Going to the office

I’ve started a new job. While I have the option of hybrid work, I am working full time from the office, five days per week. Going to the office is fantastic for onboarding.

Onboarding is stressful

Onboarding is stressful. You have so many assumptions about how things are and what you will be doing for the company. Regardless of what you learn during the recruiting process, you only find out how things really are when you have started. Being in a physical space with other people is a great way to understand what kind of company this really is.

High level, every company is the same. In the details, every company is special. There is an organisation chart, sure. But what do people actually do? How are decisions made? How is information shared? What is important and valued? What is frowned upon? What are the taboos? Then there is the company lingo. Some words have a very specific meaning. Words that have a very different meaning outside the company. And usually you don’t know what you don’t know. You make assumptions. Often you are wrong. You need feedback to verify and correct. 

I’ve onboarded two jobs after the pandemic made everyone in the tech sector work remotely. I have learned my lesson. Onboarding is tough. Getting into a new role is hard. Especially as a senior knowledge worker. You expect to contribute with your experience and skills quickly. But hitting the stride, finding your place to lift and the direction to push, this is hard. You make mistakes. I hate making mistakes. In software engineering, 80% is not good enough. You aim for 100%, grudgingly accept 99% and discuss the number of 9's you can hit above that.

What I want from a job

After quitting my last job, I reflected a lot over what I want from a job. What kind of company and what kind of role to look for. What I would like to do. What I would need from the company. What I can do differently to make my next job a job I can enjoy for years to come. 

I decided that I want a job that I enjoy. And I realised that what I enjoy in a job today is different than what I had been looking for earlier in my career. 

I know that I can add a lot of value as a software engineer to any company. I know that I can do a wide range of tasks, from coding to coaching. There will be a lot that I don’t know, technology, domain, people, organisation, processes, tools. But I also know that I am quick to get into new things, both on detail level and in understanding the big picture. I don’t have to prove it to myself or to my new company. I trust that this will happen. They will find out and value it.

What I don’t know is if I will like it there. So my goal for the onboarding period is to find out if I like my new job. In Sweden you have a six month trial period. After that, contracts have three months mutual notice period. Three months is a long time to be in a job that you don’t like. IMHO.

Trial by fire

I had couple of trials by fire. Typical onboarding experiences that can be very stressful. I survived them all. 

I was called out to do a brief presentation of myself at a company meeting. No head notice and still with just a vague idea of who everyone is and what I would be doing in my new role. Most people in the meeting I had never met, many who joined the meeting remote and was only pixels on a screen. Did I say what people expected? I don’t know.

I set off the alarm. One morning the traffic was light and I was first to arrive to the office. I entered the wrong code and set off the alarm. I’ve tried that on other jobs. It is part of the onboarding experience.

I had a chance encounter with the new CEO. He was in the office for a meeting and we had an opportunity to say hi and smalltalk over the coffee machine. Turns out that he grew up in the place where I live now. Good to have something in common. He will have his own onboarding soon to learn what kind of job he is getting into.

Healthy habits

I am very conscious about establishing good work habits and setting up my work environment.

These first weeks, my brain is overloaded with new impressions at the end of each work day. New ideas, new questions. It takes time to unwind and rest. Rest is crucial for learning. A busy brain forgets and you can’t make smart decisions. I leave the computer in the office. Not having the option to bring it out and check a few things. This is great. 

I go for a walk every now and then to clear my head. Making sure that I focus on the important things. To not get lost in the woods. When I come back refreshed, I have one or two ideas for things to do that I immediately act on. Reaching out to someone. Checking in with people I met earlier. Looking into code or documentation.

I take breaks at the coffee machine and socialise with the people who come to the office. We go out for lunch together or we bring back food and have lunch together in the office. Socialising and getting to know each other. Building a good work relation with someone means also knowing who people are outside of work. 

Then I use my personal productivity hacks that I’ve adapted over my career. Keeping a personal notebook with a todo list, priorities, and tidbits of questions to explore and answers I have found. Sharing my plan for the day on the team channel in the morning. Concluding the day with a summary of what I achieved. Helps me keep focus and makes it transparent for my colleagues what I am doing.

The commute

The commute is 45 minutes. In average. Each direction. I commute by car to the other side of Stockholm joining the twice daily rush hour. It’s 30 km. On a day without traffic it’s less than 30 minutes door to door. When the freeway is packed, it takes more than one hour. But you never know when that happens. 

I drive my daughter to school in the morning. Then head to the office. She can find her way home from school on her own now. But I still enjoy these morning rituals to get ready in the morning. The five-ten minutes in the car on the way to school. The smalltalk about life. So I’m stuck driving during rush hour.

The trick is to accept it. Don’t plan to reach the destination by a given time. Spend the time trapped traffic to reflect on what has happened. What you have learned. What you don’t understand yet, if you need to find out and how you can do that.

I listen to music. Instrumental music. Familiar music. Years ago I discovered Mike Oldfield’s instrumental works. Ommadawn. Amarok. Songs of Distant Earth. It has complexity and depth for the brain to explore. But also rhythm and themes to recognise and find comfort in.

What going to the office can do

One day almost everyone came to the office. A valued colleague had last day. There was a buzz in the office. I could feel that people enjoyed being together. I had many chance encounters that day. Five minutes here, ten minutes there. Conversations that would not have happened otherwise. Social as well as work related. Conversations that helped me get my mental map of the company right. Who is doing what. What is important. Why are things as they are. What could we be doing that we are not doing. Culture.

For onboarding, going to the office every day is fantastic. It answers questions you didn’t know you have. It anchors information that you need to internalise. And it allows you to leave work at the office and unwind when you return home at the end of the day.

I haven’t decided if I will switch to hybrid work eventually. Maybe I will. But so far I like going to the office.