I’d like to share my preparation for the upcoming career change as a Software Engineer. After staying on the same team for three years, I decided to make a move. Job transition can be exciting, but it also involves a lot of unknowns, challenges and anxieties. It can be overwhelming but at the same time it is a crucial period — a good transition can secure your success in the new team while a bad transition will lead to nonreversible failure. We need to do our homework and get prepared. I documented some of my thoughts here to share with you while I prepare myself for the upcoming career transition.
I divide the ramp-up process into 4 phases: preparation, adapt and learn, build trust and make an influence. In this article, I am going to share my thoughts on the first phase — preparation.
Before we get into the water, we need to check out our gears, do some warmups, and get ready for the cold. If we don’t stretch our muscles and adapt to the temperature, we will hurt ourselves and probably can’t stay in the water very long. Similar to switching a job environment, we don’t want to dive right in without any preparations. The preparations include business and product orientation, culture expectation, and mindset switch.
Business & Product orientation
As software engineers, we need to build a strong connection with the product and the customers. Our goal at this step is to simply get familiar with the product from a customer perspective. If the product of your new team is directly connected to the external customers, register to be one of the customers and experience the product. Eating your own dog food and putting yourself into customer’s shoes is always a practical way to build product familiarity and identify gaps. Besides that, do some research online to know more about the business of the new team. You can look for public information such as customer direct feedback or some professional analysis presented with data.
Culture expectation
What is culture in the workspace? It’s a set of consistent patterns for people to follow for communicating, thinking and acting, all grounded in their shared assumptions and values¹. Adapting to different team culture takes time and it is not an easy process. So invest early on knowing the culture in the new environment by either speaking with the locals(if you have an existing trustworthy relationship) or the people formerly worked there. Ideally, you already have some knowledge before interviewing with the new team or company. If not, it’s not too late to do that. In my experience, I talked with a person who was formally on the same org but a different team. I got a chance to learn about his experience, the management style of the leadership, deadline intensity and his reason for leaving. After talking with him, I reset my expectations of the new environment quickly. If you don’t have any connections with the new environment, you can read reviews on public forums like Glassdoor or Blind. I find Blind a little bit more authentic since it enforces workspace email verification. However, remember to take all the information with a grant of salt.
Mindset switch
First of all, have a clear cut with your previous team. It’s a bad idea when switching to a new team but still have the work from the old team depending on you. Take time for yourself and make the transition happen internally, tell your friends and update your LinkedIn. Face toward the up-comings and leave the old things fully behind. I find it is important because sometimes we live in the past without noticing. No matter if your past is memorable, successful or unpleasant, simply leave it and don’t take the emotion of the past with you. We need to do this because what makes us succeed or fail in the past won’t simply replay in the future when the situation is different.
In the next article, I will talk about the second phase of the career transition as being a software engineer, where it starts on the first day when you join the new team. We will focus on how to adapt to the new environment quickly and accelerate learning. Hope you find this article helpful and remember to check out the next one.
References
- Watkins, Michael D. The First 90 Days. Boston, 2013.
