The first week
The First Morning, Hour by Hour
A first remote morning has a predictable shape, and knowing it in advance converts most of the disorientation into something ordinary.
What the people on this page had to find out, and where from
Which of the two deploy guides is current
worked out6Decided by checking which matched the scripts
That nobody reads the team channel after 15:00
worked out7Learned from two unanswered afternoons
two things you had to know · nobody told you any of them · the median arrived in week 7 · all two you went and got
Two things nobody told anybody, learned by noticing. Both were visible in week one and neither was legible until much later.
A useful onboarding review separates time spent learning from time spent blocked, so teams can view the official feature summary and discuss the pattern with the employee rather than relying on impressions.
The wider workplace question can also be checked against resources from O*NET OnLine.
What the first morning actually supplied, and what had to come from elsewhere
Your laptop and sign-on
written down1Arrived, worked, and the instructions were adequate
Which calls you were expected on
you asked1Three invitations and no explanation; asked after missing the first
What you should do between the calls
worked out1Nothing was suggested, so you read the handbook twice
Who your manager actually is on the chat tool
you asked1Two people have similar names
That the first week has no work in it
told1Said explicitly by the manager, and it was the most useful sentence of the day
five things you had to know · one of them somebody told you · the median arrived in week 1 · the other four you went and got
Five things, all of them needed inside the first four hours. Two were supplied, two were asked for, one was guessed at. The one that helped most was a sentence somebody chose to say. One person's own first morning.
A first remote morning is strange in a way a first office morning is not, and the strangeness is almost entirely structural.
There is no building, no desk being shown to you, no coffee, nobody to follow. There is a calendar with some things in it and a chat tool with some people in it, and a long silence between.
Knowing the shape in advance does not make it less odd. It does stop you concluding that something has gone wrong.
The shape
Before anything starts. Log in early enough to find out whether your accounts work. If they do not, you want to know at half past eight rather than at five to nine with a call starting.
The first conversation. Usually your manager, usually twenty to forty minutes, usually a mixture of welcome and logistics. Write down every name mentioned. You will not remember them and they are the beginning of your map.
A gap. Often two or three hours. This is the part nobody warns about and the part that produces the most unease, because there is nothing to do and it feels as though there should be.
Something administrative. Induction, policies, a human resources call. Low content, and it will be the part of the day that most resembles an ordinary meeting.
Possibly a team call. You will be introduced, you will say something brief about yourself, and you will not follow most of the rest. That is correct and expected.
What to do with the gap
Decide beforehand, because deciding in the moment produces the handbook, twice.
| Hour | A reasonable use |
|---|---|
| First | Set up your tools properly: the chat tool, notifications, your calendar |
| Second | Read the team's channel history for the last fortnight |
| Third | Write down every name, acronym and tool you have heard so far |
The second row is the single best use of an unstructured first day and almost nobody does it. A fortnight of a team's channel tells you who talks to whom, what the current problem is, what the tone is, and which names recur. It is the closest available substitute for overhearing.
What to say in the team call
Short, and not a biography.
Where you have come from in one sentence, what you are going to be working on in one sentence, and one human detail. Thirty seconds total.
The temptation is to establish credibility, and it does not work: a long introduction on day one is listened to politely and forgotten by Thursday. What people actually remember from a first appearance is whether you seemed easy to talk to.
The sentence that helps most
In the panel above the most useful thing on the first day was a sentence somebody chose to say: that the first week has no work in it.
If nobody says it to you, say it to yourself. The first week is not for output. It is for accounts, names, reading, and finding out where things are. A first week with nothing produced is a normal first week, and the feeling that it ought to be otherwise is the most common and least useful thing a new joiner carries.
Ending the day
Ten minutes, before you close the laptop.
Write down what you did, what you did not understand, and any name you heard. Then send one line to your manager — not a report, a sentence — saying how it went and naming anything that is still missing.
Good first day. Still no access to the repository, and I was not sure whether I was meant to be on the eleven o'clock. Otherwise all fine.
That message takes twenty seconds and it does two jobs: it gets the repository access moving, and it tells somebody who cannot see you that you exist and are not drowning.
If nothing is arranged at all
It happens, and more often than anybody admits. You log in at nine and there is nothing: no calls, no messages, no instructions.
Do not wait past about half past nine. One message, to whoever hired you, with no edge in it.
Morning — I am online and set up. I do not have anything in the diary, so tell me what would be most useful. In the meantime I will read back through the team's channels.
The last sentence is the one that matters. It converts an awkward message into a report, it gives you something to do while you wait, and it is true: reading the last fortnight of the team's conversation is the best available first morning anybody could have designed for you.