It's been three months since I changed jobs.
Broadly speaking, three months feels like a good interval for getting used to something, looking back, or making a judgment.
After three months, knowledge has finally grown, and while I'm still wrestling, I've started to have my own yardsticks. There's more mental room too.
Flipped around: at first I had no knowledge, didn't know what or how to judge, and handled things by looking things up one by one and checking with people around me — days of groping in the dark.
Also, after three months, the people you communicate with multiply. Outside partners of course, and inside, people in all kinds of roles, cooperating on a task basis.
Early on I only talked with my manager or people on the same team, so the more people I communicate with, the more personally reassuring it feels.
Not quite company loyalty — but you get a real sense of doing it as a team.
At my previous job, partners were limited both outside and inside the company, so this feeling is fresh.
Full remote, and it fits better than I imagined — I'm grateful every day.
At first I thought, hmm, this isn't what I expected — will this really be okay going forward? That anxiety has mostly faded.
(Honestly, early on a little thought flickered that maybe I'd slightly mistimed the choice of next job. Not anymore.)
It's still a startup that isn't huge, so the situation flips weekly (daily?).
Anxiety from last week can look completely different the next; people disappear before you notice, and after me more people keep joining.
Probably true of startups everywhere.
I've heard the line that after three months a startup is a different company — and it really feels that way.
I'm impatient by nature, so this culture feels great.
Systems aren't settled, and it can feel like forever cleaning a room that stays messy — you can't see the end — but I take it optimistically: better than being bored.
Still, lately I feel I rarely get to think something through carefully, build systems, or organize information.
I probably won't get those chances for a while, and the priority isn't high, so it can't be helped.
Every day is execution mode, clearing tasks.
On the other hand, interestingly, tastes and ways of thinking change too — things I used to think about a lot can lose their hold. All is flux; long live that.
When I changed jobs I had a sense, skill-wise and personality-wise, of where my relative strengths in my role would be.
Then, if you have axes like what you're good at / can do / want to grow — you get asked often to do work that isn't what you want to do, but that you're relatively good at, and you even get chances to teach others.
But it was a part I was relatively good at while also preferring not to do it anymore — so when value shows up there, it's glad and complicated at once.
Well, setting aside whether you like it: creating value with what's in demand / what you're good at is the theory of an economic society, and I'm exactly following that.
That strength only adds value at a jack-of-all-trades level, so I'm well aware it isn't something I can push as a professional specialty, and I don't especially want to grow it.
(*Slight digression: aren't jack-of-all-trades types rarer than people think? I am one myself, and I love working with them. ...Yes, as you'd guess, half of that is hope aimed at myself.)
Still, securing a simple in-company position as "the person who can do X" is exactly "a craft saves your hide" — labeling increases both who you talk to and how much you talk, so it helps.
Give & Take sounds a bit comic as a phrase, but I hesitate to communicate if I feel I'm not giving, so it's all the more handy.
That said, repeating the same work is honestly painful, so I need a smarter approach. Or maybe time will solve it.
Also, I strongly feel that going after positions where you can grab even slightly better opportunities really matters for a career.
Not only at this company — anywhere — the size of opportunity the first person and the second person can grab is totally different, and the gap between second and third is even larger. The upside drops off exponentially.
During job hunting I asked an officer at a consulting-ish startup, "If you were in my shoes, what kind of company would you apply to?" Someone said they'd want to join a small-scale global company as an early Japanese member — I remember that as very useful.
The size of opportunity after joining is different, and in the end that feeds your own value.
Still, for all the talk: keeping a position where you can grab good opportunities as much as possible is a given — and after that, whether you can keep going. In the end it's a staring contest of endurance.
To tell myself again: in the end it's a staring contest of endurance.
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