Ninety days
If You Are Not the Only New Person
Another new person is the most useful colleague you will have in your first month, and the relationship has to be started by one of you.
What the people on this page had to find out, and where from
What your manager actually wants from you
you asked8Asked directly in week eight, and the answer was two sentences
That your probation review happens in week twelve
written down1In the contract, and read once you went looking
two things you had to know · nobody told you any of them · the median arrived in week 8 · all two you went and got
Two standards that applied to the whole quarter. One was asked for in week eight and could have been asked in week two.
Where a new hire is working across several projects, teams can review how the platform works to make workload and handoffs visible before confusion becomes performance debt.
For additional context beyond this collection, see the material published by Skillshare.
The people you had by week six, with and without a second new joiner
Introduced, and needed · 4
- Your own manager — met in before you started; needed in week 1
- The other person who started the same week — met in week 1; needed in week 1. You found them in the induction call
- A third joiner, two weeks behind you — met in week 3; needed in week 3. You went and introduced yourself
- The colleague two years in — met in week 1; needed in week 2. Noticed from who answered in the channel
Needed, and never introduced · 2
- The person who runs the release — needed in week 2. Found by reading the channel history
- Whoever owns the billing dashboard — needed in week 3. Found by asking in a channel
six people · four you were introduced to · six you actually needed · two you had to find yourself
Six people, and the two that would not have existed without other new joiners are the second and third. Between them they absorbed about a third of the first month's questions, at no cost to anybody senior. One person's own first quarter.
If somebody else joined in the same month, they are the most useful colleague you have, and almost nobody uses them.
Why they are useful
They have the same questions and no reason to be embarrassed by yours.
That is the whole of it. Half of what makes asking hard in a first month is the asymmetry: you are asking somebody who knows, and the asking reveals that you do not. Between two new people the asymmetry does not exist, and the questions get asked immediately.
They also have different gaps from yours. You read the deploy guide and they read the handbook; you worked out who approves schema changes and they found out where the rota lives. Between you, the coverage is better than either alone.
The thing that stops it
Nobody arranges it.
Most organisations will put two joiners in the same induction call and nothing further. Afterwards you are each in your own team, working remotely, with no reason to speak — and the conversation that would have been the most useful of the first month never happens.
Starting it
One message, in the first week.
We started the same week — would you fancy half an hour at some point to compare notes? I have a list of things I have not worked out yet and I suspect it is not the same list as yours.
Nobody refuses this and it is the entire effort required.
Then half an hour every week or two for the first couple of months. Not a meeting with a purpose — a conversation in which both of you say what you have not understood.
What to compare
Four things, and the third is the one that surprises people.
What you have each worked out. Your two lists of answers, pooled.
What you are each still stuck on. Frequently one of you can answer the other's immediately.
Whether this feels normal. The single most valuable thing two new people can give each other, because the usual private experience of a first quarter is a conviction that everybody else is doing better. Two people comparing notes discover within ten minutes that they are both having the same week.
And who you have each found useful. Two maps of people, combined.
If they joined before you
Somebody two months ahead is almost as good and worth seeking out explicitly, as the note on meeting people describes.
They remember, they have no stake in presenting the place well, and they will tell you things nobody senior would think to mention.
If somebody joins after you
Go and find them in their first week.
You will be able to tell them four things nobody told you, which takes ten minutes and will save them a fortnight. You will also discover, in the telling, how much you have learned — which is otherwise almost impossible to see from inside.
This is the point at which the window described earlier in this section starts to close, and passing on what you can still remember is the only use that observation has.
The cohort case
Some organisations hire in groups, and if yours did, the group is a resource that outlasts the onboarding by years.
The thing that makes it last is nothing more than a channel and somebody willing to put the first message in it. That person may as well be you: the cost is one sentence, and in three years it will be the only remaining trace of how any of you started.
What not to do with it
One risk, and it is worth naming because it is easy to fall into.
Two new people comparing notes can become two new people confirming each other's worst reading of the place. A fortnight of "have you noticed nobody answers anything either?" is not useful to either of you, and it hardens impressions formed on two weeks of evidence into something you will both still be carrying in month six.
The distinction is between comparing observations and pooling grievances. "Did you find the setup instructions worked?" is the first. "Is it just me or is this place a mess?" is the second.
The simplest guard is to keep the conversation about what you have each worked out rather than about how it is going, and to take the second question to the person who joined four months ago instead.
Half an hour a fortnight
Enough, and more than most pairs of new joiners manage.
A standing half hour every two weeks for the first three months is the right shape: frequent enough that nothing festers, infrequent enough that neither of you has to find things to say.
It does not need an agenda. Three questions fill it every time: what have you worked out, what are you still stuck on, and does any of this feel normal to you?
After three months it will stop by itself, which is correct. By then you both have your own people and the thing it was for has happened.