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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2599 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 30, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Preparing to enter a corporate job for the first time, anyone have advice for me on dos and dont's and/or how to navigate the corporate environment?

What’s your role?

I’d give advice for a technical professional. Not sure I’m qualified to say what works for management or, God forbid, leadership.

Write stuff down. Keep personal records of everything. All your meetings, all the tasks you did, etc. Do it immediately after the fact. If you have to learn something, write a document detailing what you learned. If it's a meeting, note who was present, link important documents, and make short notes of the decisions.

This isn't to cover your bases or protect you or anything. It's just to keep everything straight. Don't count on just remembering things. Corporate can move very slowly, and being able to refer to what happened in a meeting a month ago is very useful. As well, it's very helpful to have a paper trail when it comes to things like getting promoted.

Pretty much what JulianRota said. Don't worry too much about it.

What kind of job? IMO it matters a lot. Working in corporate IT is a very different experience from working in sales or finance.

There is a "game" and you'll learn how to play it. Take these with a grain of salt:

  • Whatever your job is, your job is to make your manager happy
  • Figure out how your manager (and others who have power over you and your career) are rating you, and optimize for that.
  • On the above, it may not matter how your coworkers rate you, so you may not need to optimize for their opinions.
  • It is easier for others to judge superficial details than deep ones, so that's what they'll do.
  • You are always "busy". You help others by "squeezing in" the work between X and Y.
  • The helpful guy who always accepts extra work will inevitability end up with lots of extra work. This is okay if this work counts towards something (e.g. promotion), but otherwise can be harmful if it prevents you from doing higher impact work, so act accordingly.
  • Do visible, high impact work. If you do something, and nobody knows about it, did you really do anything?
  • Go to the social events, build relationships. Relationships outside your local team can be particularly valuable.

Maybe these are obvious, but I have seen people who don't get it. To be clear, I am not saying don't work hard, but work hard on things that matter, and there is a skill in figuring what what matters.

I think that this is heavily dependent on what field you work in. I have worked in corporate IT for almost 20 years now, and in a healthy environment it's nothing like what you describe. It may be different for other fields of course.

I've worked in IT/dev for about 10 years, and I've found these things to all be true both in functional and dysfunctional workplaces, although they are more important in the latter. If you have a fantastic, altruistic manager, you might be able to ignore some of these, but even then it's probably unwise.

I don't know how comfortable with small talk you are, but I recommend practicing it, some people assume if you don't engage or reciprocate small talk with them then you hate them or something.

Oh baby I'm a MASTER of small talk. No worries there.

What are some good ways to improve small talk?

Ask questions. Not too personal. Listen to the answers. Look engaged and reasonably happy to be there. Smile.

Conversely, expect to be asked similar questions. I can’t say I’d prepare answers, but just don’t be surprised. Keep your answers short; they want your input, not your life story.

It’s all part of a casual conversational quid-pro-quo stemming from desires to socialize.

Practice. Exposure. That’s what worked for me. It’s not a quick or easy path though.

Are there any specific talking points you default to when meeting new people? How do you handle conversations with someone who may be uninteresting, shy, or closed off?

I don't really have specific talking points, no. Just whatever has caught my interest, what we might have in common, et cetera. I guess a lot of it depends on context like if you meet someone at a job, might start by asking them job things. Most of it is figuring out what you might have in common and going from there.

Asking open ended questions (instead of yes/no questions) helps a lot.

Weather is a universal, if cliché, starting point. If it's summer, you can ask if they're doing something for their vacation. If it's December, you can ask what their plans for the holidays are. Sports, if your city has a sports team that has the attention of a large portion of the population (here it's our hockey team).

The only divisive topic that's allowed is sports because it's sort of an agreed upon topic most normal adults nowadays can still have diagreements on without significantly affecting their esteem of the other. Avoid controversy, avoid politics, even if you think the person agrees with you (they might not and just be keeping quiet about their real opinion) and others might overhear and alter their opinion of you over it. Others with either less awareness or stronger filter bubbles might still bring politics up, being unaware (or not caring) that the topic is divisive, in those case stick to uncontroversial, non-committal answers or statements.

You don't necessarily have to remember every little detail of their answers (if you can, though, great!), but try to remember a few points to reference next time you chat with them. If, for instance, the person tells you that they're going to stay at her parents over the holidays because her mother is sick, next time you see them, ask how her mother is doing. That kind of stuff.

It feels almost gross of me to write it down, because I feel like it is faking sympathy for my fellow humans, but I certainly needed to figure out how to have small talk myself, and it wasn't because I didn't care about others.

Most advice is by people who ended up in really dysfunctional places for some reason and are mad about it and probably over-reacting. I'd say just go in with an open mind, lean towards keeping your head down and learning at first. It's usually a good move to start out as bland and inoffensive as possible in dress, speech, mannerisms, etc. Read the room and get a sense for what's acceptable there and what isn't, and relax as appropriate.

This is the best advice.

This is true. I was going to give advice based on my experience, but I have indeed worked only at very dysfunctional places, so I suppose the better advice would be "try to determine whether the company you work for actually functions reasonably well, and if not, go work somewhere else.".

This advice is often useful if used judiciously.

I have to agree with this. You can and should spend political capital to say "no" clearly every once in a while. But if a superior asks you to do something super stupid or wasteful, you can do it slowly or not at all. Especially if you stay busy doing useful things.

Probably can provide some advice - It largely depends on what your role will be but here’s a bit of what I’ve learned (25Y in the private sector, now sr. mgmt). Since it’s a new environment for you, first off I’d listen and observe. try to get a sense of who among your colleagues get things done, if you’re interacting with managers be cognizant of where the alliances and fissures between areas are, listen more than you speak at first. Some orgs are internally competitive, some are not, a lot depends on the personality and attitudes of the corporate leadership. Of course YMMV depending on your particular situation.

There will be many things that piss you off. You will see levels of earth shattering idiocy and incompetence from people making 10x your pay. Don't let any of this get to you to the point it shows in your words. Don't burn any bridge that you don't have to. Always be professional.

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