[ryeguy_24]

Perception is reality. Your personal brand is insanely important. In a job, you are always assessed and your career progress will be based on how others perceive you (unless you are in a very metric focused career like sales). Anyone can say differently, but whatever other factors people mention, they all drive the final factor which is perception.

I always tell people two things when they start:

1) Impress everybody you meet. First impressions are very sticky. Impress people first, they will hold you to a higher standard, and then you aim to continue to impress. I’ve seen very few cases that people have shed their initial impressions.

2) Over-communicate. Make sure you ask questions, write thorough emails that explain rationale. It’s really important that you aggressively set and meet expectations. A major problem people have is expectation mismatch. Make sure both you and others are in sync and this usually happens via over-communication.

[dbg31415]

> 2) Over-communicate. Make sure you ask questions, write thorough emails that explain rationale. It’s really important that you aggressively set and meet expectations. A major problem people have is expectation mismatch. Make sure both you and others are in sync and this usually happens via over-communication.

Eh, this is not great advice for new hires. Let's not encourage them to spam their managers for every decision. Ha.

[ryeguy_24]

Spamming was not my intent. I agree that spamming “is it ok if I” and “should I” emails is definitely bad. I do think that communication is an incredibly important focus for new hires though. Confirming what they are hearing, asking questions, setting expectations (verbally or written). I think those things go a long way.