Before you start
The Weeks That Are Already Yours
The weeks between a signed offer and a first day belong to nobody, which means they belong to you, and almost nothing needs anybody's help.
What the people on this page had to find out, and where from
Which repository is the real one
you asked1Four days of reading the wrong one first
The holiday booking process
written down1The one thing properly documented
That your manager prefers a written update on Mondays
told3Said in passing, in week three
three things you had to know · one of them somebody told you · the median arrived in week 1 · the other two you went and got
Three of the things this page is about. Two of the three were answerable in a message sent the week before you started.
Where a new hire is working across several projects, time tracking for hybrid workplaces can make workload and handoffs visible before confusion becomes performance debt.
New employees and managers can compare this approach with guidance available from Coursera.
Four things you could have known before your first day, and when you actually learned them
Which repository is the real one
you asked1Four days of reading the wrong one, and the question would have been answered in advance
The holiday booking process
written down1Properly documented, and the document is public
That the client is referred to internally by their initials
worked out1Guessed from context after missing half of a meeting
That your manager prefers a written update on Mondays
told3Said in passing, in week three
four things you had to know · one of them somebody told you · the median arrived in week 1 · the other three you went and got
Not one of these four needed anybody to prepare anything. Three of them were answerable in a single message sent the week before you started, and the fourth was in a document you could have been pointed at. One person's own twelve weeks.
Between signing and starting there is usually a month, and in most organisations nobody is doing anything with it.
Your new employer is waiting for your start date. Your old one has stopped giving you anything important. The month exists, it is yours, and three or four hours spent in it will save you a fortnight later.
What the month is not for
It is not for learning the job. You cannot, you do not have access to anything, and trying produces anxiety rather than knowledge.
It is not for proving keenness. Nobody is watching, nobody will remember, and a flurry of enthusiastic messages before you start lands on people who are busy with the thing you have not joined yet.
And it is not for worrying, which is what most of it actually gets spent on.
What it is for
Four things, and all of them are cheap.
Getting the obvious questions answered. Which systems will you need. What happens on your first morning and who will be there. Whether your equipment is coming and when. What you should read first, if anything. One message, sent two weeks out, gets all of it.
Reading what is public. The company's own site, its documentation if any is open, its public repositories, its last year of announcements. Twenty minutes of this makes the first week measurably less bewildering, and it costs nobody anything.
Settling the practical things. Where you will actually sit. Whether your chair and your internet connection are adequate for eight hours a day. These are boring and they are much harder to fix in week two, when you are also trying to look competent.
Writing down what you already want to know. The questions you have now, before you have been absorbed, are the clearest ones you will ever have. Most of them will stop occurring to you within a month.
The message that does the work
Two weeks before your start date, to whoever hired you, one short message.
Looking forward to the 14th. Three quick things so I can hit the ground running: is there anything you would like me to read beforehand, who will I be with on the first morning, and is there anything I should do at my end about equipment or accounts?
That is polite, brief, and asks only for things the recipient knows offhand. It also does a second job: it tells them that you are organised, which is the cheapest impression you will ever buy.
What to do if nobody answers
It happens, and it means nothing about you. The person who hired you is doing their own job and your start date is three weeks away.
Send it once more, a week out, slightly shorter. If there is still nothing, assume nothing is prepared and plan for a first morning in which you have no accounts and nobody has booked anything. That is a very common first morning and it is survivable if you are not surprised by it.
The one thing worth refusing
Some employers will send you work, or reading, or a training course, and expect it done before you start.
You are not employed yet. Doing a small amount of it voluntarily is fine and sometimes enjoyable. Doing a week of it unpaid is not, and agreeing to it in week minus two sets a precedent that is hard to reverse in month three.
The polite form is specific: "I will have a look at the handbook before I start — the rest I would rather pick up properly once I am there."
Starting the record now
The most useful thing you will do in this month takes two minutes.
Open a document. Put a date on it. Write down what you currently believe about the job: what you think you were hired to do, what you think the team is like, what you think will be hard. You will be wrong about most of it, and in three months that page will be the only evidence of what you could see before you stopped being able to see it.
Everything else in this collection depends on that document existing.
What a month of it actually looks like
Not four hours spread evenly. Three short efforts, and nothing else.
| When | What | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Three weeks out | Read the public site and the last year of announcements | An hour |
| Two weeks out | One message with four practical questions | Five minutes |
| One week out | Chase anything unanswered; write your page of expectations | Half an hour |
Everything else in the month is yours and should stay that way. A holiday between jobs is the last uninterrupted time most people get for several years, and spending it preparing for a job you have not started is a poor trade that nobody will ever credit you with.
The three items above are worth doing because each of them saves several days later for a few minutes now. Beyond them there is no further return, and the attempt to find one is mostly anxiety looking for an outlet.