9 Things I Learnt On My First Job

I recently moved on from my first job and cannot help but ponder on what I learnt over the 5 years.

Like any job, it was filled with ups and downs. Through it all, I learnt who I was, how to navigate corporate life, understood where I wanted to be down the road, and grew as a person. It was a wild ride with many events and milestones marking the distance.

Although I'm moving on from the job, I don't want to forget what I learnt there. Hence, I'm taking the time to write the most important lessons. After all, writing is the best way to remember something. It's also a post to come back to if/when I feel lost in the future.

So, grab a cup of your favourite drink and settle down 🍵 Maybe this will help you as well.

1. communication is key, of course.

Everyone talks about communication skills, so it's nothing new. But I have a few things to add that I never read/heard about whenever people spoke about it.

I'm mentioning communication first because no matter how much we talk about it, it's still not given as much attention or consideration as is required. My communication was good enough when I joined but I still had a lot to learn which happened on the job.

There are a few sub-themes under communication.

The first and most important is knowing to communicate properly. This is the basic aspect of knowing how to converse in the required language and being able to clearly convey what you mean. There's a compounding effect if you know how to do this in multiple languages.

As I'm a huge reader and had been blogging for 4+ years before I started working, I had the basic skills down. My English was good. However, I didn't expect that knowing other languages would help as much as it did. My Hindi especially came really handy to converse with teammates who were more comfortable in Hindi. Knowing Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu also helped me to understand others' conversations and get involved everywhere.

After the basic things, there's a lot that's under communication skills that no one talks about. One thing that I noticed all the time was knowing what to say and to whom. We might be the master of some aspects but what we say when explaining it should differ based on the context and the audience. The content and the level of detail will not be the same for any two audiences.

Speaking from a software developer's perspective, technical details are not required in every conversation. Sometimes, only the business aspect matters. A lot of people don't know this. Since I knew, I took up many presenting/speaking opportunities. It put me in front of more people and increased my impact which in turn helped me grow and get even more opportunities. Similarly, my colleagues who were also intuitive about this got more opportunities. This is a great post on this topic.

The more you do something, the better you get at it. This applies to talking as well. Talking is such a small word but means so much. I learnt to speak up and talk more during meetings, discussions, and other opportunities at the office which helped me become better at it. I spoke to everyone about everything which created familiarity and connections. In a few years, I had no hesitation in reaching out to anyone on the floor for help, even if they were in higher positions or in a different team.

My highest compliment is this comment from a colleague/friend: "Just talk to Sumedha instead of setting up a meeting, she's the one who says the most anyway." Considering how I barely spoke when I first joined and was given feedback that I don't speak up, this meant a lot to me.

Another aspect which requires practice but is super useful is explaining/teaching. During the regular work day, we explain our work—what it is, hurdles faced, and accomplishments—all the time. The "daily standup" is a meeting to quickly tell the status of work. There are bigger forums to discuss the status of projects. There are times when we have to explain what something is or how we do it. This is also context-driven, what you emphasise while explaining is different based on the audience.

I had a head start on this because I blogged for years and had a lot of practice "explaining" a book, my blogging process, and other things. I wrote how-to guides which helped me teach stuff at work. Eventually, I became the person people came to know about or understand something. This skill helped me stand out as a leader and subject matter expert as well.

2. build a knowledge base.

Doing a project on your own or with a small team is completely different from working in an organisation where many teams's work sums up to create a big product. My internship project was simple because it was a small project with 2 people. We did everything ourselves with mentors' help and it was manageable.

The pace quickly changed when we graduated and became full-time employees. When I joined a team, I was overwhelmed with the amount of information coming my way. From a new software developer's perspective, there was the business context, the product itself consisting of different services and features, the technical architecture, the technical details beneath it all, and then the processes of how to do things.

The team I joined worked in quick cycles with overlapping projects. There were at least 3 different things going on at once and it was an all-hands-on-deck situation at least once a week. It felt like I was thrown into the water suddenly and my seniors were helping me swim by telling me what to do after I was already in the water.

It was clear that how I managed information and learning in academics was not going to work. I won't lie, I was excited about the challenge too. I was glad that work is not like academics because I sucked at the latter.

To start with, I needed to keep track of everything. I didn't have the time to think of a good notes app or organisation system so I opened a new note in the Notepad++ app that my teammates used and started dumping everything into it. Initially, it had reference links and quick descriptions of what something is. I started writing how-tos to myself in it as well

Over time, it evolved into multiple notes. Bigger notes became separate files. I started taking notes based on intuition over time based on my experience. Later, I read Building a Second Brain which inspired me to try the PARA method and I stuck with it. I wrote all about my knowledge management system for work here.

The real power of the notes I took was that they compounded over time. I relied on them heavily to remember things so that my brain could work on finding solutions. It helped me make connections and respond to things faster because I had historical context saved in my notes.

My notes helped others too, even if they didn't know it. I became the go-to person for information on a lot of things. If I didn't know something, I knew how to find it. Many rough how-to guides were in my notes which I shared and eventually made into full-fledged documents during my exit transition. People saw me look up stuff in my notes and asked for them.

Since I had a system to manage information, my brain was also freer to accept new information. For example, I'd pay attention to conversations between people I was with even if their topic wasn't relevant to me. Often, they become relevant later on. I kept resources and advice saved which I could go back to.

We all say that writing things down clears our minds. It's even better if we do it in a way where it can help us later on. Taking notes on everything is a key lesson that I'm glad I learnt early on.

3. business context >= technical context.

I'm a software engineer. Most of my work is to look at code, figure out how to make things work a certain way, and build systems based on given requirements. I don't need to concern myself with the business, the real-world usage, and other non-technical factors. But non-technical context is as important as—or sometimes more important—than the technical context.

No matter what job we do, it lives in a bigger context than what we actually do. It is sustainable because of the wider context. What I code would not pay me if people weren't in need of the product in their daily lives.

I make an effort to know the business and user context because I do well with the entire picture. I like knowing everything so that I do my job well. I don't look at a task in isolation because it doesn't make sense that way. However, that trait helped me in more ways than I expected.

Knowing the full picture helped me make connections and do a better job. Eventually, I could take decisions and started standing out as a team. I knew all the different moving parts which made collaborating so much easier. Knowing the full picture also helped me ask bigger questions and be a part of bigger decisions which helped me move forward.

The technical architect at my first job mentioned this a couple of times in conversations during my last month there. He explicitly mentioned that technical decisions mean nothing if it doesn't help or make a difference to the user or the business. Taking cost and impact into account leads to good prioritisation and good decisions.

I've worked with many seniors and it was clear that some of them had more impact because of their decision-making. That decision-making came from looking at things beyond tech, even if they're technical leads.

It's not hard to find people who have great technical knowledge and skill, it is hard to find people who have that and can relate it to the bigger picture to create great solutions.

4. ask questions, all the time.

Asking questions is absolutely imperative to understand things better. This is sooo important in a software engineering job. I don't remember being told to ask more questions in my first job but I eventually did after I settled into the company and it makes a difference.

I'm still bad at this, I know that I don't do it often enough. I still find myself searching and figuring out things myself before asking someone. It takes time for me to feel comfortable enough to ask a lot of questions. I consider and decide not to ask in calls/meetings many times. I'm not good at asking anything in a bigger group because I don't want to waste people's time or be wrong. But I cannot deny that every question I've asked led to a better understanding.

We've got to ask all the Ws. What is this, why is it needed, who benefits from it, who works on it, who should I reach out to for something, where is this, how does it work, what should I do, etc. In my current job, asking questions is stressed a lot during onboarding and yet, I hesitate. I've got to work on it.

The thing is, over time, the questions become bigger and more important. Once I learned how things were in my first job, I became comfortable enough to question new changes. By the end, I was very comfortable questioning something and asking whatever was on my mind.

There's more to asking questions than finding out information. Putting forward something makes others think as well. Even if it's not a "good" question, you'll know it only after asking it. Even if you're wrong, you'll learn something new.
If you have doubts about a certain decision, call it out and ask why or why not. Even if your idea is not accepted, you will learn something. You will learn to come up with better ideas. This post elaborates on how asking leads to quick learning.

I told a couple of my juniors that they asked too few questions in my last days at the company. They were surprised by that. I stressed this point. But now that I'm in a new job, I find myself making the same mistakes and trying to overcome them. It's easy to think something is easy once you're comfortable in a setting. Being comfortable in a new setting is a different thing.

I'm trying to ask more questions. It's a work in progress.

5. be approachable but set boundaries.

I don't think I've cracked the balance of this yet. Sometimes, I think I'm a bit too rude. Other times, I feel like I should be more rude because people seem to think they can expect a lot from me. Whenever I think that I'm getting close to figuring it out, something happens and I realise that I'm not.

Both are important. Being approachable is important for collaboration, opportunities, and having fun while doing a good job. Having boundaries stops anyone from overstepping or messing with your peace outside of work.

The problem is that it's a shifting line. It's not the same for everyone. It changes based on context, the person, duration of familiarity, setting, and more. You've got to keep reevaluating where to draw the line with someone and decide whether you want to share something or not.

I'll be honest—I'm not very approachable initially. Multiple friends have told me that they thought I was rude and arrogant initially. Only later did they realise that I'm actually nice and fun. I'm trying to fix that initial impression with new people but it's not easy. I'm not a very chatty person and tend to stay silent for a good while. It takes effort to be viewed as approachable and a good teammate.

There are easy ways to do it. Smiling and greeting people when you pass by them, suggesting grabbing coffee or snacks together, playing sports or participating in another activity—there are many small things that can create a great relationship over time.

On the flip side, being too nice and approachable isn't good. I'm fairly good at drawing a line and not letting people think they can walk over me. But sometimes, some people (i.e. men with too much audacity) make me think that I should stop being nice to everyone.

Although I've had a few issues on both sides, I think I'm much better at this than I used to be. I know how to approach people and talk better so that I don't come off negatively. I'm also trying to keep a boundary by not mixing professional and personal lives unless I've grown close to someone over time.

6. learn how to figure things out.

This! Is! So! Important! Knowing how to figure things out is an invaluable skill.

It's not something one knows immediately, it takes time because you've gotta know how some things work/are to use them to figure out other things. However, once you know something, knowing how to use it to figure out something else is important.

You need to know only a few basic things. Whom to ask about different things (this is so undervalued), where to find specific types of information (documentation, history of changes, work log, etc.), and what to ask. If you know these, you can figure stuff out on your own.

Maybe the reason I got good at this is because I didn't like asking people. However, I can't deny that the skill has served me well. After 1-2 years, I was barely asking people for help. I knew a lot and I knew how to use it to figure out whatever I needed. I asked questions to understand or if I had to do something new that I couldn't figure out online. But after the initial guidance, I was self-sufficient.

Google search, AI chatbots, internal documentation, and training/knowledge transfer videos have a wealth of information. Knowing how to search and where to look helps massively.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't seem to even want to learn to figure things out. We don't live in a world where we'll always get help from someone to know how to exactly do everything. In any working environment, people who know how to figure things out given some of the information thrive.

I mentioned earlier that people often came to me for information and help. The reason I could help was because even if I didn't already know it, I could figure it out quickly. It was a running joke in my team that one seat next to me should be empty because I kept having visitors all day.

It's rarely the case that a new thing will not be at all related to what we already know. We may switch to new tools or processes—but they are built on something and it's highly likely that you can relate it to something else. All experience comes in handy.

7. talk.

I learnt this from my mom and later realized that this is genuinely one of the most important things. I initially waived it off because I was an introvert and I thought that my work would speak for itself. That does not happen.

No one is going to notice your work unless you bring attention to it. And you've got to keep doing it, mentioning everything once isn't enough. If you do a huge project, keep talking about it until it is well-known and then you can use it to ask for a raise.

Waiting to talk about your accomplishments until the annual performance review won't work because by then a budget would have been decided and there would already be something decided in the leadership's minds. It will be hard to ask for a big raise or a promotion then. It will get pushed to another time.

It's easy to notice that the people who talk all the time get the most back. Once I started talking about my work, the reception that I got was different too.

You've got to talk about many things, too. You have to talk about yourself like your skills and experience, your ideas and opinions, the big things you've done, and especially whether you took on extra work. Working weekends to deliver something won't be noticed by many people unless you talk about it. If you don't, that work will get maybe a one-line appreciation and that's it.

All of us are super busy at work and most people don't have the time or energy to keep track of what others are doing. Sure, managers have to because it's their job but they're also busy handling many things and may forget a critical piece that you delivered. Leaders have maybe 5 minutes to think about a person in a week.

It's not that capitalism expects you to advertise yourself all the time, it's that people won't notice you until you do because that's just how busy everyone is. Even you wouldn't notice someone if they never spoke to people outside their small team and didn't talk about what they're doing or help others to do something. People should know you and your work for you to make an impact.

My mom often said that the people who spoke a lot got promotions faster even though they didn't do half the work that she did. She said that she, unfortunately, did not learn the art of boasting and narcissism required to do well in a big organization. Because of that, I learnt to try it out early and can do better. I do the work and I talk about it. Both steps are important.

8. demand for what you want.

Unless you work for yourself, you've got to demand for what you want. I mentioned earlier that people are too busy to notice others' work and what they deserve (unless they're really good friends). The same applies to compensation as well.

Even if someone works a lot and delivers many projects, it's possible that they won't get promotions or raises if they don't ask/demand for it. It's so easy for organisations to not give you what you deserve and explain it away as "budget" and "company metrics." Even if you can quantify the amount you've made for the company with something new, you might not get a fraction of that in your salary.

This point is not just for role or compensation, it's for everything. Whether you want days off, a good work-life balance, a better project, or different opportunities, you have to take it yourself. It's rare to be handed what we deserve, it's more likely to get what we want when we demand for it multiple times.

I actually mentioned this to someone—that I had many different things to do and opportunities because I asked for it. There were others who hadn't done anything different in years. I don't know their path but I do know that if I hadn't asked for what I wanted and stayed stubborn about them, I wouldn't have gotten anything.

9. the work will never stop.

Absolutely never. Whether it's in a for-profit organisation or a non-profit organisation, whether you're working for someone else or you're working for yourself, whether you're winning an award for a hobby or your family is going through something, whether you're burnt out or not, the work doesn't stop. You have to go ahead with other plans anyway.

Once, I planned a really fun trip with my friends and later a big project came up. I was working all the time for it and I felt a bit guilty taking a week off for the trip. But if I had cancelled it, I wouldn't have had a great time and no one would remember that I cancelled it. It was one of my best trips and I still did well on the project when I worked.

I've seen people cancel vacations and other plans for work. They kept believing that it was important and that they'd get a break after it. They never got a break. I've seen the toll it takes on them. No matter how much we give to work, the work won't stop. Neither will people try to give you time off.

Unless we set boundaries and learn how to say no, the work will keep coming and piling onto our desks. We have got to stand our ground to take breaks and not accept overtime unnecessarily. Considering that overtime is not even paid in India, it's ridiculous.

It's hard to say no, especially if others are willing to work all the extra hours for less/no pay. But then, if overworking is an expectation, the work is not sustainable.

The system is different in other countries but in India, we get a certain number of paid days off every year. If we don't use them, they carry over to the next year and accumulate (with a limit of having 45 PTO days at once). If there are any unused days when we quit, we're paid for those many days.

Many people let days accumulate in order to encash it when they leave. However, when the time comes, it's evident that it would have been much better to take that time for resting, travelling, or whatever else. 20 days of break throughout the year is more valuable than 20 days of pay when you quit burnt out.

I once took 2 weeks off at the end of the year simply to use my vacation days. I didn't go travelling or didn't do anything fancy. But those 2 weeks of rest were luxurious. I read, socialized, and blogged after a long time. In another instance, I took 10 days off simply to do a course that I was interested in. I don't regret any of my days off.

Don't wait to take breaks or vacations. Take time off regularly and use up your PTO.

endnotes

My first job was where I learnt that I actually enjoy programming beyond small problems. I learnt that I do well in a corporate setting and the problem for the first 2 decades of my life was the academic setting. I made tons of mistakes and learnt from them. There are a bunch of things that I cringe when I think about, but they're experiences that shaped a confident me.

The idea for this post and most of the content came up when I was journalling during my last days at my first job. I was writing about my experiences, how it felt to leave the place after 5 years, and what I learnt during my time. I went through a lot of different problems and came through stronger with solutions.

I journaled these points mainly to remind myself of what I learnt. After writing a bunch, I realized that I could make it into a post. I mainly wrote it for myself so that I can look it up anytime through this post.

I hope this post was helpful for you too 🙂

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What did you learn from your job(s) so far? If you haven't started working yet, what are the things you're keeping in mind? Do you have any specific lessons or learnings that you'll never forget?