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Comment by doktorhladnjak | Hacker News Reader

So true. I’ve personally experienced this with starting a new job in January 2020 and subsequently working on 3 teams.

Team 1: 3 engineers of various tenure already on the team. Built good relationship with 2 before pandemic put us in WFH about 6 weeks in. I still talk to both of these engineers on a regular basis, even though we no longer work together.

Team 2: Changed about 8 months in due to a reorg. Working with a different set of people who had all worked in this area together pre-reorg. Very hard to “break in” and ramp up. Things were not going well. Manager, another engineer, and my manager all moved teams.

Team 3: 6 months later. Brand new team with engineers all coming from different parts of the company plus an external new hire. Working well together but we’ve all been remote working together the entire time.

Team 2 was _rough_, and its situation is what most new joiners will face.

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As someone who manages people for a living, the problems on Team 2 were entirely your manager’s fault.

That was my take at the time too. I do take some blame for not flagging the situation to my manager or my skip (their manager) earlier, and for not being more aggressive about it. It's so easy to think it must be you when things aren't working out.

I did not escape without a bad review. Somebody had to take the blame when things didn't work out. That was also some textbook bad management: my poor performance was first described in the meeting where the review was delivered. Never once in all the 1-on-1s we'd had. Skip said there was nothing that could be done because all that mattered was that I did not deliver compared to my peers.

My manager moved teams then left the company not too long after as well. I'll never really know what happened, but I assume they got a poor review themselves.

What are specific actions to address these problems the manager could have done?

I imagine a few small group tasks to help the new hire come up to speed on certain things might help. That is, assign the new hire and 1-2 other team members to work on a somewhat small task, something that the team members could easily accomplish in an hour or so, but will take a bit longer because the new hire is also being taught at the same time. Highly encourage them to use group video chat, and not to just have each be hidden behind a screen share. Being able to see the faces of the people talking is important to getting the right nuance of what they are expressing (sometimes that's the difference between something obviously being a good natured joke and an ambiguous and anxiety inducing statement).

Hopefully after a few of these ice breakers, everyone will have a better grasp of each other and more natural communication and relationships might come about.

Seriously. Some of the people in this thread... you need new managers, folks.

Yep. Team 2 was me 6 months ago. Went into the office for 1 week and that almost completely solved the problem.

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