My Road for Knowledge

Establishing goals for the future of my employment:

First Day: I’m terrible with names and I know that all programmers are a drain on productivity on day one, so I can’t expect to contribute a stroke of genius as I walk through the door.  So what can I do on day one?  I can be a positive to the culture of the team!

DBC has trained us through their “Engineering Empathy” to listen first, communicate second, and problem solve third.

That we can’t program as a team until we see ourselves as a team.
Let me say that again… “That we can’t program as a team until we see ourselves as a team!”

The hardest thing for me to overcome at DBC wasn’t a programming challenge. It was my inability to contribute as much to the team as smartest member of our team.  I honestly stressed out over letting my teammates down, because if couldn’t contribute as much to the project as they could I felt like I was failing them.

I think I’ve said it before; we aren’t building code, we are developers. We develop the code. It is more of an art than building a wall by placing brick after brick. I can’t coerce better code by working longer hours or trying to move faster. I can only contribute up to my ability level and stressing out about not contributing enough will only reduce my ability to contribute worthwhile material.

So DAY 1 be a positive effect on culture.
– Be energetic, excited to learn, excited to work on the project no matter what the project
entails.
– Show up ready to learn. Have a system in place to learn names, places, and how things work in this new chapter of your life.  It may be a 3 month contract, it may be your home for the next 5 years, either way you show up ready to absorb everything.  Let it change you, let it make you better.
– Be ready to adapt. You have ways you do things and they may conflict with your new coworkers.  Try their way first. Evaluate it and see if you can make it work.  After learning their way, if you have a legitimate reason to think your way is better, talk to them about why you way is better. A company can get stuck in a rut of how things are done without asking themselves why they are still doing it that way.
– Don’t let you life influence your workplace. It is easy to bring all of your baggage into to work with you. If you had a fight with your wife or your father died. You can’t remove the baggage but you can keep it contained.
Let those who you work with closely know what is going on with you. If they know you are having problems they will be less likely to mistake your mood as being their fault or who you are.  Never displace any of your bad moods on your coworkers. They don’t need it and they didn’t do anything to deserve it. If you can do both of those things your coworkers will be more likely to let you know what is going on their lives and communication will reduce stress and misunderstandings.

In short, you need to make the space a place where people want to come to work. If you come in on a Sunday to work, how likely is it that one of your coworkers will come in to help you.  If you’re a joy to work with, you should get better than even odds.

I’ve been rambling a little and I have other work to do. So I’m going to make this topic three separate entries.  Next, time : 1st month.