{"id":4371,"date":"2016-11-18T10:30:27","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T10:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marvel7077.wpengine.com\/?p=4371"},"modified":"2019-05-13T12:31:37","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T11:31:37","slug":"10-ideas-about-first-years-at-gocardless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marvelapp.com\/blog\/10-ideas-about-first-years-at-gocardless\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Ideas About My First 2.5 Years at GoCardless"},"content":{"rendered":"

About two and a half years ago, I decided I fancied a change from working for myself designing & building WordPress sites in my bedroom, so I applied to work at GoCardless<\/a>. From the website I wasn\u2019t totally sure what the company did, but from what I could find on social media it looked like a group of people who were having a lot of fun working together building something they were proud of.<\/p>\n

\"gocardless-team\"

An image from the GoCardless jobs page at the time I applied, featuring Kit, James, Andy, Helen, Phil & Charlotte<\/p><\/div>\n

After a quick Skype chat, a take-home challenge to test my design & front end chops and finally a trip to the GoCardless office, I left my final interview realising that I really cared whether I got the job or not. On the way back to the bus stop I reasoned that I would soldier on following a rejection\u200a\u2014\u200abut that I would be really disappointed if I ended up not being able to work there.<\/p>\n

My train of thought was interrupted by a phone call from Hiroki<\/a>, GoCardless co-founder and CEO, making me an offer that I excitedly accepted on the spot. I never made it to my bus stop because I got another call from Andy<\/a>, who worked at GoCardless as an engineer at the time, inviting me on a company outing to a roller disco in Vauxhall that evening\u200a\u2014\u200aso I turned around and went back to the office to join the team for some Turkish takeaway before we all headed out.<\/p>\n

I started here in May 2014 as a front end developer, tasked with building landing pages whilst looking for opportunities to make more use of my background in design. I\u2019ve since grown into the role of a lead designer with an intimate understanding of our product, owning impactful projects that improve the user experience of our online dashboard and working on pretty much everything with the GoCardless logo on along the way. I\u2019ve also learned to write plain JavaScript (contrasting with my previous life of prodding jQuery and hoping stuff worked) as well as how to build & maintain Angular & React apps.<\/p>\n

Over that time I\u2019ve collected a handful of ideas about doing a good job & working well with others. Some of these I brought with me to GoCardless; some have formed whilst I\u2019ve been here; none of them can I claim a 100% track record with\u200a\u2014\u200abut I thought that writing them down might make sticking to them even easier.<\/p>\n

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\"first-day-desk\"

A photo I took after arriving at my desk on my first day at GoCardless.<\/p><\/div>\n

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1. I want to keep asking questions until I understand<\/h2>\n

When I joined, I had so much to learn in order to become productive\u200a\u2014\u200athere was no option other than to ask questions until I understood the answers. Over time it became more normal to get stuff done without help and asking questions naturally started to feel less essential.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> let conversations progress without fully understanding everything being said, but I\u2019ll do a better job & learn loads by always digging until it all makes sense.<\/p>\n

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\"It\u2019s easy to\u2026 let conversations progress without fully understanding everything being said\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

2. I want to help my workmates get their work done<\/h2>\n

When I\u2019ve been stuck on something, it\u2019s been amazing when someone has clearly outlined the steps I needed to follow to solve my problems, rather than just ushering me in a general direction.<\/p>\n

If you tag me in code review, my goal is to help you ship your code\u200a\u2014\u200aand the quality of my feedback could mean the difference between that happening in the next five minutes or the next five hours.<\/p>\n

In verbal communication I try to be succinct when someone asks me to help them understand something they need to get on with their job\u200a\u2014\u200asomething I\u2019ve kept in mind especially after getting feedback that my \u201cconsidered nature can sometimes lead to giving more context than required\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> feel like there isn\u2019t time to go the extra mile when helping someone else\u200a\u2014\u200abut I want to keep in mind that I\u2019m not the only one trying to get stuff done.<\/p>\n

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\"I want to keep in mind that I\u2019m not the only one trying to get stuff done.\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

3. I want to receive feedback that helps me get better<\/h2>\n

Every six months, GoCardless employees review each other. Over time, I\u2019ve gone from needing to hear good things (looking for validation that I\u2019m doing well at a new job) to being keen to hear bad things (looking for anything specific that I can spend time improving).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also sometimes sent out my own feedback forms in between the official review seasons to make sure that anyone who works closely with me has an earlier chance to let me know anything I could be doing more or less of.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> settle into a groove and just get on with my job, but I will get better faster with constructive feedback.<\/p>\n

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\"Over time, I\u2019ve gone from needing to hear good things, to being keen to hear bad things\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

4. I want to give feedback to my workmates to help us work better together<\/h2>\n

If someone is making it harder for me to do my job well, it\u2019s not fun and takes guts to give feedback to that person to improve the situation\u200a\u2014\u200ahence me not doing it nearly enough.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> not express myself following a negative interaction, be a bit annoyed for a while and move on, but I think we\u2019ll both learn something if I can give some constructive feedback.<\/p>\n

5. I want to take a notebook to a meeting rather than a laptop when possible<\/h2>\n

This only applies to meetings where it would be permissible to have my laptop open\u200a\u2014\u200athere are lots of meetings where that simply wouldn\u2019t be appropriate and there are also some meetings when I need my laptop for demonstrating something.<\/p>\n

I aim to take notes in every meeting and I\u2019ve noticed that when I\u2019m poised to jot things down in a notebook I listen more intently & leave the meeting with a better understanding of everything. Conversely it\u2019s rare that a laptop doesn\u2019t become a distraction\u200a\u2014\u200aand it ends up needing to be firmly closed when people are talking anyway.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> take a laptop to every meeting out of habit, but for me it\u2019s often more distracting than it is useful for the discussion.<\/p>\n

\"team-shot-from-2014\"

A group shot from sometime around August 2014\u200a\u2014\u200aI\u2019m second left in the front row ????<\/p><\/div>\n

6. I want to describe a solution before I try implementing it<\/h2>\n

Before GoCardless, I rarely spent enough time in advance thinking about a technical solution\u200a\u2014\u200aI just hacked stuff until it worked. Too many times I uncovered hidden complexity after having invested significant time in a solution before this one really clicked.<\/p>\n

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\"I just hacked stuff until it worked\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> jump straight into the code and hope for the best, but it\u2019s better to spend time scoping problems out and solve as much as possible on paper before attempting to build anything.<\/p>\n

7. I want to think about what I\u2019d like to work on<\/h2>\n

I turned up to GoCardless on my first day just hoping I could be useful. I was lucky to have people looking out for me to make sure I had things to work on that they knew I\u2019d do a good job of.<\/p>\n

One piece of feedback I got quite regularly is that I didn\u2019t speak up enough about what I actually wanted to work on. People left, I became more senior and it became my responsibility to decide what work I wanted to lead on, which I initially found challenging due to previously relying so much on others to direct my focus.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> passively let decisions happen around me, but it\u2019s dangerous to not have a good idea of what would make me happy to work on or the confidence to communicate it.<\/p>\n

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\"It\u2019s easy to\u2026 passively let decisions happen around me.\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

8. I want to be in as few meetings as possible<\/h2>\n

This one\u2019s just a reminder to myself to make sure I always question whether it makes sense for me to be in a meeting or not\u200a\u2014\u200aor, if I need to discuss something with one or more people, to question whether a quick \u201chey, are you free for 5 mins for a chat?\u201d on Slack would suffice.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> see something turn up in my calendar and go along with it, or to start booking out times, rooms & guests every time I need to discuss something with others\u200a\u2014\u200abut it\u2019s good to consider what the best use of everyone\u2019s time is, including my own.<\/p>\n

9. I want to use principles to do better work<\/h2>\n

Whilst at GoCardless I\u2019ve seen us work on a company vision; on team themes that helps us focus on the right problems each quarter; on design principles for projects. Done right, each of these should essentially be tools that help us make consistent decisions with confidence.<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019ve been here I\u2019ve realised the importance of having solid frameworks like these to inform everything we do, whether we\u2019re prioritising a project, making a decision on a candidate, or solving a design problem.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> justify opinions on the fly, but I can make better, quicker decisions with guiding principles.<\/p>\n

10. I want to create the culture that I think should exist<\/h2>\n
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\"An individual can really influence how you perceive a company\u2019s culture\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

During my first weeks at GoCardless, I gained a strong first impression of an entire company and its shared culture\u200a\u2014\u200abut naturally it was the people I worked closest with who most impressed certain values on me, like Al<\/a> who was great at making the most of flexible working, finding time for side projects & generally being a lovely guy to work with.<\/p>\n

An individual can really influence how you perceive a company\u2019s culture and when they leave it can feel like they\u2019ve taken an important chunk of that culture with them. If they\u2019ve done a good job of leading by example then those values aren\u2019t gone, because now you care about them too\u200a\u2014\u200abut it becomes your job to keep them going.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to\u2026<\/strong> quietly observe the gradual change of my workplace as the team & product evolves, but I want to actively maintain the culture that I cared about belonging to when I applied to work here two and a half years ago.<\/p>\n

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\"I want to actively maintain the culture that I cared about belonging to\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

This post was originally published on the GoCardless blog<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About two and a half years ago, I decided I fancied a change from working for myself designing & building WordPress sites in my bedroom, so I applied to work at GoCardless. From the website I wasn\u2019t totally sure what the company did, but from what I could find on social media it looked like a group of people who… Read More ￫<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":4576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viewpoint"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n