Ask HN : How to aviod new job anexity?
I'm a s/w dev changing jobs for the 4th time in 3.6 years! Still I feel pretty anxious about getting into a new job, seeking some help to stay clam.
My goal with new workplaces is to be reserved and act introverted until I have figured my colleagues out a bit. A few of my work places have been political minefields, and looking back, if I had only waited a month or so to get familiar with things, it would have been obvious where the landlines were laid, and I could have avoided them.
In the past I assumed, naively, that my colleagues MUST be reasonable people, so I acted as if they were. Most people are completely enjoyable to work with, however there are enough bad eggs out there, that if you are contracting or job hopping you are bound to run into them.
Working with a bad egg who you have rubbed up the wrong way can be a total nightmare since, IMO it is relationships that make or break a job. Its a shame, but I now assume people are volatile, unreasonable, and egomaniacs, and so I walk on eggshells around them until they prove me otherwise.
Yes, it shouldn't be that way, but I just want to work in peace!
My boss's ego is VERY easily damaged by confident females who behave as men do in the workplace. Ya, he is sexist and having cultural integration problems, but I probably could have toned it down a bit if I knew he interpreted my professional opinions as emasculating. Now he is a monster boss from hell constantly trying to put me in my "place". It would have been better for me if I just sucked it up and acted a little more cutesy and insecure at the beginning, so he wouldn't have felt so threatened(?) by me when I began.
The other posters are right. For me its gotten so bad at my current job, that I will probably never experience worse. Dealing with my boss for so long now, I have gone through all of the stages in reacting to the situation: denial, disbelief, mourning(it was supposed to be my dream job), thinking I must be crazy, being masochistically amused by it, reveling in the conflict, etc. Now that I have used all of my energy up and gotten used to the torment, it has become so obvious how meaningless and insignificant it is.
If you can manage to see that from the outset without having to learn it experientially, consider yourself lucky! The only reason I am able to view my situation as ridiculous and insignificant, is because I am so worn out, that that is my only remaining option!
Lesson learned. Startup "sabbatical" coming soon!
Also, remember that your new colleagues are probably decent human beings. They'll be nice to you. Don't be afraid to ask them for help.
If they're jerks, then you don't want to work there anyway, start looking for a new job.
Of course, if your old job is stressful or toxic, it means you have to put up with that situation. If your old job goes away, and you don't get a new job, obviously you need to figure out another way to get enough money to live. (Live off savings or friends/relatives while you bootstrap a startup?)
That helps me, anyway.