> focus on developing superficial relationships with lots of people
Any tips for doing this in a remote company? Just be more active in random slack channels? Reach out to random individuals?
Any tips for doing this in a remote company? Just be more active in random slack channels? Reach out to random individuals?
For example: "Hey John, I'm spangry and I just started this week in team foo. So and so tells me that you're the resident expert on x. I'm planning to do some work related to x and figured, given I'm new and all, I should talk to you before starting. Have you got a moment to talk about x?" Then ask your favour and they will likely oblige. After you've thanked them, that's your opportunity to launch into a more general conversation where you show interest in their background or subject of interest (e.g. 'So how long have you been at [company] for? Got any tips for a new starter?' or 'I did a little research on x before calling and read that y is a big issue at the moment. Just curious, what's your take on y issue?')
It goes without saying that being genuinely interested and curious about them helps greatly. I think the above works because (1) most people want to help, and they remember what it was like to be new (2) it's respectful, even flattering, that you're coming to them for their expertise and (3) broadening the conversation (but still keeping it on safe ground) generates additional conversation paths and further opportunities for building rapport.
Lastly, asking for small favours (which are obliged) may actually make people like you more as a post-hoc rationalisation for why they did you the favour (this is known as the Ben Franklin effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect).
If you've ever worked on a team that uses Donut - think something like that. A chat to meet each other and, ideally, talk about stuff other than work (but I find work talk is my go-to when the room goes silent and that's fine too).
I'll usually ping someone on slack with a quick message like:
> Hey <name>, I just joined the engineering team and I'm scheduling a quick chat with everyone as part of my onboarding. Would you be free for a chat at <X:XX> tomorrow?
Then book it as soon as they say yes or propose a time. Don't worry about the people who don't respond. Move on for now - you'll meet them later.
The audience is usually:
- Everyone on the engineering team
- Every manager up the management chain (up to CEO for a smaller company, probably have to stop somewhere before that in bigger companies)
- Every "lead" type person in all adjacent groups (Design, product, QA, customer support, operations, etc.). Rule of thumb: whoever you'd go talk to first (or, often, who your manager would go talk to first) if you had a general question about that area.
- Anyone who you encounter that seems like they'd be fun to talk to/friendly.
But definitely worse on slack, I overthink my messages that I type and end up not participating since I feel it can be misunderstood. I also feel that I dont want to be seen as a “time-waster”.
Fwiw, i also struggle with this with my american friends on discord, i just dont know how to navigate this sort of stuff and whats okay and not okay.
Doing these things historically would be considered quite of of character for me so I understand it can be difficult to do.
I genuinely look forward to getting to know everyone I work with and so just leading with my name, why they should care and the truth usually works best for me.
As I start figuring stuff out, I’ll build relationships, help and ask for help. But early on, I just like to be basic old me.