5 Rules For Your First Office Job
Starting your first job can be challenging, especially since you’ve spent most of your life in the classroom environment. Here are 5 rules that will help apprentices and new starters excel in their career.
Be Visible
In my first role, no one really knew I existed. This is mainly because my team only came into the office once per week so I didn’t bother coming in more days than I had to.
This is a mistake. When I rotated into my new role I started coming in at least twice per week, even if my team weren’t in.
I learned from my mentor, Andreas, that sitting on the end of the row at the front of the office where most people will walk past means that people are more likely to approach you and ask for help - or even just stop to chat.
This pays dividends in terms of opportunities for learning and building your professional network.
Of course, the amount the visibility you offer the world depends on your role. A lot of software engineers deliberately hide away because they don’t want to be distracted from their work.
This is perfectly fine, and there have been times where I’ve booked a conference room to just sit down and do an important task without being distracted - but the passive efforts to be visible far outweighs the negative for new hires.
2. Be Dependable
I’m currently trying to build a reputation in my workplace of being the guy that gets stuff done. Doesn’t matter whether it’s: boring, outside my job description, time consuming, unfulfilling etc.
I just want people to know that I will get the job done no matter what. Aside from my immediate role responsibilities i’ve worked on a lot of different projects.
One of these side-quests is to write for our company newsletter. This started off as just a boring task that I tried to get out the way, but I quickly established myself as a key contact for the initiative.
This led to a crazy opportunity of interviewing our company’s Chief Technology Officer.
To put that into perspective, my boss’ boss reports to the CTO lol.
That all happened because I branded myself as a dependable contributor to the newsletter, despite it not being anything to do with my role.
If you’re always on the look out for new ways to contribute to the wider organisation, you’d be surprised how many opportunities open up when people can rely on you to get the job done.
3. Be Patient
If you start your career in a specialist role like a software engineer, it’s unlikely you’re going to be unable to contribute the same as the rest of the team until you learn the ropes.
This can feel frustrating at first, especially if you just want to get started and produce the same output as everyone else.
As an impatient person myself, it felt like I was never going to catch up to the senior developers. And I never did - but that’s okay.
You can’t expect to outperform experienced team members who have been practising their specialist skill longer than you’ve been a legal adult.
It’s a humbling experience to be an apprentice, but that’s why it’s valuable. That feeling of inadequacy will drive you to become the best version of yourself.
I hated coding in my first rotation, but now I’m not actually a software engineer I find myself doing online coding tutorials for fun.
I’ll never forget how I felt when I desperately wanted to contribute to the team but the hard truth is you have to put in the work first.
There’s nothing glamorous about sitting through online tutorials while everyone else is effortlessly performing - but with enough patience (and consistency) the results will follow.
4. Be Curious
The most important part of being an apprentice or new hire is learning. The easiest way to learn something new is to just ask.
And when you do ask - shut up and listen. If you’re on a team with more experienced colleagues, they know something that you don’t.
Don’t waste time talking. Find out what they know and increase your understanding of the task at hand.
Software engineers are tricky because they’re very good at coding but not always so good at communicating. They’d rather get on with their work than teach you how a for loop works.
For this reason I recommend finding a mentor. The topic of mentorship and how it has added so much value to both my personal and professional development will need its own post.
In short, a mentor will accelerate your learning by focusing all their attention on you.
The hardest thing about pair programming in my first role was that the developer I was shadowing was usually only concerned with solving the problem.
Which is fair enough because it’s their job. But when you’re struggling to get your head round difficult concepts you will need more time and attention.
A mentor on the other hand, experiences fulfilment by bringing others up. In the context of development - they will sit with you on a 1-2-1 basis and teach you how to write code.
Finding my mentor - Andreas - was the most important thing that happened in my second role. I established a strong connection with him by being curious and learning from someone who I want to be like.
5. Be Open-minded
In my end of year review I asked my boss for feedback on how I could improve my work.
First he softened the blow by telling me that my written and verbal communication skills have really improved since I started the role.
He then went on to say in order to improve, I need to complete tasks with more urgency.
As someone who usually takes criticism personally, I was surprisingly receptive to this feedback because I knew exactly what he meant.
In my current role it’s easy for things to stall just by one person not replying to an email. To generate urgency, I make sure to chase people and give them a deadline by which I need the information from them.
This feedback also identified a tendency of mine in which I work on various different tasks at once, instead of focusing all my efforts on one at a time.
I always managed to get everything done by the end of the 2-week ‘iteration’ that we schedule work for, but by working with urgency, tasks get completed in order of priority.
Criticism can either build you up or bring you down. The choice is yours as to how you choose to interpret it.
I would encourage every apprentice or new hire to regularly seek feedback with an open-mind. The quicker you can break bad working habits and create good ones, the better.
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