
Ask HN: How to effectively start in a new (software engineering) role? - goralph
I&#x27;ve just finished a job search and going to be starting in ~4 weeks.<p>I thought it would be good to get some general advice from the community about people&#x27;s strategies for the first few days&#x2F;weeks at a new company, as a software engineer in a non-leadership position.
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itamarst
Here's my checklist (originally included in an email sent out to my mailing
list - [https://softwareclown.com](https://softwareclown.com)):

Understand the big picture direction of the organization, team, and product
I’m working on: management, marketing, sales, and engineering.

* Talk to relevant managers about where we’re going, and what they’d consider success or failure. Also a chance to meet managers I didn’t talk to during interview process.

* See if anyone’s done a pre-mortem, or if not try to informally or formally do one: “it’s one year in the future and the project has failed. What did we do wrong?” Usally I’ve started mentally creating a list of big picture risks, but many of those are probably irrelevant, and I’m probably missing quite a few.

* Learn meeting schedule, start forming opinions about existing ones (useful/needs improvement/useless) and what meetings might be missing.

* Get to know co-workers: names, roles, who knows what.

* Wander around introducing myself, and asking people what they are working on.

* Figure out lunch and snack culture.

* Join social chat rooms / email lists.

Set up work environment.

* Standing desk, with keyboard and monitor correct height.

* Kinesis Advantage keyboard.

* Mat for standing desk.

* Install Linux on laptop.

* Editor configuration (using my dotfiles repo). * Setup email, chat, other communication methods.

Start learning the development process, code base, tool chain, and relevant
technologies.

* Get code checked out, figure out how to build and run it.

* Figure out how to file tickets.

* Get smallest possible commit merged (fixing a typo, say).

* Improve or write documentation for the above three, for the benefit of future developers.

* Next smallest code change: improve code quality by adding a linter, or setup EditorConfig.

* Start work on a small, real feature or bug fix.

* Order (and expense!) books covering topics I don’t know enough about.

Logistics.

* Health and dental insurance.

* Retirement account.

* Bring relevant legal documentation first day (passport / birth certificate).

* Figure out best time to leave for work.

* Figure out bike parking.

