With a Pinch of Salt
What I learned from switching roles as an experienced hire.
Despite being in the early stages of my professional career, I’ve had 3 role switches over the past 4.5 years. The first was due to the end of my research contract, whereas the second was in pursuit of growth and learning opportunities. It was only on my most recent switch that I joined a company as an experienced hire.
Unlike joining as a “freshie” or “trainee”, joining as an experienced hire comes with additional expectations. This is no surprise. What caught me off guard, however, was the extent to which everything has to be taken and approached with a pinch of salt.
I’ve only been in the new role for a few weeks, but here are the 3 things that shocked me the most so far:
- Suboptimal practices can outperform the best practices
- Context change both externally and internally
- Balancing expectation, personal drive, and acclimatisation is difficult
Suboptimal practices can outperform the best practices
One of the biggest and most widely-used buzzwords in the IT industry is Agile. For those who are unfamiliar, a couple of software developers came together 20 years ago and wrote a manifesto dictating their view on how to develop software better. These 4 ideals led to the inception of various frameworks designed to encapsulate them in a formulaic manner.
One of the most popular frameworks today is Scrum. 94% of all agile businesses use Scrum. Even though the framework is open-source, its creators are now billionaires, and countless certifications sprung up as a result of its popularity.
And yet companies are still struggling to yield highly motivated and performing teams. There are still countless poorly-implemented softwares being sold to the market. Most ironically was how in ComparativeAgility — the tool provided by ScrumAlliance to compare a team’s agility against various benchmarks — even the global benchmark lies on the poorest performing quadrant.
I became a firm believer of Agile and Scrum ever since I learned more about it, and I still am. However, having seen how much my current employer outperform some of the other firms who claim to be “Agile”, I no longer believe that it is the one true solution for excellent software craftsmanship.
A framework, ultimately, is just a guideline. We should always make the best decision based on the context we are in, and that includes our software development approach and methodology.
Context change both externally and internally
When switching roles we often pay more attention to the apparent changes that will happen: new workplace, new colleagues, new culture. In anticipation to these changes, we may proactively conduct research: reading Glassdoor reviews, asking friends who work in the firm, stalking our future manager and colleagues on Linkedin. Having done exactly this, I believed that I had a strong, bullet-proof game plan to acclimatise myself to my the work environment I soon find myself in once I moved.
However, I learned that I forgot to account for one very important context change: my increased wealth of knowledge and experience.
My previous manager once encouraged me to get out there and try things out while the stakes were low. Why? Because I was a “freshie”. Hiring me came with the expectation that I was bound to stumble, fail, and make mistakes. It also came with the expectation that I would learn from them and grow professionally.
And grow I did, by trying out new things, always embodying the “can-do” attitude, taking initiatives, and promoting changes/new practices internally. Through all my actions, I built a reputation as a capable, creative, proactive, outspoken, and dependable contributor to the company.
When preparing for my most recent switch, I accounted for the less forgiving culture and my status as an experienced hire. I told myself to make a strong positive impression, apply all that I know, and ensure I do not make the same rookie mistakes I made 2 years ago. Initially, it all seemed to work just fine; I was commended for my speed of onboarding and proactive nature.
However, I came to realise that while my plan was fine considering just the external context changes, it was flawed if I accounted for the internal context changes. These internal context changes encompassed my skillsets and experiences, and they affect the way my colleagues perceive me and my actions just as much as the culture of the company I just joined. I learned that whereas my eagerness, candid nature, and “can-do” attitude were all seen as proactivity and openness in the context of a “freshie”, it came across as arrogance and overstepping in the context of an experienced hire.
Balancing expectation, personal drive, and acclimatisation is difficult
Which brings me to my last point, and that is the fact that balancing the expectation of a being an experienced hire, my own personal aspirations, and the need to adopt to a new culture and establish professional relationship with new colleagues is not easy. On the one hand, the need to convince the manager that he made the right choice in hiring me is evident (I am, after all, still under probation). In an environment with informal onboarding and minimal handholding, taking initiatives and trying things out may be required. On the other hand, doing so may make me come across as trying to impose myself too much without first understanding the ins-and-outs of the company today.
Getting over these points, especially the last 2, definitely require more contemplation, pondering, and adjustment on my end. However, if there was anything I could immediately adopt as of this writing, it was that context matters more than we think, and as such everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt, with more salt pinched the more uncertain the context became.
