What to do in your first few months of joining a new team (as a Software developer).
After starting at a new company or joining a new team, I have realised that a lot of people get confused about what to do in their first few months. There’s usually a lot of pressure on you as a new member of the team. While some of those pressure might come from your manager or supervisor, most of the pressure are usually self generated also.
So, you ask questions like:
- Where do I start from?
- How do I gain trust and respect from my team mates?
- How do I meet up with expectations?
So here’s a list of things to get started with as you start at your new role.
- Get to understand the company or team goals, first at a high level then later at a lower level. This would help you understand why some things are done the way they are.
- Speak to your manager about expectations. Understanding what your manager/team expects from you would be very helpful, it helps you to know what to focus on and what not. You can’t meet up of expectations that you don’t know.
Schedule and have a one-on-one meetings with all your teammates. For a small team, you should try to meet every team member personally. However, for a very big team, you can just focus on the people that you would most likely work directly with, your manager can help you with this information. This helps you build a relationship with each of then which would come in handy when you start asking questions.
Be free to ask the dumb questions. Most people shy away from asking some very simple and fundamental questions just because they don’t want to look dumb but eventually you might end up being a newbie for a longer duration than necessary. You should also try to load balance across multiple people when asking questions so you don’t become a disturbance to them.
Learn the codebase by doing. The best way to get up and running with the codebase is to start working on it. You can start contributing by making very little changes, then you can gradually increase the scope of the changes.
In conclusion, I love to say that “the first few months of your time at a new company is your opportunity to show the company that they made the right choice by hiring you”. Earning trust and respect at a new company requires a little extra work and some level of intentionality and that is work you must be willing to do.
I hope this helps someone ✌🏼.