On April 1st this year I started working for a new company after having been in my old job before that for a little over 3.5 years. Together with this change came also a pause to me posting on this blog. Which is fair of course - I needed to settle into some new routines, learn a lot as part my new role, get to know people, keep in touch with people, … It was a busy two months. Today, however, I finally have some time I want to spend on reflecting on the changes incurred by my job change. I will focus only on the positive aspects here - not to dunk on my previous employer but rather for the following reasons:

1. In my former job I think I’ve mentally been in a downward spiral for some time which eventually led me to look for a new position. I am pretty sure that was partially self-inflicted rather than 100% the fault of my former employer. So this time I want to try to actively work against the negativity that apparently human brains are naturally built to prioritize..
2. Things I can call out as improvements over my previous job can serve as indicators of what could be improved at my own employer. That seems helpful to me. In contrast, it is easy to criticize without providing any guidance on how improvements can be made.
3. It’s still pretty early. Nobody likes a newcomer that has zero clue but claims to know everything better. Indeed there is lots of things I don’t know, countless events leading up to the current situation that I haven’t witnessed. And in the same vein, I’m also still in my probation period :P
4. I need to be able to tell myself that this was the right choice. For obvious reasons.

So in the following I want to list my observations of what is going well at the moment.

1. A stricter daily routine

My new job requires me to commute a bit farther away than before. Previously, I could get into the office within roughly 10 minutes by bike. In contrast, it’s now a 20 minute train ride, with two 5 minute bike rides to and from the respective stations. While I could pretty much leave for work any time I wanted with my old job I now have train schedules to consider. I know which train I want to take and so I have to plan my timing accordingly. In practice that means I get up at 7 which is 30 minutes earlier than before. It takes my 12 minutes to get from my bed into my clothes, through the bathroom, and into the kitchen. There I will spend another 15 minutes getting through a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, and a sandwich. This leaves me with 3 minutes to put on my shoes and jacket and to leave the house with my folding bike. In the evenings, I will shower and prepare as much as possible for my breakfast. I know this sounds stressful and I can’t deny that it partially is. However, I’m also in the office a full hour earlier than I used to - around 8 o’clock instead of 9. This helps me safeguard for the inevitable day where my train gets cancelled. Also, it has a good look to it in my opinion while I’m still new to the team. In turn I am free to leave a bit earlier in the evenings. I still get my fair share of time for doom scrolling - just that it’s now on the train instead of at the breakfast table. So overall I think this is a good development as I feel I do more with my time with acceptable trade-offs.

2. Azure Devops vs. Github

My new company is what some would call a “Microsoft shop”. We use Teams and Outlook, everyone has Office. But most crucially, for all things development we rely on Azure Devops - or ADO as people like to call it. That includes repository hosting, the pull request workflow, CI pipelines, wikis, and ticket tracking. It gets a bit of getting used to at first. But what is undeniable is that the ADO web ui is much faster than Github. It was staggering for me to learn that people don’t need to keep open tabs or bookmarks to important pages. They just know where to click to get to them 🤯.

Aside from that, having a usable issue tracker helps a whole lot having visibility into individual work items. And having a board to look at actually makes dailies a lot more worthwhile.

3. Clear responsibilities

Some time ago I wrote about how (not to) name teams. My core thesis was that teams should be given the most concrete name possible. I was arguing that by being unclear in the naming teams would be set up for failure as there would be an inherent unclarity about the teams goals and responsibilities. My new team is literally just called “Team Yellow”.

Yellow is my favorite color, so that is the first reason I’m all pro for that now. But the actual reason why this team name works is because in my new company, team name doesn’t equal project assignment. The fact that the social construct that makes a group of individuals effective and successful at their work can be decoupled from their work is as smart as it is obvious in hindsight.

4. Mutual Respect

My impression so far about my new workplace is that there is an incredible amount of extremely talented people. To be honest, I think I may start getting imposter syndrome. I literally have no idea how I can make myself stand out positively over my colleagues. Which naturally leads me to the question of why I even feel that this should be my priority right now in the first place? My conclusion right now is that I am better off focussing at being good at my job rather than finding ways to stand out. In short, I adapt to a culture that I would describe as “less ego, more competence”. I think this culture has tremendous positive side effects: In an environment where people are nice and respectful with each other, where they help each other to achieve the common goal, they also help each other grow and to become the best version of themselves. This naturally raises the floors and ceilings for everybody in the company.

I also have the feeling that positions in the company are filled based on skill and not based on inter-personal relations. This is of course hard to assess within just 2 months (with many holidays in between). I also cannot tell if this is a consequence of the previous point. But I am sure there is correlation.

Getting back to being more concrete here for a moment, I wanted to highlight also that the company seems to understand the importance of our designers. As a technical person this was a gradual learning for me. I started out viewing designers as people who wanted to do arts but also get paid. My understanding of their contributions was limited to “sprinkling some artsy bits over the functional product”. To my defense, maybe my first interactions with some designers at the beginning of my professional life more than ten years ago may have been more in that direction. Back then, websites were still mostly documents, not apps. In my last company, however, it became absolutely clear to me that design is doing an absolutely essential job. Of course this is just my observation from two companies I worked in. Maybe it’s practiced completely differently anywhere else. But what I learned there to be the role of design was that they

• familiarize themselves with all the requirements upfront and then
• lay the required functionality out in a multi-dimensional space so that it becomes a coherent, intuitive experience
• so that it is also visually pleasing

I have the utmost respect for this work. And so it’s great to see that the company I now work for also seems to realize what a difference good designers are making. Although I am only inferring this because the design department seems to be staffed sufficiently ¯\(ツ)/¯

5. Perks

There are many nice things to say about the amenities provided by my new employer:

• The office buildings are modern and located centrally
• There is free coffee and fruit baskets (how cliché, I know)
• There is also soft drinks. Sparkling water comes from the tap.
• Train ticket is completely subsidized
• There is third-party fridges stocked twice a week with freshly prepared microwave meals that the company further subsidizes
• On my first two days there were actual onboarding sessions teaching me about the company mission and its history
• The provided hardware is new and highly specced
• Access is provided to all major (and some not-so-major) AI subscriptions. This lets me compare and draw my own conclusions. There is also a culture of sharing experiences and learnings which gives me a feeling of not getting left behind in during the current times.
• There will be a summer party

So far I am absolutely convinced that this was the right next step for me to take. I might revisit this post if I can think of more aspects that I should be mentioning here.