New company - week 3. Frustration and patience

Yes, it has been quite frustrating for the past two weeks roughly. Nothing wrong with that and after a bit of thinking, I guess it is quite natural. Let me explain.

From being a central hub, know-it-almost-all, building for the long-term, position.

After more than five years in a company, you get to know quite a lot of everything. Even more when you have had several of those years as a manager of a central project. At VTEX my daily, weekly, and monthly routines were all in place.

First, I was managing my team daily, doing 1:1s, solving short-term issues, answering questions, doing team rituals, checking career development plans, and so on.

Then, weekly, I was helping organize the upcoming frontend chapter event with fellow frontend developers, looking for a new host, inviting developers to show their current work, or giving a hint on who to interview during the event. The same thing with the EM Talks event, thinking about relevant topics or questions given the time in the quarter or year and who to interview during the ritual. I was also checking the state of hiring priorities with my contact at the talent acquisition squad.

Of course, checking on tasks and projects was a daily/weekly activity as well. Are we able to fix that recently spotted bug? How is going the current largest feature's development? Is our on-call process handling an improvement we agreed upon? You get it.

On a wider level, I was planning the evolution of some of our team's projects with other leaders, whether it be engineering, product, or UX. My team was at the center of the admin system for our customers and product teams. And this generated constant questions and alignments which I loved. Having worked on multiple apps for several years, I had a very good view of the admin as a global product, even thinking of its global evolution with senior co-workers given the evolution of technologies, requirements for performance and security, and product use evolution.

Sprinkle with meetings, planned and unplanned events, code reviews, and tech debt management and you get very busy and (hopefully) productive weeks.

Full speed ahead and very dynamic.

Loved it.

To being a newbie and having lost the instant intensity

Do not worry, it is normal.

Be aware if you plan to change company. Your time to be fully productive will be over for a bit. The tough part is to accept it. Really.

It is not possible to land in a completely new environment and just have the same amount of productivity in the first weeks. You do not know the ecosystem, the development process, the rituals, the people, nor the story of how it was made.

So accept it, breathe and read, listen, talk, ask, and take a lot of notes. Moreover, accept that the "old you" is in a transition state. Especially if you add a new language in the middle.

Go slow, go steady

Thankfully, several coworkers were key in saying that this state was normal. My direct leader told me to go slow. Read. Present myself and get to know people. Enjoy the moment. Things will naturally speed up.

My director of engineering told me he was not expecting a 100% productive state before two or three months.

All my fellow leaders were happy to get to know me and recalled their first weeks within the company. All the same.

Looking from above, it makes sense to remember that companies hire experienced managers for the long run. I am not a freelancer to produce straight away tons of lines of code from the second day. This time has passed.

The things listed above and the ones I forgot or do not know yet will come in time. My take: just put one foot after the other, and do not try to jump too far too soon. Talk to others, whether from work or not. Remember that you are out of your comfort zone.

Or even write this down.

In a blog for example.