New job, who dis?
So it’s been a while -rightfully so. Man’s been busy. I know that sounds cliche but I have been up to a lot. Let me explain. So I have this baby that we birthed late 2019 that has kept me busy. No, I’m not talking about a tiny human, I’m talking about Saint Lyon Apparel. The activewear brand I co-founded. The story of the genesis of this is for another day but my entrepreneurial spirit has been nurtured over the last year and a half and that’s all that’s really mattered lately. So much so that I yearned to switch jobs to align with my new found passion of e-commerce. No better place than the company that’s synonymous with e-commerce - Shopify! I’ve seen Shopify make a couple of millionaires (no, I’m not talking about all those sketchy dropshippers who claim to have made bank - no shade) but even more importantly, be the saving grace for so many businesses especially during a tough year like the previous one we just had. It’s safe to say I’m completely sold on their mission to make commerce better for everyone. I’ll blog about Saint Lyon in the near future but today let’s talk about starting my new role at Shopify.
So I took on a software developer role at Shopify. To be honest, my dev skills were the most transferable I had to join the company so I used “what was in my hands” to get there. Getting there was kind of your typical dev interview process sprinkled with some delightful unique parts. The process is documented here. I enjoyed the chatty parts [Life Story and Technical deep dive] where I didn’t have to hide behind some problem to prove that I was worthy. I think technical interviews are broken for the most part especially when it’s used to judge experience and compensation but that’s a rant for another time.
So it’s been a bit over one month here at Shopify and so far so good. I’ve had the pleasure of onboarding at a few companies and so far Shopify takes the cake. A big part of what stood out before I joined was how well-paced everything was. They initiated and kept in contact with me weeks before my start date and slowly got to know me. We even had a slack group for my cohort which came from all parts of the world! I hate information overload so being given a whole month to onboard was a pleasant welcome. I’ve onboarded at a few companies where I’ll be lucky to have a wiki to gather any context on what I should be looking forward to. Kudos Shopify for having an awesome remote onboarding.
When starting new roles, imposter syndrome tends to kick in but this time it’s a little different from me. I’m super confident about my abilities to help Shopify become a 100-year company and at the same time learn from all the other smart Shopifoks - Google has Googlers and we have….Shopifolk. It hasn’t grown on me yet but yeah I digress. Speaking of Shopifolks, I think everyone in my immediate team has exhibited some important traits that I always look out for right off the bat to gauge if I truly made the right choice. Amongst them are empathy and vulnerability. Look, joining a new company is intimidating. Lots of new jargons flying left right and center, new tech stack, new internal tools and technology, new people period! The best thing you can have is a supportive team. The empathy shown by co-workers just let’s you know that it is “normal” to take some time to acclimatize and get to know your surroundings.
How I plan to succeed is simple. If I can summarize it in a few steps:
Build credibility - Shopify has this thing called a trust battery. And I need to charge that shit up. I need to gain context and then be able to say to let them trust me. You know, be that dependable member of the team. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have to be perfect. I’m actually eager to make mistakes and learn from them. But in the end, I want to be able to see things through to completion. To help build context, one thing I do when I start a new role (be it a new org or company as a whole) is to have my cheat sheet. Companies are notorious for letting all the jargons fly around and being the newbie, you leave meetings feeling like “what just happened here”. So in my cheat sheet, I have some explanations of a few jargon and terminology and try to relate it to something I’m more familiar with or generic. A simple example will be to map the term Polaris to Shopify design system.
Leading- After building credibility, I should be ready to say to my team that “I’ve got this” and be able to make key decisions that will steer things in the right direction. Where there is ambiguity, I should be able to provide clarity and make things easier for the team.
Build bridges - There’s an African proverb that goes something like “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”. This basically means that you need a community to go far. It’s amazing how many teams work together on the Shopify platform and I definitely will need to make connections to learn more on things that go on outside of my team.
So…that’s the plan - simple right? Obviously, there will be some bumps here and there but I think I have the right blueprint. Let’s just hope my current passion for e-commerce fuels my motivation to keep going and impact. Till the next one, peace!