
Ask HN: How can I onboard myself in my new company? - ktacm
I&#x27;ve been working for a tech startup for 2 months. Things currently going very well for the company. The company is growing with investments. They started employing new ones.<p>The product excites me. However, there is a problem, I feel inactive.The reasons that makes me feel inactive are: 
- They don&#x27;t apply scrum. (They just do dailies and retrospectives, however scope changes during the sprint and we don&#x27;t make estimation points for our tasks.) 
- Tasks are just one sentences on our scrum board, no explanation for any task. 
- Product manager and team generally talk during lunch and breaks and decide what to do and how to do. I can&#x27;t follow them all the time. 
etc.<p>I try to express myself in retrospective meetings however, it feels like I am just the man who criticizes and judges the team. It seems like they feel comfortable about that, but they never apply anything more, it goes how they do before. We don&#x27;t apply decisions we made in retrospective meetings.So it also effects me mentally. I feel insufficient and can&#x27;t express myself self-confidently. It effects my personal life very bad. I&#x27;ve been a pessimist.<p>I don&#x27;t want to leave my job, because I love the product and the c-level people.So what I supposed to do in a situation like this?
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mooreds
Implement what you can from the retros. This shows you are interested in
improving things rather than complaining. For instance, when I joined a
company a few years back, I just started writing unit tests for my code. No
permission needed.

Even if you can only do one retro item every sprint, at the end of a few
months you should be more effective and will have proven yourself a team
player. Hopefully then you can make suggestions that will not be perceived as
critical.

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ktacm
The retro items we decided on actually about the behaviour of the team. For
example, "start explaining tasks written", "stop discussing out of the
meetings". This is not an implementable thing that I can do myself.

~~~
mooreds
Is there nothing you can do yourself? Maybe something you could suggest at the
next retro

~~~
ktacm
I am trying to catch a task while they are talking. Then I say "let me do
this, ok?" for the tasks that I have no idea. Then I start asking questions
people around. I think it is very hard to maintain this.

