On Starting A New Job

The first week of the new job is done, more or less.

Starting a new job is almost always a predictable experience, at least in my field.  It will start with introductory training - here is the facility, here is where the coffee is, here is your desk - followed by a series of meetings on specific training items:  safety, IT, the basics of the Quality system.   Likely a meeting with one's team, if one has one.

And then, one is left in front of the computer.

It is an odd sort of thing.  You are almost an isolated incident in the midst of people that are already engaged and going about their business.  You start grinding through the documents (usually Standard Operating Procedures in my industry) with some hope of getting some understanding of the systems (which can be hard, as you have no understanding of the use of them and the linkages between them) as a babble of conversation goes on around you about subjects which you know nothing about (but soon will shortly). 

There is always some awkwardness if you are an introvert as I am.  You never really quite fit in at lunch facilities if they have one.  You look for a coffee cup (if you have not brought your own) without looking like you are looking for a coffee cup.  People introduce themselves to you - or do not; people and companies are different.

The second day seems like the first, except there tend to be more meetings and less reading.  E-mails start to flow in with more regularity as well.  You begin to apply good practices to organizing your e-mails because you learned - last company - that if you do not start organizing from the beginning, they will become a mess in relatively short order.

By the third day you are likely an old hand:  you confidently stride in the door in the morning and fire up the computer, getting the cup of morning coffee in your mug (as you have finally brought one), greeting people by name or by smile.  The e-mails are reviewed as the file folders for them grow.  Likely you have completed the bulk of your initial reading and are making notes on what needs to change and what your goals over the next few months and years will be.

The specifics change, of course - for example at my new employer, they actually have snacks and a drink refrigerator, so I am learning what there is available (and pacing myself - I will eat my own weight in snacks, given the opportunity - but in general it is the same, as it has been for the last 25 years. 

Is it somewhat awkward?  For me, it always is.  But at least it is awkward in a way that I have learned to live with and manage.  I have now done this enough that I know we will move through to actually productivity quickly enough.

That, and for the first time ever, this could potentially be my last "new" gig.  And that brings a certain joy to the situation all of its own.