First Months
The first weeks set a reputation that later work has to argue with
Early impressions are sticky for reasons that have nothing to do with fairness, and knowing the mechanism…
· 4 min read
Zubin covers first months, managing up, money at work and the questions readers actually send in and is happiest when a piece answers the question completely.
17 articles
Money At Work
A raise is a budget decision that happens months before you ask
Understanding when the money is actually allocated explains why the same request succeeds in one month and…
· 3 min read
Moving On
The signal that a job has stopped teaching you anything
A plateau is easy to mistake for competence, and telling the two apart requires a sharper test than how the…
· 4 min read
Skills
A meeting ends on time because of decisions made before it starts
Overrunning is a design failure rather than a discipline failure, and almost all of the fix happens outside…
· 3 min read
Skills
Your estimate is wrong in a direction you can predict
Underestimating is systematic rather than random, which means it can be corrected without becoming any…
· 3 min read
First Months
Every workplace has a private vocabulary, and it is a record of its history
The acronyms and odd phrases you cannot follow in week one are not decoration; each one marks something…
· 4 min read
First Months
Starting a job remotely removes the accidents that used to teach you the place
Most of what a new joiner learns in an office is absorbed rather than taught, and when that channel closes…
· 4 min read
Managing Up
Disagreeing with a decision that has already been made
Once something is settled the useful question is no longer whether it was right, and confusing the two is…
· 4 min read
Moving On
An interview is your only chance to inspect the place before you commit
Candidates spend the whole process trying to be chosen and forget that they are also the only inspector…
· 4 min read
Moving On
Working out whether a new role is actually a step up
Offers are usually compared on pay and title because those are the two numbers available, and neither…
· 4 min read
Skills
Getting up to speed on something nobody is going to explain to you
Sooner or later you inherit a system, a process or a body of work that has no documentation and no…
· 3 min read
First Months
What a probation extension actually signals
Having a probation period extended is neither a formality nor a dismissal notice, and the difference is…
· 3 min read
Managing Up
Giving your manager feedback without it costing you
Upward feedback is genuinely asymmetric, the invitation to give it is often sincere and unreliable at the…
· 4 min read
Money At Work
Reading your own payslip, line by line
Most people check one number and ignore the rest, which is how errors survive for months and how a large…
· 3 min read
Moving On
The months between deciding to leave and actually going
There is usually a long gap between the private decision and the resignation, and how you behave in it…
· 3 min read
First Months
Being the youngest person in the room, or the oldest
Age gaps in a team produce assumptions in both directions, and most of the friction they cause is about…
· 3 min read
Managing Up
Reporting to two people at once
Dual reporting lines are a structural arrangement rather than a passing muddle, and the question that…
· 3 min read