9 ms·

Meeting everyone on a new team

266 points by craigkerstiens 6y ago

yodsanklai 6y ago
I 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.
Fnoord 6y ago
> 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.
- masonhensley 6y ago
  You can do this remotely. If in a historic remote team or now, I still encourage this practice.
- pvinis 6y ago
  why were you resistant at first?
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    The &gt in the first paragraph means they're quoting the article.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  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.
kybernetikos 6y ago
I 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.
- ketzo 6y ago
  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.
  - nashashmi 6y ago
    what is SWE?
    - throwawayinfo 6y ago
      Software Engineer
    - untog 6y ago
      More importantly, who do you ask “what is SWE” to?
      - jrott 6y ago
        Seriously in any big company who can you go to ask what acronym $TEXAS means is an important question.
        ngkaboon 6y ago
        seen this pattern work in two orgs - create an online dictionary through a chat bot interface for acronyms
cmehdy 6y ago
At 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).
dv35z 6y ago
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 paste into Gmail, and preserve the nice formatting. In this email, I included several questions (see below), which I wanted to ask the person. I got these questions from a few sources, including "The first 90 Days" book, along with some other questions I found through Google. At the end of the email, I marked in bold: Suggest 3 other amazing people for me to connect to, and why you recommend them. I sent the emails out, and got replies within 1-2 days - 75% provided me with 3 names! If some did not provide me with names, I politely followed up with warm, thankful email, but also a reminder to please send me name, which each of them did. I then sent out "cold" emails to THOSE people, starting with "X person said to reach out you" (helping bring a familiar name immediately at the beginning of the email). I used the exact same email template for that, along with asking for more names. I used a Google spreadsheet to keep track of all the people I reached out with, along with columns for questions, the people they referred, and who referred them. At current, I have 15 1:1s scheduled for next week, and tentatively 5-10 scheduled for the week after. I'm using labels in Gmail to flag "@ Waiting" for the people who have not responded, so that I can follow up after a few days. In the meeting invites I sent to folks, I included the agenda items in the description, so it was top-of-mind for them, as they checked their calendar. I'm using a note taking tool called Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/) to take notes on all the conversations I'm having with people. This tool lets you write in markdown, and quickly crosslink topics (like a personal wiki). The goal is to create a knowledge base of information, based on all the "here's what you need to know" topics that people share with me. Finally (and important). I made sure to set expectations with my manager before doing this. I basically told him: (1) I am going to setup conversations with many people this first 2 weeks of work. (2) I will use this output of these conversations to build a learning plan of topics which these people suggest focusing on, (3) I will then synthesize these notes, and will share them with you (manager). (4) You and I will review the learning plan, and prioritize it together. (5) We will use this plan, along with our weekly 1:1s to build out a 30/60/90 day plan. This was important, because it allowed me to "buy time" before being thrown into a million meetings, assignments, etc. Each person I have spoken to so far has had different suggestions on what the first several things to focus on, learn, etc are. However, they have all been incredibly valuable - and in many cases, they are things I would not have immediately known to even list down. The great part about this approach (in my opinion), is that all of the people I'm meeting are essentially pre-selected for awesomeness by someone awesome. All of the conversations have been enormously valuable. The feedback I've gotten from the people has been really great, and validating! Bonus: I have been using an app called UpHabit (https://uphabit.com/ https://uphabit.com/), which is a "Personal Relationship Manager". It lets you tag people (e.g. by skill, passion, etc), and then assign regular reminders to reach out to them (e.g. "connect with this person every 3 months"), and lets you take notes on the conversations you had. I have found this tool enormously valuable, as its allowed me to "scale" my personal network, and trust that important people don't get forgotten. I find myself a very LIFO person (the people I most recently connected with, I'll remember to connect with. The folks from long time ago, I often forget). This tool has been helping me re-invigorate my personal/professional relationships. Note: I have no affiliation with either of the tool recommendations in this post, aside from finding them very useful! Below are the questions I included in my intro email. If anyone would like to see the "full" email, I could probably generify it, and share directly. --- Tell me about yourself! If you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear what you are personally passionate about, and what topics, processes, areas etc you are passionate for at X. What is your role & your responsibilities at X? What’s a “day in the life” like for you? This helps build empathy and understanding for your world, and how I could best help. What are your top 3 priorities in the next two months? What specifically are you hoping to achieve? What do you feel are the top 3 challenges/blockers (1) facing X, (2) facing your team, (3) you professionally at X? What is your understanding and expectations of me and my role? How do you envision us working/partnering with one another? If you were in my shoes, what would be the top 3 things you would prioritize, learn, or focus on in the next month or two? For each of the above, what would be an actionable next step to make progress? (it could be as simple as, “reach out to X person”, or “read this blog post”) What do you think would be some realistic, achievable and impactful “quick wins” or contributions I could make, for me to consider taking on as I get started at the company? Very Important: Suggest 3 amazing people at X for me to reach out to, who you think connecting with and learning from would help make me successful in my journey at X. Be sure and tell me what about these people is so amazing & awesome!
zachrose 6y ago
> With a team of ~50, that’s a lot of hours, and I was also working four days a week so each meeting takes up a greater proportion of time. At thirty minutes a pop these meetings come out to 25 hours. That does not strike me as “a lot of hours” given that this is talking to everyone who works in your department. Put another way is like a sanity check on the biggest and most important category of your department’s budget, at roughly 1% of your annual time.
- nfm 6y ago
  At the exec level, a good 70-80% of your time is probably unable to budge, so 25 hours of discretionary time _is_ a big investment - probably most of your discretionary time for a calendar month. It sounds like it was well worth it though.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Uh, why would your time not budge? As I’ve become more senior I’ve also been left more and more alone to determine what is important to be doing at any given time.
    - oldprogrammer2 6y ago
      As an executive, your calendar will fill up fast with meetings, planned and unplanned. 1:1’s with direct reports, 1:1 with your boss, your staff meeting, your boss’ staff meeting. Meetings to manage down, meetings to manage up. Meetings with product, meetings with sales, meetings with operations. Various steering committee meetings to move larger initiatives forward. Meetings with customers and prospective customers. Meetings that need your decision, your expertise, or need to bring you up to speed on evolving issues. And many of these meetings need preparation in advance to be productive. So your time is quickly depleted. Many executives do their deep thinking in the early morning or on the weekends since their day is a day of interruptions. At least that has been my experience in my last 3 roles.
      - brnt 6y ago
Cyph0n 6y ago
Would a similar strategy be valuable for an IC (individual contributor) joining a new team? For example, setting up 1-on-1 meetings with direct teammates soon after joining.
- mrud 6y ago
  Yes! This is what we do. We even explicitly typically put it in your 30 day plan.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
NateThePirate 6y ago
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).
- wcerfgba 6y ago
  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. Occasionally we talk a bit about work but we usually try to keep it as socially focused as possible. I've found that it contrasts well with the typical situation of being in an office. In office I find there is continuous social interaction, but it can be more shallow (banter, quick chat, etc), whereas a 1:1 format like this allows you to develop a deeper connection with each person and have more nuanced discussions.
  - torvald 6y ago
    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/ http://www.randomcoffees.com/>.
josep-panadero 6y ago
I have done that in my previous two jobs. And I find it easier to do as soon as I join a new company than later. Once I get involved in projects it requires more effort to get the time. And to know everyone and their opinions is very important to get up to speed. The views of managers/product/developers/testers are not perfectly aligned. Also, it is a great opportunity to understand the views of the less vocal members of the teams. Finally, it is important to present yourself, so people have an easier time to rise any concerns when they arise. Sadly, right now, I am technical leader for too many teams but once the situation is solved (we are hiring a new architect) my focus is on getting more regularly in contact with all teams and not just the ones working on the topics that require my attention. There are always small things that go unsaid unless done in a one on one. One year later, I repeated - just for three teams - the ones on ones and asked for personal feedback and the general "Is there anything you think I should know about?" again. It was very insightful, and I was able to get more into the nuance of the people's views as I had more knowledge about the company. I recommend, if you have the opportunity, to go to training on coaching. I got the training as a manager several years ago, and I found that type of training very useful for all positions and an important part missing in the software engineering curriculum. It is very difficult to help to solve technical problems without knowing the views of the people that would design and implement the details of the system. Spending time to create rapport it always pays off, and - for me - it is something fun to do.
l0b0 6y ago
As a software developer, being introduced only to the managers and not the team as part of the interviewing process is one of the biggest red flags (except during social distancing times, of course). Picking up the vibe is an excellent way to know whether I'll be able to contribute as much as possible. It doesn't have to be time consuming at all; simply joining a standup should be plenty. For example, are the tech lead and managers listeners or talkers? Do they solve problems, delegate them or ignore them? Is the team as a whole enthusiastic about the work? Are there rock stars, cowboys, social justice warriors, dominant/submissive personalities, blamers, micromanagers or virtue spiralists? A little bit of even several of these is probably inevitable in any team, but it's possible to take any one of these to a toxic level.
- ajb 6y ago
  Don't know why this is being downvoted, its right on. I need to know I'm working for, but I also need to know who I'm working with. Probably can't actually peg all potential problem team members, but getting a chance to do so is valuable and shows good will on the part of the employer. I guess some people are upset at the characterisation of "social justice warriors" as a negative. Don't really want to get into the politics part - but that's kind of the point. There is a place for politics at work, when it can alleviate genuine suffering, but advertising which in-group you belong to isn't it. That goes for both sides of the political divide.
SergeAx 6y ago
That's a great piece, thanks for sharing! Knowing that engineering teams are overloaded most of the time, I've got that question for first 1:1s: "If you have a week without having to closing tickets, what would you do for the project?" Those are not necessary an items for my to-do list, but clearly showing people's priorities and what they think is really important.
swilliamsio 6y ago
Why is this blog called JFDI? What does it stand for?
- sullyj3 6y ago
  Just fucking do it?
jan_g 6y ago
> 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 knew it by the next working day. Lesson learned: never tell anything sensitive or important in your 1-on-1s with the manager. Except pleasantries, hobbies and other useless stuff.
- websap 6y ago
  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 misconstrue what I'm saying to their benefit. Talking about career conversations. I wouldn't tell anyone about my career plans until the day I have to. In my experience telling people early has no tangible benefit.
  - jan_g 6y ago
    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.
    - esfourteen 6y ago
      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 plan in place for my departure. It’s certainly a situation specific action, and it’s unfortunate that more managers aren’t equipped to handle this adequately.
javieranton 6y ago
In my time of bouncing between jobs and meeting new teams on a regular basis I found that the biggest hurdle for me was remembering where everyone sat in the org. So I made a little app to keep track of this (Collaborative Groups)
draw_down 6y ago
I was surprised to see the reluctance to do this, stated multiple times even. In my opinion, doing this is table stakes, not really much question there. A new leader who didn’t take the time to do this would make me wonder why, and probably not make a great impression on me in terms of their ability to lead. When the head of engineering joined my company, he met with every engineer, several hundred at the time. Sure it takes time. And you should do it.
jeffrallen 6y ago
I would like to work with her. I've had bosses occasionally call me in for these types of open questions. It's really useful. But there's also a bit of mystery to when it happens and why it is not equally distributed across the team. There's a bit of "teacher's pet" anxiety associated with it. There's another thing that can happen in these confidential conversations which she was not in a position to do at this point... Sometimes the boss can explain the political landscape he/she finds themselves in, such that you can contribute better insights to help them protect your team.
dutch3000 6y ago
good article and agree that continued 1:1s with a team of 60 wouldn’t be worth it. i’d switch to a group meeting format or have 1:1s with key leads

I 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.

Fnoord 6y ago

> 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.

masonhensley 6y ago
You can do this remotely. If in a historic remote team or now, I still encourage this practice.
pvinis 6y ago
why were you resistant at first?
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  The &gt in the first paragraph means they're quoting the article.
sokoloff 6y ago
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.

kybernetikos 6y ago

I 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.

ketzo 6y ago
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.
- nashashmi 6y ago
  what is SWE?
  - throwawayinfo 6y ago
    Software Engineer
  - untog 6y ago
    More importantly, who do you ask “what is SWE” to?
    - jrott 6y ago
      Seriously in any big company who can you go to ask what acronym $TEXAS means is an important question.
      - ngkaboon 6y ago
        seen this pattern work in two orgs - create an online dictionary through a chat bot interface for acronyms

cmehdy 6y ago

At 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).

dv35z 6y ago

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 paste into Gmail, and preserve the nice formatting. In this email, I included several questions (see below), which I wanted to ask the person. I got these questions from a few sources, including "The first 90 Days" book, along with some other questions I found through Google. At the end of the email, I marked in bold: Suggest 3 other amazing people for me to connect to, and why you recommend them. I sent the emails out, and got replies within 1-2 days - 75% provided me with 3 names! If some did not provide me with names, I politely followed up with warm, thankful email, but also a reminder to please send me name, which each of them did. I then sent out "cold" emails to THOSE people, starting with "X person said to reach out you" (helping bring a familiar name immediately at the beginning of the email). I used the exact same email template for that, along with asking for more names. I used a Google spreadsheet to keep track of all the people I reached out with, along with columns for questions, the people they referred, and who referred them. At current, I have 15 1:1s scheduled for next week, and tentatively 5-10 scheduled for the week after. I'm using labels in Gmail to flag "@ Waiting" for the people who have not responded, so that I can follow up after a few days. In the meeting invites I sent to folks, I included the agenda items in the description, so it was top-of-mind for them, as they checked their calendar. I'm using a note taking tool called Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/) to take notes on all the conversations I'm having with people. This tool lets you write in markdown, and quickly crosslink topics (like a personal wiki). The goal is to create a knowledge base of information, based on all the "here's what you need to know" topics that people share with me. Finally (and important). I made sure to set expectations with my manager before doing this. I basically told him: (1) I am going to setup conversations with many people this first 2 weeks of work. (2) I will use this output of these conversations to build a learning plan of topics which these people suggest focusing on, (3) I will then synthesize these notes, and will share them with you (manager). (4) You and I will review the learning plan, and prioritize it together. (5) We will use this plan, along with our weekly 1:1s to build out a 30/60/90 day plan. This was important, because it allowed me to "buy time" before being thrown into a million meetings, assignments, etc. Each person I have spoken to so far has had different suggestions on what the first several things to focus on, learn, etc are. However, they have all been incredibly valuable - and in many cases, they are things I would not have immediately known to even list down. The great part about this approach (in my opinion), is that all of the people I'm meeting are essentially pre-selected for awesomeness by someone awesome. All of the conversations have been enormously valuable. The feedback I've gotten from the people has been really great, and validating! Bonus: I have been using an app called UpHabit (https://uphabit.com/ https://uphabit.com/), which is a "Personal Relationship Manager". It lets you tag people (e.g. by skill, passion, etc), and then assign regular reminders to reach out to them (e.g. "connect with this person every 3 months"), and lets you take notes on the conversations you had. I have found this tool enormously valuable, as its allowed me to "scale" my personal network, and trust that important people don't get forgotten. I find myself a very LIFO person (the people I most recently connected with, I'll remember to connect with. The folks from long time ago, I often forget). This tool has been helping me re-invigorate my personal/professional relationships. Note: I have no affiliation with either of the tool recommendations in this post, aside from finding them very useful! Below are the questions I included in my intro email. If anyone would like to see the "full" email, I could probably generify it, and share directly. --- Tell me about yourself! If you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear what you are personally passionate about, and what topics, processes, areas etc you are passionate for at X. What is your role & your responsibilities at X? What’s a “day in the life” like for you? This helps build empathy and understanding for your world, and how I could best help. What are your top 3 priorities in the next two months? What specifically are you hoping to achieve? What do you feel are the top 3 challenges/blockers (1) facing X, (2) facing your team, (3) you professionally at X? What is your understanding and expectations of me and my role? How do you envision us working/partnering with one another? If you were in my shoes, what would be the top 3 things you would prioritize, learn, or focus on in the next month or two? For each of the above, what would be an actionable next step to make progress? (it could be as simple as, “reach out to X person”, or “read this blog post”) What do you think would be some realistic, achievable and impactful “quick wins” or contributions I could make, for me to consider taking on as I get started at the company? Very Important: Suggest 3 amazing people at X for me to reach out to, who you think connecting with and learning from would help make me successful in my journey at X. Be sure and tell me what about these people is so amazing & awesome!

zachrose 6y ago

> With a team of ~50, that’s a lot of hours, and I was also working four days a week so each meeting takes up a greater proportion of time. At thirty minutes a pop these meetings come out to 25 hours. That does not strike me as “a lot of hours” given that this is talking to everyone who works in your department. Put another way is like a sanity check on the biggest and most important category of your department’s budget, at roughly 1% of your annual time.

nfm 6y ago
At the exec level, a good 70-80% of your time is probably unable to budge, so 25 hours of discretionary time _is_ a big investment - probably most of your discretionary time for a calendar month. It sounds like it was well worth it though.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Uh, why would your time not budge? As I’ve become more senior I’ve also been left more and more alone to determine what is important to be doing at any given time.
  - oldprogrammer2 6y ago
    As an executive, your calendar will fill up fast with meetings, planned and unplanned. 1:1’s with direct reports, 1:1 with your boss, your staff meeting, your boss’ staff meeting. Meetings to manage down, meetings to manage up. Meetings with product, meetings with sales, meetings with operations. Various steering committee meetings to move larger initiatives forward. Meetings with customers and prospective customers. Meetings that need your decision, your expertise, or need to bring you up to speed on evolving issues. And many of these meetings need preparation in advance to be productive. So your time is quickly depleted. Many executives do their deep thinking in the early morning or on the weekends since their day is a day of interruptions. At least that has been my experience in my last 3 roles.
    - brnt 6y ago

Cyph0n 6y ago

Would a similar strategy be valuable for an IC (individual contributor) joining a new team? For example, setting up 1-on-1 meetings with direct teammates soon after joining.

mrud 6y ago
Yes! This is what we do. We even explicitly typically put it in your 30 day plan.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

NateThePirate 6y ago

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).

wcerfgba 6y ago
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. Occasionally we talk a bit about work but we usually try to keep it as socially focused as possible. I've found that it contrasts well with the typical situation of being in an office. In office I find there is continuous social interaction, but it can be more shallow (banter, quick chat, etc), whereas a 1:1 format like this allows you to develop a deeper connection with each person and have more nuanced discussions.
- torvald 6y ago
  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/ http://www.randomcoffees.com/>.

josep-panadero 6y ago

I have done that in my previous two jobs. And I find it easier to do as soon as I join a new company than later. Once I get involved in projects it requires more effort to get the time. And to know everyone and their opinions is very important to get up to speed. The views of managers/product/developers/testers are not perfectly aligned. Also, it is a great opportunity to understand the views of the less vocal members of the teams. Finally, it is important to present yourself, so people have an easier time to rise any concerns when they arise. Sadly, right now, I am technical leader for too many teams but once the situation is solved (we are hiring a new architect) my focus is on getting more regularly in contact with all teams and not just the ones working on the topics that require my attention. There are always small things that go unsaid unless done in a one on one. One year later, I repeated - just for three teams - the ones on ones and asked for personal feedback and the general "Is there anything you think I should know about?" again. It was very insightful, and I was able to get more into the nuance of the people's views as I had more knowledge about the company. I recommend, if you have the opportunity, to go to training on coaching. I got the training as a manager several years ago, and I found that type of training very useful for all positions and an important part missing in the software engineering curriculum. It is very difficult to help to solve technical problems without knowing the views of the people that would design and implement the details of the system. Spending time to create rapport it always pays off, and - for me - it is something fun to do.

l0b0 6y ago

As a software developer, being introduced only to the managers and not the team as part of the interviewing process is one of the biggest red flags (except during social distancing times, of course). Picking up the vibe is an excellent way to know whether I'll be able to contribute as much as possible. It doesn't have to be time consuming at all; simply joining a standup should be plenty. For example, are the tech lead and managers listeners or talkers? Do they solve problems, delegate them or ignore them? Is the team as a whole enthusiastic about the work? Are there rock stars, cowboys, social justice warriors, dominant/submissive personalities, blamers, micromanagers or virtue spiralists? A little bit of even several of these is probably inevitable in any team, but it's possible to take any one of these to a toxic level.

ajb 6y ago
Don't know why this is being downvoted, its right on. I need to know I'm working for, but I also need to know who I'm working with. Probably can't actually peg all potential problem team members, but getting a chance to do so is valuable and shows good will on the part of the employer. I guess some people are upset at the characterisation of "social justice warriors" as a negative. Don't really want to get into the politics part - but that's kind of the point. There is a place for politics at work, when it can alleviate genuine suffering, but advertising which in-group you belong to isn't it. That goes for both sides of the political divide.

SergeAx 6y ago

That's a great piece, thanks for sharing! Knowing that engineering teams are overloaded most of the time, I've got that question for first 1:1s: "If you have a week without having to closing tickets, what would you do for the project?" Those are not necessary an items for my to-do list, but clearly showing people's priorities and what they think is really important.

swilliamsio 6y ago

Why is this blog called JFDI? What does it stand for?

sullyj3 6y ago
Just fucking do it?

jan_g 6y ago

> 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 knew it by the next working day. Lesson learned: never tell anything sensitive or important in your 1-on-1s with the manager. Except pleasantries, hobbies and other useless stuff.

websap 6y ago
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 misconstrue what I'm saying to their benefit. Talking about career conversations. I wouldn't tell anyone about my career plans until the day I have to. In my experience telling people early has no tangible benefit.
- jan_g 6y ago
  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.
  - esfourteen 6y ago
    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 plan in place for my departure. It’s certainly a situation specific action, and it’s unfortunate that more managers aren’t equipped to handle this adequately.

javieranton 6y ago

In my time of bouncing between jobs and meeting new teams on a regular basis I found that the biggest hurdle for me was remembering where everyone sat in the org. So I made a little app to keep track of this (Collaborative Groups)

draw_down 6y ago

I was surprised to see the reluctance to do this, stated multiple times even. In my opinion, doing this is table stakes, not really much question there. A new leader who didn’t take the time to do this would make me wonder why, and probably not make a great impression on me in terms of their ability to lead. When the head of engineering joined my company, he met with every engineer, several hundred at the time. Sure it takes time. And you should do it.

jeffrallen 6y ago

I would like to work with her. I've had bosses occasionally call me in for these types of open questions. It's really useful. But there's also a bit of mystery to when it happens and why it is not equally distributed across the team. There's a bit of "teacher's pet" anxiety associated with it. There's another thing that can happen in these confidential conversations which she was not in a position to do at this point... Sometimes the boss can explain the political landscape he/she finds themselves in, such that you can contribute better insights to help them protect your team.

dutch3000 6y ago

good article and agree that continued 1:1s with a team of 60 wouldn’t be worth it. i’d switch to a group meeting format or have 1:1s with key leads