I always believe there are always things you can learn from your colleagues no matter what size of your company you are working for, what industry you are in, but a good company culture can help you grow faster.
Days in OMSignal
OMSignal is a wearable tech startup company, it is my first job after my graduation.
The thing I learnt from the first day is that ask, ask, ask. Everybody is busy and it’s not that people don’t want to tell you, without a systematic onboarding guide like a mature company does, no one really know what’s the right thing to tell you, so asking question is the best way to figure out the situation.
Be transparent, don’t hide problems, at the early days, I sometimes feel afraid to report problems since there are many, and I am afraid people will not be happy if I speak out without solving them by myself. Later I learnt that try to solve problems by yourself, but if you can’t, reporting early will avoid big problems in the future.
Another lesson I learnt is that besides getting work done, thinking about your career path, because you never know when the company doesn’t need you any more.
I left OMSignal half years later with a shock, I hope I can learn more before finding the next adventure, but this is how the world works, a company’s outlook decides whether they expanding or reduce.
Days at SurveyMonkey
One month after I left OMSignal, I joined SurveyMonkey through alumni referral. I have so much to talk about, this is a great company that I learnt a lot, a lot.
This is not a company to the scale like Google, Facebook, Amazon, but the company is making a lot changes everyday to make it a great place to work. The onboarding experience is pretty good, you got everything you need to start. you can start contributing in one week, and at the same time, you will get a glance of how the company works. This is not a large company, but not small, it has more than 700 employees around the world.
Since I am talking about colleagues, let’s back to it. a great culture nourishes people, everyone is humble, friendly, even I am not good at speaking, but everyone is still like a good friend when you need them. This shapes my attitude in work. Be humble, be friendly, take the company as home.
Senior developers are really good mentors here, they help you understanding what your teams do, there is no dumb question here, but they helps you to not get confused with it next time, it helps you grow.
I have 1:1 meeting with my manager biweekly, they share experiences, guide you to the next level, you got a lot intuitions for your career path. I can still clearly think of the cascading path my manager guide me.
From designing a small system independently to participate in complex system work, from be active in a meeting to how to attract your audience. From making your code a product to increase your impact both on the tech side also team cooperation.
This is place that tolerant your fault, but it doesn’t mean people ignore it. they take it seriously with helping you get through it instead of blaming.
Days in the future
What I learnt today will help me do better in the future. but I will remember to learning continuously.