Before staring a new role the first thing I did was take a mental inventory of some of the guidlines (not rules) I wanted to keep in mind.

Rough guidlines

• Read all the documentation for products you’re working on. Understand how they work in and out as early as often. Read them in full. It will take days or weeks. Find all the docs possible. Talk to people about them. Annotate them with questions and ideas.

• Become a proficient in the common tech stack. Does your team use git for EVERYTHING? You should know it well. Does your team use terraform? Be proficient in it.

• Spend time mastering the VCS system and other internal tools. Generally internal tools are not as polished as public tools but are typically heavily utilized. Run into issues early on.

• Setup baseline systems early. These are systems that you can fall back to when things get complicated. Where are you going to jot notes down? Doc templates? Where are you storing code? Screenshots? Email templates and rules.

• Take notes during important meetings and share them when necessary. Everyone loves a scribe. This isn’t the same as a meeting transcription or AI summary. Take notes from your pespective.

• Take 5 minutes at the end of your day to quickly write down what you did that day. Use this as a checkpoint for the next day’s tasks. Use this as a signing off habit.

• Keep a “wins” document and rotate it yearly/quarterly based on performance reviews. Use this to track things you’d put on your internal resume.

• Reach out to people in the company to network and learn about their team. Do maybe 1 per month. Ask for recurring 1:1s with people who you can learn from. Depending on the team I think a 1:1 with everyone on your team at least monthly is a huge benefit.

• Make sure you look at your tax withholding info. Some companies withold way less from RSUs which means you can owe a lot during tax season.

• Spend a LOT of time reading old team docs. Pentest reports, security evaluations. This is a gold mine of information.

• Find groups. Even if you’re not active in them it can be a good place to get information about things going on in the company. Can’t find one for something you’re interested in? Start one.

• Call out issues early and often. Doesn’t have to be a big deal, just a quick ping saying “hey just so this is on your radar….”

• Don’t chase ghosts. When you get to a new role your first instinct is going to be to change everything you see wrong, especially if you’ve fixed them in a past role. Try resisting this until you better understand the company dynamics.

• Don’t work in your Pajamas.

• Take a lunch break. Don’t eat at your desk. Play 30 minutes of Balatro or vampire survivors, go outside, get coffee, do the dishes, etc. You’ll do better work.

• Have full meals prepped or have quick go tos. Doing some of the prep work beforehand cuts down on time too. Quick “pre-made” things like vite ramen are great in a pinch.

• Don’t sit in the same spot all day if possible. I like to wake up and start my day downstairs on the sofa where I can drink my coffee and figure out my plan for the day, triage email, etc

• Have a shared 1:1 doc with your manager and discuss it during your 1:1s. This can be simple things like links to a training you want to take or that you discussed taking PTO or bigger things like career growth, promo, etc

• Track data for important things. When starting a project what data can you collect? How can you show your impact?

• Get the easy things right. Join meetings 1-2 minute early. Turn your camera on. Have a decently lit room. Use a decent mic. Running a few late? Ping the person and say “Be right there!”. Don’t look like a cave troll that just rolled out of bed for the 1PM meeting

• Don’t expect to be useful day 1. The bigger the company/projects the more ramp up time you’ll need. In large companies you probably won’t be as useful as you are at your last role for ~6 months. You’ll fight with the VCS, get bogged down in mandatory training, etc.

• Write SOPs. Doesn’t matter what it is. If you found it hard or confusing to do something like submit an expense report, write down how to do it and share it.

• Start an onboarding guide day 1. What was annoying? What did you wish you had? Just make a list and then fill it in as you learn more. Then share with future new hires.

• When writing docs to be shared, use formatting to draw the reader to the most important ideas (no one will read your docs, they’ll skim it). Use color, bold, monospace for code, tables, diagrams.

• Diagram things. See above.

• Respect people’s time. Don’t send random DMs about unimportant things at 7PM. Don’t send vague meeting invites without an agenda. If you don’t know the agenda you likely don’t need a meeting.

• Block off time on your calendar for important work even if it’s a private calendar just to keep yourself on track.

• Most of being a good employee is doing what you said you’re going to do. If you can’t do something you said you’re going to, say so.

• Comment code…

• Schedule time to get your admin work done. Throw a fun playlist or video on and get it all done.

• Keep a personal scratchpad. A piece of paper you can have on your desk for things to attend to outside of work when you have a minute. “Oh, I need to reschedule a dentist appointment”. Important, but I tend to remember this right when I’m in the middle of something. Write it down and come back to it when you have time.

• Don’t sit on your foot or crisscross. Your back will thank you.

• Have an enjoyable KVM solution. Minimize the hardware differences between your work laptop and what you enjoy. No futzing about with wires every morning right before a meeting.

• Have a “whats it” background is a great conversation starter. I met some cool people because they messaged me about my proxmox server behind me or my winrar bag on the shelf. This also works in reverse.

• Take PTO. Even if you just stay home and do nothing.

• Do post mortems. Even if it’s just for your own knowledge. At the very least: What happened, what went wrong, what went well, action items.