Starting a new job always means getting to know the company that you now work for. The company also has to get to know you too. Everyone is usually on their best behavior during the interview – and this does not just mean the interviewee. As a company, when you have a good candidate, you want to show off the team in its best light as well. Once the new person starts, there typically is a nice honeymoon period. In some ways it is like dating someone new – you’re focusing on all of the good things to justify your decisions (both on the hiring and on the deciding to work there sides). During this honeymoon period a lot of time and energy is spent on learning.
When I was an engineer starting a new job my focus was always on the technology. I almost always came into companies that were launching new products. In this respect I was really fortunate. I was part of the team that was defining the design, and a lot of times the technologies that were being used. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything new and different to learn right up front. For example – almost every company that I have ever worked for used a different code management system. I’ve used proprietary, PVCS, Clearcase, CVS, and Perforce. On the bug tracking side I’ve used ddts, bugzilla, and devtrack. I’ve utilized a number of programming language environments, and dealt with a lot of different processors and operating systems. The good news is that unless you’re coming in as the architect of a large project the scope of what you need to learn is rather focused. You will own something specific and hopefully manageable.
As a manager the scope of the things to learn is much greater. Not only do you need to have a high level understanding of the technology and the product you are building, you need to understand some of the more amorphous details.
Who are you managing? Did any of them aspire to the job you were hired to do? Are any of them unhappy and looking to leave? Any performance problems to suss out? How do you build trust? When you lead them, will they follow?
But this is just the beginning. Who are you peers? How do you need to interact with them?
Still not enough – what other groups are stakeholders in the technology you are managing? Project managers. Product managers. Sales. Marketing. Consulting.
It’s time to drink from the fire hose.
