Questions for new teammates

I need to remember to take the time to ask good questions to any new teammate, especially in an open office.

I need to ask:

1. What do you know about the project? What were you told about your role?

2. What days and times will you be in-house? Remote?

3. How often are you used to checking in with bosses, teammates, or direct reports? In what way?

4. What’s your ideal ratio of heads-down solo work to side-by-side collaboration?

5. What kind of working documents or deliverables do you make?

6. How do you like to receive feedback? Information?

And I need to tell them:

• Here’s how our process worked for the last 1-2 projects, here’s the role I played. Here’s where we are in this one, here’s the roles and responsibilities I expect at this point.

• I’m in M-Th from 9:30 to 6 or 7. It’s fine to email or text me stuff outside of those hours, but there’s no expectation to do that (or respond then).

• Each week or sprint, let’s block out our goals together. And then chat each morning about what we’re doing and when we want to do any collab hours that day.

• I’m on the introvert side, so I’m most effective working in a heads-down way, but please interrupt me if something is blocking your progress. If it’s not a blocking issue, please put it on a list for our next work session. I love a good discussion, but I have to budget my energy for them.

• I’m a UX-focused product designer, so I’m usually hashing out the strategy with everyone, drafting our concepts (as flows) myself, then getting help with the visual design and text iterations. But it varies by team.

• I’ll give feedback in person or as comments in any Google docs. I’ll try to email you any info I want you to remember or be able to refer back to. I use Notion as a mini-intranet for each project — please browse it, add links to any working documents or references, comment freely, and tell me how else it could be useful!

(There was a related thread on Twitter this week that defended one woman’s / workplace’s “Guide to Me” custom, which other people had criticized, but I can’t find it.)