First Months
How to be useful in a first month when you know almost nothing
There is real work available to someone with no context, and finding it is the fastest route out of the…
· 4 min read
Yash writes the explanatory pieces on first months, managing up, money at work and would rather show the working than assert the conclusion.
18 articles
Managing Up
A one-to-one is your meeting, and most people waste it
The regular catch-up is the highest-leverage half hour you get, and it is usually spent reciting a status…
· 3 min read
Money At Work
What is actually negotiable in an offer, and what only looks it
Different parts of an offer sit with different approvers and different costs, and that determines which…
· 3 min read
Moving On
Leaving well is a skill, and it compounds
The last three weeks of a job carry disproportionate weight in what people remember, and that memory keeps…
· 3 min read
Skills
Learning to be reviewed is a separate skill from doing the work
How you respond to criticism of your output is watched more closely than the output itself, and most of the…
· 3 min read
First Months
The org chart tells you reporting lines, not who decides
Every organisation runs a second structure that nobody publishes, and finding it is most of what learning…
· 4 min read
First Months
Being useful in a meeting you were not briefed for
Getting pulled into a discussion with no context is routine, and there is a small set of contributions…
· 3 min read
Managing Up
Saying no to a request from someone senior
Refusing work is rarely the actual skill required; what matters is making a capacity problem visible in a…
· 3 min read
Money At Work
The difference between a cost-of-living rise and a merit increase
Two very different mechanisms are often communicated as one number, and confusing them leads people to…
· 3 min read
Skills
When a strength quietly turns into a liability
The behaviour that made you valuable in your first years is often the same behaviour that holds you at that…
· 4 min read
First Months
Working with a team in another country, and the hours between you
Distance is rarely the real difficulty — the size of the overlap window, a calendar you were never shown…
· 4 min read
First Months
When the work you are given is the wrong size for you
Being handed something far above your level and being handed something far below it are opposite problems…
· 3 min read
First Months
Being the first person in a role that did not exist before
A newly created job comes without a predecessor, a template or an agreed definition of success, and the…
· 4 min read
Managing Up
When the colleague you sat next to becomes your manager
A promotion from within the team changes what can be said in both directions, and the people who handle it…
· 3 min read
Managing Up
How work gets handed out, and how to change what you get
Allocation looks like a judgement about you and is usually a scheduling problem solved in a hurry, which is…
· 4 min read
Managing Up
Asking for something that is not money
Requests for time, scope, training or a change in how you work are decided by a different mechanism from…
· 3 min read
Moving On
When somebody approaches you and you were not looking
An unsolicited approach arrives with an inbuilt flattery that distorts judgement, and the first useful step…
· 4 min read
Skills
Leading a small piece of work when nobody reports to you
The first time you are put in charge of something, the authority to direct people is exactly what you do…
· 4 min read