. * Get smallest possible commit merged (fixing a typo, say). * Improve or write documentation for the above three, for the benefit of future developers. * Next smallest code change: improve code quality by adding a linter, or setup EditorConfig. * Start work on a small, real feature or bug fix. * Order (and expense!) books covering topics I don’t know enough about. Logistics. * Health and dental insurance. * Retirement account. * Bring relevant legal documentation first day (passport / birth certificate). * Figure out best time to leave for work. * Figure out bike parking.