Not the OP but I've been on an M1 Air for a couple of weeks. It's startlingly good. It's been a lot of work to recompile our various dependencies for am ARM64 VM but overall the machine is hands down the best I've ever used.
It was a bit of a process but once we got it working, developing on the M1 has been great. Captured notes on the process here in case it's helpful for anyone later: https://authzed.com/blog/onboarding-with-an-m1/
More than anything; starting on a new team, sorting out the provisioning process, meaningfully contributing to the team and doing a write up for their blog. I’d wager whoever hired you is very pleased.