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
First Months
What a probation period is actually assessing
Probation is rarely a test of whether you can do the job yet, and understanding what it does test changes how you spend the first three months.
By Marta Kowalska · · 4 min read
First Months
A good question makes you look more capable, not less
The fear of asking is really a fear of a particular kind of question, and the difference between the two…
· 4 min read
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
First Months
Onboarding is bad almost everywhere for a structural reason
The people who could write good onboarding are precisely the people who can no longer remember needing it…
· 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
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
The job you were advertised and the job you were hired for are rarely the same
The gap between a job description and the actual work is usually structural rather than dishonest, and the…
· 4 min read
First Months
What to do in the first hour after you have caused a problem
The damage from a mistake is largely decided by what happens in the hour after you notice it, and that hour…
· 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
First Months
When two people give you contradictory instructions
Conflicting direction is almost never a mistake that one of them made, and treating it as one is what turns…
· 3 min read
First Months
Joining a team that is already in trouble
Arriving somewhere with a backlog, a departure and low morale is a specific situation with specific traps…
· 3 min read