Ask HN: I just started my first real workday, any tips?

Congrats on starting!

One bit of advice I would personally give is to remember that work is just work.

You will have responsibilities, deadlines, arguments, critisms and one day you might find yourself anxious and stressed out. When that happens, it's nice to remind yourself that the critical bug or whatever you're working on is meanigless in the grand scheme of things. No matter how passionate you are about your company, your personal life and principles should always come first.

It sounds obvious but humans tend to forget that kind of stuff.

+1. I need to remind myself about this almost weekly.

In my first job I reached a point where every day I'd wake up and I would quite literally dread the day ahead. It was hard to realise that I was suffering from anxiety and that I actually didn't enjoy what I was doing. I was fresh out of uni and I just thought that that's what all working adults feel like.

Looking back at it it's mind boggling how I didn't quit sooner.

If you are in a similar position consider if you're actually happy at your workplace. It's easy to tell yourself that "it's just a phase" and to "hold out a little longer" - more often than not these phases become the norm.

What if the workplace is not the problem, but me instead? I don't want to quit, it could be worse somewhere else and for me it could be bad everywhere.

> What if the workplace is not the problem, but me instead?

That's a valid concern. Unfortunately it's one of those things that only _you_ can find the answer to. Getting experience in different companies helps here because you have something to compare your experiences with. Ask yourself what problems you're facing. Write it down; it really helps.

If you are the problem you are also the answer.

I was in similar situation. I didn't quit, and spent quite a lot of time figuring out what was the real issue that me miserable. It turned out it was something I could change without quitting. I managed to change it, but I first needed to understand the real root cause. It is like debugging your life. Mindfulness and introspection are great tools in those times.

I've found this is easier after changing jobs a couple times. At some point you'll look back at what you did at your previous job, and most likely you'll barely remember exactly what it was or why it was considered important. Certainly nothing to warrant stressing out about it. Realizing that the same will apply to your current job in just a couple years really helps put things into perspective. Looking back, you're much more likely to remember whether you were happy or stressed than any of those details that seem so all-consumingly important right now.

It doesn't sound obvious at first. Once you have a few years of work behind you, it starts becoming more obvious.

Once you see CEOs say "Everything's fine" one day, and 2 weeks later lay off 10% of the company (or 70% of my current team) with no real warning beforehand, then it starts becoming REAL obvious.

Being a freelance contractor, working 4 to 12 month projects at a time with different companies, I've seen quite a bit of crap.

But being a freelancer / contractor, I've built a client network plus a "radar" for potential trouble (e.g. company is re-organizing the whole tech team for the 3rd time in 3 years, or a new round of financing is coming up and the last 2 quarterlies were below forecast).

This is an amazing back to basic tip that I actually fully implement. My variation is: work is just work, and when working make the most of it during the time that you work.

Without that addition, one could interpret the "work is just work" too negatively.

The discussion that this advice has created is something that I'll reread a few times as I have experienced similar experiences while I was studying at university.

I only just noticed your reply, sorry for the late answer. I agree with your variation. Work can certainly be enjoyable!

> I'll reread a few times

Me too! I'm glad to hear my comment sparked something helpful :)

Set aside some time at the beginning of each day to buff your tools and skills. Over time these sessions compound like interest and make you wealthier in human capital and a more valuable employee.

I do it for one pomodoro, 25 minutes. For me an example might be installing and learning a new vim addon or scripting a common task or focusing on a tough corner of a programming language. Something useful to the job but not directly making progress on an assignment. This is an easier habit to acquire if you do it from the start, before your routine consolidates.

This is a great idea!

Sometimes I take time from some task to do things like this, but as this time off isn't a regular ocurrence, once it does happen, it ends up taking a lot of time, making me feel like I'm delaying an assignment. Small but regular steps like this could help with this feeling.

That is an amazing tip. Do you have some stories on what worked for you and what didn’t? I’ll use them as a form of inspiration.

Don't be afraid to admit ignorance.

"I don't know what that means." and "Can you explain that to me?" are two of the most wonderful phrases. I use them regularly and have been programming for over 30yrs. Every time I do, I learn something new.

My coworkers know that I'll speak up if I don't understand something, and when you're finally experienced, it helps the new kids to not feel like such imposters to see that an experienced coworker doesn't know all the things.

Upvote! New people or people interviewing are always afraid to ask questions. I find they think people expect them to always know the answer. I'd much rather hire someone who will find the right people and ask questions when they don't know how to do something. Communication skills.

I always say what I don't know during interviews. Based on my experience here is what I've learned:

- Most companies will believe you're inexperienced

- It act as a filter to those type of companies

So one should inhibit themselves if they want more volume / don't care if they end up at a place where this is an issue during the interview process.

I have to say, Triply's interview process was quite unique in this: saying what you don't know was kind of the nature of the game. They were simply interested in how you thought based on what you do know and how quick you get to understand certain topics. I'll admit, I'm probably biased, honeymoon period, etc. but I've had a lot of interviews and I found only a few sane things in the whole process. The only other sane thing that I remember is that Brilliant.org had a sane online coding challenge, just enough related to data structures and algorithms to test your mettle, but also practical enough that you could see yourself using that during actual web development.

Here are my tips: https://erkanerol.github.io/post/adapting-a-project/

Quote from the blog post: "Last but not least. Feel responsible from day one. You are a part of the team and you are responsible for every failure and every success. More or less. If there is a pain in somewhere in your team, feel it in your heart. In companies, there are always some “local people” and “tourists”. Tourists are only interested in “fancy” things. They follow their interests. They hate problematic situations. They don’t take some much responsibility in case of failure. They always blame decision makers since they never try to be one of them. When they get bored, they just fly to yet another city. In reality, there are lots of limitations and we are not living in a perfect world. Unfortunately they are not aware of this fact. Maybe they are just prefering ignoring it. I don’t know. What I want to say be one of the “local people”. Local people know not only good places of the city but also the suburb. Local people think about how to manage the city, how to “survive” in the city, how to make the city more beautiful. They can live with the bad sides of the city. At least for a while :)"

how can you reconcile that with the fact that job-hopping in 2-5 years is proven to be a more effective way to raise your salary?

Being seen as "local" may have its benefits but I doubt that being one is more beneficial.

That is why I said "At least for a while" at the end. You can take initiative and feel responsible in that 2-5 years.

"your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job."

Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 31).

> Last but not least. Feel responsible from day one. You are a part of the team and you are responsible for every failure and every success. More or less. If there is a pain in somewhere in your team, feel it in your heart.

In a new role it takes a while to start doing actual work let alone impactful work. That's even more true when it's your first job. So I would give the opposite advice - feel responsibility for your work, not for everything that happens within the team/company. And if you ever feel something deep in your heart at work especially if it's someone else's problems, that's a sign that maybe you're taking things way too seriously.

The local people people vs tourists dichotomy also seems outright wrong - there are more categories than these two and neither of the two describes a good employee.

For those looking for more information on the "tourists and locals" concept, search for organisational citizenship.

There's a bunch of research of what elicits citizenship behaviours (high commitment, identifying with the company, etc) and what doesn't.

Lots of stuff in the HR literature!

I've managed a number of interns and new hires over the years. Here is what I tell my newbies.

Keep a small notebook, or use a to-do app and track everything that gets assigned to you. If something is assigned to you make sure that you get a clear deliverable time or date and time. If you have any questions about what's been assigned to you ask the person who assigned the task, even it your question doesn't pop up until later.

If you take notes in meeting etc. use a separate notebook or app for the notes. You want to be sure that you don't clutter up your to do list with notes.

First thing in the morning: - Review your to-do list. - Check your calendar for the day - Check your inbox

Before you leave at the end of the day: - Create a bullet list of everything you did for the day. - Check your calendar for the next day - Check your inbox one last time. - Check to make sure that you don't have any unfinished emails.

Learn how to use all the office tools, even if you think they are stupid, lame, outdated. It's what you'll be using, complaining won't change the fact that you'll need to conform. First impressions.

There will be a lot of things that won't make sense, roll with it. Intra and inter system dependencies drive most things that don't make sense when you walk into a new place. Telling people how to do it better won't win you any points.

Take a few months of your first job and be humble. Listen more than you talk. I like to tell new hires to be like a human Golden Retriever. Positive attitude, want to help always, look like you are smiling all the time. Don't bark unless it's absolutely necessary. Look good at all times.

I'm not suggesting that you completely alter your personality, just ease into things. You'll be working for the next 40-50 years of your life so you have plenty of time to be yourself.

Ask questions and be willing to discuss your thought process with people. Don't be afraid to try and improve things even if they've been like that a long time. Try and find something to work on you're genuinely interested in.

My first job out of school (8 years ago) was a pretty effective springboard. Unfortunately the secret to success was basically to be excessively keen and interested in doing anything and everything. At the time it was fun - I worked too much and I made myself look foolish at times, but I was junior enough that it didn't matter.

Now that I've been around for a couple years and I'm a little more jaded I don't think I could do it again. But if you're very keen I think just being enthusiastic and learning things will get you far.

Close social media tabs and silence your smartphone notifications.

You will be blessing the concentration you'll gain

Try and be principled in your interactions with people and with the work you produce. Don't get too confused with the myriad of tactics and behaviors people pretend are required for success in the work place. Work is people, be the best person you can be. Good luck :)

1) Find a way to make the folks around, above and below you look good.

2) Invest in both technical and productivity learning.

3) Until you’ve built a reputation, show up a little early and stay a little late. First impressions disproportionately matter, and this is all they can judge you on.

4) Know how your internal and external customers use your product to hit their goals.

5) Be as nice to the security guards and admins as you are to the CEO.

6) Write lots of Thank You notes. Email people’s bosses when you send.

Write everything down. Keep detailed todo lists, break todos into smaller units when necessary. At the end of the day try to give yourself an easy task for the morning, so you can accomplish something right away before you're fully in the zone. Listen to the salespeople, they might be promising some feature that's not on your radar yet. Don't eat the donuts.

There have been some comments about staying off HN (or any news site). But some tech news can further your knowledge and skills...so instead of foregoing news altogether, just don't make it the first thing you do in the morning. Instead, get some nugget of productivity done first.

Productivity, for me, has a strong "momentum" component to it. Once you get going, it's easy to keep going as long as you can keep distractions down. But if you start on a news site, that sets your momentum for the morning in the wrong place.

Another thing along these lines are to leave a task unfinished in the evening so that you have a place to jump right back to in the morning (balance this with the ability to not think about work after work).

Thanks for the momentum tips. I actually visit HN after I'm done with work (it's 17:30 here in Amsterdam).

The unfinished work thingy is a handy one, I'm testing it now. Thanks!

Whatever role you're in, don't underestimate the value of relationships, communication, and soft skills in being able to influence the impact and value of the work you can deliver.

If you can persuade a product manager to drop a bad feature you might be able to ship a more valuable feature at a higher quality.

If you can persuade a procurement office to change a supplier you might be able to ship a better design faster.

If you can get involved in the hiring process you might be able to pick the team you work with.

Always make friends with the admin person, accounting that pays you, and stay on the right side of HR.

+1 on knowing the administrative assistants. They run everything.

Thanks for the amazing response so far. I just closed off the second day and just read all your responses.

Day 3 will see a lot of incoming change :D

It's a lot of info, but here is what I digested and what I'll experiment with:

- 25 min. of skill building time

- Work is work, I have a life outside of that. In fact, one of my own tips is to be playful at certain times to lighten the mood. Living a life outside of work really helps with that to stay playful and keep team spirits up.

- "Take care of your health. Eat well and exercise. Sleep is important."

- Admitting ignorance

- Feel responsible for the company (I read the discussion, I figured I might try the other side if feeling responsible has mixed results)

- Keep separate apps and notebooks

----- Working at Triply in Amsterdam:

If you're interested in working with Triply -- and me ;-) -- and can work in Amsterdam, medior/senior software engineers are still looked for [1].

We're focusing on improving the developer experience for using linked data and creating linked data (sets). As I understood it, the whole topic is too academic, Triply is changing that by making it more UX friendly for developers and data analysts.

[1] https://triply.cc/career (I'm not sure if they do remote)

- Personal Analog Assistant: literally just a small notepad where I jot notes and To-Dos. A cell phone or desktop app could work just as well, but I like the paper approach.

- "Spellbook": any command that's not something bog-standard and simple gets added to a Notepad++ file; e.g. a bunch of Cisco commands go in the Network Spellbook, SQL queries go in the DB Spellbook, Linux one-liners in the Bash Spellbook, etc.

Your tip reminds me of an amazing app for the Mac: Boost Note [1]. It allows you to have all the spellbooks in one place.

[1] https://boostnote.io

Take care of your health. Eat well and exercise. Sleep is important.

Learn about personal finance and the power of compound interest. Create a budget and start saving for retirement. Contribute to a 401k/IRA/etc. Your goal should be to save 12-15%. If you can't save that much today, start lower, but increase it every 6-12 months and every time you get a pay raise. Save 6 months of expenses for a rainy day fund -- this is especially important in 2020. Pay yourself first. Save for a vacation every year and take it. Travel the world and get a different perspective.

Every year you don't save for retirement means you'll need to work another year, or save even more when you're older (think 20-30% of your salary).

I'm making up for lost time now. I used to buy new cars and toys. I bought my current car 27 years ago; it still runs great.

I wish someone had told me this 30 years ago. I hope I would have listened.

What would some recommended reading about saving for retirement? For example, I have a healthy amount of savings but none is invested and it sits in an account doing nothing (@ 0.1%).

I read the obvious subreddits, have a basic working knowledge of financial concepts, understand that I should just invest in the broad market / ETFs and not touch it for decades.

But when I go to invest, I feel I have no idea what I'm actually doing. When I look for brokers I'm bombarded with advertising and marketing and get frustrated with what I feel is a lot of dishonesty. Decades of stories about pension funds screwing people over mean I have no trust in the "systems" at all, which is probably wrong. Why would I pick one broker over another? Or a pension fund over another? Should I just go with a big name like Vanguard as I could always move it later?

For example, I've never had anyone answer this question: If a pick company Z, invest through them and one day they go bust or disappear, what actually happened to what I invested? I understand risk and that some financial instruments are like bets and so on but seemingly can't wrap my head around this concept. If I buy specific stock Y, through broker Z and broker Z disappears, what happens to my stock Y? Like where is that actual record kept that I have X quantity of stock Y?

It's really dumb questions like these that stop me doing anything and lead me to fill an account, technically losing money from inflation.

I know this one!

Disclaimer: not a financial advisor, I do trade stocks as a hobby and am interested in personal finance.

Invest in an index fund. I am a fan of Vanguard based on that one good friend of mine is a fan of it (and he studied finance) and that one acquaintance who has this as a very big hobby is a fan of it. (early bitcoin investor, read way more personal finance books than me, etc.).

I only know specific vendors in The Netherlands. If I were you, make an ask HN about it. I'm sure that enough people on HN can give you some directions as even high frequency trading people frequent this site. My point is that people who work in the field of finance are probably happy to help and guide you with this question, but it's better to create an Ask HN than to dump all your lifesavings into Vanguard just because I say so :P

Disclaimer: I only have a portion of my lifesavings in Vanguard. I actually trade stocks more often, but that is a hobby, not a saving mechanism.

No affiliation, just a happy long time user of wealthfront.com. It goes one step further than investing in domestic index funds and diversifies into foreign stocks, emerging markets, bonds etc.

Their fees are slightly higher than just index funds but still lower than actively managed mutual funds and it's very acceptable in my opinion.

betterment.com is a similar service although I haven't used them

both these services are known as robo-advisors and they have an algorithm that decides what to invest in as opposed to an individual person

Make sure your desk is set up correctly ergonomically speaking. Start early and your back and neck will thank you later. Don't hesitate to request a different keyboard and mouse if what you are provided isn't comfortable.

And if they won't provide, look to bring your own. This is a big part of your day, being comfortable is huge.

I remember a friend who did that, he bought his own monitor and brought it to work.

Try to understand what your colleagues have done. This will help you get to really know the team culture.

If you're a programmer, read through some parts of the codebase, if possible, to get a sense of how your colleagues are doing their work.

As in just open random files and read? Or open up a UI and see what it does under a debugger? Or open up the test files first to see how things are supposed to be called/used?

I wonder what your structure is.

If the code base is huge, maybe just read some of the code your team has been writing (if you have a fixed team). Seeing how things are supposed to be called / used is also very important if you're collaborating with others on a project. Probably you'll find some internal libraries written by others useful.

Maybe start with reading the parts related to what you expect to be doing?

This of course comes after getting their consent.

Forget the ergonomics, tackle the requirements by diving into it. A good developer knows how to help the system engineer meet their goal once the requirements are understood.

Congrats.

I'd advise you to avoid setting too many goals each day, especially when you are getting up to speed at a new workplace. I like to make a morning checklist of just three things that - if I was to achieve them - I'd finish the day thinking "That was a good day".

Not my original idea but seems to work, and three is a far more manageable number than five. ;)

Shameless plug: I wrote an article exactly for people like you https://medium.com/@lolski/career-tips-for-young-software-en...

Congrats on starting your first job!

Read The Beginner's Creed, by Peter J. Denning

https://web.suffieldacademy.org/cs/intro/beginners.shtml

That's a beautiful poem!

Stay the hell off HN!

Stay away from HN!!!

They hire remote?

I actually don't know, they have a careers page, so you could ask them.

Congratulations on your first day!

Here are a few thoughts that you might find helpful.

Be teachable. Prioritize learning what you didn't know you didn't know.

Don't try to be an expert. I call this the "amateur expert" phenomenon. It's OK to want to be an expert and to strive for that every day. But it takes time. And the only way to get there is to listen and learn.

Be approachable. Don't be too busy for people. Yes, everyone appreciates a good work ethic. But it's more important for people to want to work with you. If you don't make time for other people they won't make time for you.

Don't make it a goal to impress anyone. Your work will speak for itself. Focus on making steady progress every day and you will naturally stand out.

Triple your estimates. No matter what you're asked to do, until you've done it several times it will take you a long longer than you expect. If you have the option to influence how much time you're given to do the work, under commit and over deliver. This is way more important than some people think.

Be nice to others, but not too nice. If you're super nice to people, they'll expect that from you every day. And when you have the inevitable "off day", people will get way more upset with you just because it's such a big contrast. So be nice, clearly. But again, let it flow naturally. Don't try too hard.

Learn how to make mistakes well by placing small bets and learning from your mistakes. You're going to screw up. Sometimes you'll screw up and people will tell you. But if you keep screwing up two things will happen. First, people will stop giving you opportunities and you'll eventually wither and probably either leave on your own or be asked to leave by your boss. Second, people will stop telling you when you screw up. They will lose faith in you. And this is a terrible place to be. Avoid this at all costs by simply learning from your mistakes.

Batch up your questions. As you learn all the ins and outs of a new environment you'll have many, many questions. And no matter how much you learn over time, every time you move to a new environment you'll go through this process again. You'll see things in the code that don't make obvious sense. You'll have ideas about how to improve things. Some things will start to make sense as you just spend more time with them. Other things you will need help with. What you want to do is try to be as efficient with other people's time as you can. If you ask questions constantly it will begin to annoy your co-workers, even if they say it's ok. So write down your questions as they come up. Make an honest effort to figure things out on your own. Then schedule time once a week or so with more senior people. They'll appreciate you making it so easy for them to help you and some of them may even become your champions.

Invest in relationships. As you take on more and more responsibility your ability to influence other people will become more and more important. It won't be enough to simply solve problems. People won't follow you just because you have answers or experience. But when people feel connected to you and know that you care about them as people, they will want you to succeed and go a long way to help.

Continue to learn on your own time. You will have some opportunities to learn on the job. But you will also make a lot of mistakes as you learn. Think of the time you invest outside of the office as study time and what you do in the office as the test. Contributing to an open source project is a great way to try things out and get feedback from people with more experience.

I wish you the best out there. Take care and enjoy the ride :)

Close HN and get to work