[NEW EP] Starting new role - Action Anxiety
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Introduction: Starting a New Role at Cartesia
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Speaker: Hey, guys. Now, today it's gonna be a bit of an unusual episode because I'm gonna talk to you about my first couple of weeks in a new role. Some of you may know that I moved from Chainlink Labs to Cartesia to head up their dev rel. And, you know, any time you move to a new role, it's hard.
There's lots of uncertainty, there's lots of ambiguity. Your insecurities can come up, your doubts and fears can resurrect.
INTRO
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Speaker: Welcome to Easier Said Than Done with me, Zubin Pratap, where I share with you the self development that I did on my journey from 37 year old lawyer to professional software engineer. The goal of this podcast is to show you how to actually do those things that are EASIER SAID THAN DONE.
There's lots of uncertainty, there's lots of ambiguity. Your insecurities can come up, your doubts and fears can sud-suddenly resurrect. And so this is gonna be pretty much very straight from the heart. I've even got my phone here with a few notes that I wanted to talk about because all these came to me while I was taking a walk.
I'm actually at a friend's place for the weekend, just catching up with with them and some, extended friends and family .
So, I don't have my [00:01:00] usual setup, not the greatest setup here in terms of my mic and camera, my usual setup that you guys may have seen. But, I thought useful while I'm out of at a walk here in nature to gather some thoughts and share them with you.
So look, really it's about how difficult it can be when you're starting a new role. Now, I've been around in the workforce, coming on twenty-five years now, and it's-- it does get easier. Obviously, for those of you who are much younger it's harder. It's much harder when you start out. And as you get older and you get more confident in yourself and you know your place in the world and things, it gets easier.
But
Starting Fresh: Why You Lose Your Credibility Asset Base
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Speaker: no matter when or how you do this, starting fresh means not having the credibility you're used to. Now, when I was at Chainlink Labs, again, you know, great team, fantastic organization, phenomenal work and I was doing really well. I was there four years. So the first six months is always hard in a new job at least.
You know, sometimes it can be longer. And this assumes that you have a great manager and stuff like that, right? If you have a not so great manager, your manager changes or the org changes, then there could be trouble even in year ten. It doesn't matter, right? It could be hard. But [00:02:00] assuming you have a good team, good manager, good support around you, and the right sort of culture, then usually the first six months are pretty hard.
Same thing I noticed when I was at Google. That was even harder due to the COVID lockdown and stuff like that when I was onboarding. So, it can be quite hard at that, that, that point in time. And after a few years, you have some credibility, you have a track record, you have deep relationships, you have the social capital, the intellectual sort of vigor, the understanding of the business, the understanding of the people, the players inside, the understanding of the market you're in and so on and so forth.
And so you have all this built-up asset base that you suddenly just say goodbye to when you
when you move to a new role. Now, obviously you're not- saying goodbye to everything. You're taking some of these assets, mainly your own growth, your learning, your own insights, your confidence and so on with you.
But you know, it's still a lot because you're starting fresh, you don't have the credibility and you don't have those relationships, any, you know, runs on the board or track record as we call it. It also means that when you start something new, especially in a [00:03:00] slightly different domain. Now, if you stay in accounting and you move to another accounting firm, there's still a lot new to be learned.
But you
The Steep Learning Curve: New Domain, Tools & Culture
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Speaker: know, when you're moving domains, like I'm moving from the blockchain world into the AI world, and though I've been working with AI for 18 months now, it's still very new, especially in voice AI, which is what Cartesia does. Completely different type of technologies. State space models are a unique and very phenomenal kind of technology, which is a very different kind of architecture from the traditional transformer models and has significant advantages in different use cases.
So, you know, obviously at this point in time, I don't fully understand all of this. I'm only two weeks in, but I will as I go along, pick it up. But learning the new things in a busy environment, new people, new product teams new sort of market, new personalities, new business operation style, a different level of scale in the business, all of these different factors are new things, right?
And so the s- the, the learning curve is very steep on, on several dimensions, and not just one or two or three dimensions. It's very, very, [00:04:00] very steep on, on several dimensions. And even different companies, the way they use terminology, the acronyms, the turns of phrase that are internally, you know, they have a lot of mean- meaning.
, But externally or to someone new, that, that doesn't have the same meaning or connotation, or in fact, you may be completely confused as to what exactly that means. So that's a, learning curve as well.
And then of course, there's all the tooling. Some companies use Jira, some companies use Linear these days or, you know, whatever else it is. And so, the tooling can also change. There's a, there's a learning curve around that. And so it's a time of stress, right? It's a time of stress, uncertainty, ambiguity,
Being an Unknown: Earning Authority All Over Again
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Speaker: anxiety.
Especially for people who like to or who have built up a track record, it's hard to let go of all the advantages of your past experience in a new role because the new people you're meeting have never heard of you, have never met you, have never seen what you've done before. As far as they're concerned, you don't have a track record, right?
They'll take for granted that you do, and that's why you got hired. They're gonna assume that the company hires well. Now, Cartesia, for example, hires exceptionally [00:05:00] well, very thorough process, and a phenomenal team. Like, that was a big decider for me to join them was, was the team.
It's a team with outstanding talent density. The founders have a great vision and tremendous academic and technological pedigree.
The kind of people they've even able to hire at different levels in the organization and different functions in the organization is quite, quite astonishing really, quite impressive.
And so these are all the things that, that were important to me. But everything is new at the same time, right? Now, none of these people necessarily know me that well other than those who interviewed me . But otherwise, I'm totally new to people.
I'm completely unfamiliar. I'm just some new guy who's come to the, the company, and so I don't have the track record. I have to earn the trust again. I have to build up all the social capital with them all over again. And if you're not accustomed to that feeling, it's, it's very uncomfortable because it makes you feel, "Oh, hang on, I don't have quite the same level of authority or influence as I did previously because I haven't earned that yet."
You know, I don't have the trust. I have to earn all of that from scratch, which is fine, but it's, it's a difficult feeling because you're used to being able to move with a certain amount [00:06:00] of velocity, and now you have to adjust that, and you have to be mindful of, "Hey, this person doesn't know anything about me.
I've gotta earn, earn the right to be listened to in some respects," right? Not to say that in, in most good organizations, it's not like people will dismiss you 'cause you're new. That, I've never, almost never seen that happening. But what ends up happening is they don't know how to work with you yet, and they don't know that you have a certain point of view based on your experience and what value that brings.
And, and to a lot of people, it's new, right? Your function may be new to them for all you know, right? So these are some of the challenges with with moving to a new role.
And these are all normal. I've had this in every single role, whether back when I was in the law, back when I was in middle management layers, when I was doing my startup, when I moved to Google. It's the same Pattern, if you like, right?
Action Anxiety: How to Act Despite Uncertainty
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Speaker: And what happens for people who are starting out is that they need to develop the muscle to be able to act without anxiety.
Now, it sounds easy. It's not, and I'd be lying if I said that I acted without anxiety. That's not true at all. But you will notice if you've been at a place for long enough, [00:07:00] a lot of your actions do come without anxiety, right? But that has evolved over time. When you start out, you'll have actions with lots of anxiety, and anxiety is a pretty rich word, so, you know, tone it down a bit in your own head when you listen to this if you want.
But anxiety is a, is a big word. And so I'm not saying it's clinical anxiety. I'm saying you can be anxious about how your actions are perceived, received interpreted and valued, right? So, but the more you get senior or the more you get established and the more you have the r- the track record, the more people seem to assume that you know what you're talking about because you've earned that right, and therefore, your actions become more confident, more you know, influential because you are less anxious about how you're seen because you have the confidence of knowing, "Well, you know, I've got the runs on the board.
I've got the track record."
So acting without anxiety is very, very hard. And that means that we need to be really careful about managing our internal state, right?
Because we don't have the track record, because we are an unknown quantity [00:08:00] to colleagues. We don't know what the relationships are like, what the dynamics are between people.
We've got to make allowances for the fact that there's gonna be a period of time when we have to act with that level of uncertainty and anxiety. There are also unwritten rules and and concepts and, and sensitivities maybe around different people or different parts of the organization or something that's happened with a customer or there's some market dynamic or a competitive influence.
There are all these forces that are operating on businesses and teams, and you- you're not going to know all of them when you start, and you can't. So when you take all of that anxiety, plus you have competence gaps, right? You know, in my previous role, I was very competent at what I was doing because I was there that long.
I'd built up that competency set, many of which can be generalized across companies and, and roles, but some are specific to the company, and that's how it always is, right? And so it's just like when you're used to driving a car or when I used to ride motorcycles a lot. The first few rides on a new motorcycle, I'd have to get used to it.
Now, it's still a motorcycle. Still got the same sort of engine, [00:09:00] same sort of physics. Well, broadly the same physics. You know, it's two wheels and, and so on and so forth. But yeah, each motorcycle is different or with each car can feel a bit different when you drive it for the first time, and it's the same thing with, with, with new roles, new teams, new companies, and so on and so forth.
You've got to give it the time to grow into that. So don't expect to join a company and not feel anxious. Don't expect to join a company at whatever level, unless you're like at a C level, and even then from what I've seen and what my mentors have told me over the years, there is tremendous anxiety in it, especially at the C level.
I'd say even more so because at that level, your expectations on performance are much higher, and because- And that the higher you go, the more you're responsible for outcomes that are very hard to control, that are extremely fluid, that are very non-deterministic, can be quite subjective, quite probabilistic.
That's what you really, you're being hired to do is solve problems that aren't formulaic, that aren't easy to reduce [00:10:00] into a formula and a set of processes, right? And so, you know, this, this never really goes away. The more you sort of grow in your career, you'll find every new role, there'll be a different sort of anxiety or a different sort of uncertainty or a competency gap.
So
Setting Realistic Expectations & Winning Trust
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Speaker: all of this then comes down to handling this requires a correct expectation setting on yourself on how long is this turbulent period going to be, this period of uncertainty and ambiguity? What do I need to do to actually win the trust? And let me emphasize that you can't demand trust. You shouldn't demand trust beyond a point.
You can for a little bit when it's really something you're a functional expert on. You shouldn't assume that people are going to give you plenty of benefit of the doubt. They will initially, but you have to always have the mindset that, "Hey, for at least the first two quarters or six months," however you want to look at it, " I've got to win the confidence and the trust of my boss, of, you know, the founders or whoever else it may be in your, in your context, your boss, your peers, and if you're managing people, definitely your [00:11:00] subordinates, right?
Because they have a previous manager, maybe more, that they're always gonna benchmark you against, and you've got to win the trust. You've got to learn each individual. You've got to understand what they want, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, what doesn't work well with them, what works well with them.
Now, some of you may say, "Well, why should I care about all that? I'm here to do a job, my job, and get the job done." And the reality is, the higher you get, the more your job is working with other people constructively.
That really is your job, especially in a world with AI, where the AI can do a lot of things autonomously. Your job then becomes orchestrating yourself, other people, and tools, right? And so it's really important to handle that, which requires a psychological shift or a constant upgrade of your psychology and identity to, "I don't have to be the person with all the authority yet.
I can earn that back. That's not a problem. But I do know what I know, and I do know what I'm good at, and hopefully you also know what you're not so good at. And then you have to map what are you good at, what are you not so good at to where the company is at its journey and [00:12:00] what it needs from you for the company to succeed, which means you're going to succeed.
So you have to constantly calibrate your identity, your psychology, and your focus to what the company actually needs, where it's at today, and where it's trying to go. Now, initially, a lot of people push action onto new joiners, right? You know, hit the gr- ground running. I have two points of view on
Bias to Action vs. Thoughtful, Directed Action
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Speaker: that.
Sometimes that is necessary and for some roles that may be required. But I also truly believe, as many of you have been following my channel for a while may know that action's the easy part. Thoughtful, directioned action is much harder. In other words- It's easy to move fast. It's easy to move fast and break things.
It's easy to constantly have a bias to action. I recently posted about this on LinkedIn. It's easy to have a constant bias to action and put a badge of honor on that.
But action without intention or purpose or direction is just busy work. It's just being busy, right?
You're much better [00:13:00] off applying action to thoughtfulness or on the back of thoughtfulness.
So yes, bias to action is important, but that's not an excuse to not think carefully or not know what's going on or not spend the time actually understanding the space you're in. So yes, absolutely, you need to move fast. Yes, there's a tension between acting fast and having the confidence in your hypothesis that's, that's driving your action.
But I believe when you're starting a new role, you do need to spend time reading, listening, and thinking, and then redoing that over and over again. And how you get a little bit more confidence that you're doing the right thing is while you're doing the reading, listening, thinking loop, you're also taking small little actions to, to put momentum.
And you always wanna be outside your comfort zone. Now, it's easy for me to say this when in reality, there are times when I find myself shrinking back into my comfort zone and saying, "Oh, I'll do this maybe later or tomorrow or next week." And there's always a good reason to put something off. But sometimes if I'm really honest with myself, especially if I get away from my desk and go for a walk,
I realize, "Hmm, I'm just doing that because [00:14:00] I'm afraid of being rejected, afraid of being ridiculed afraid that it may not be good enough,"
where what I did previously in my old life was, was good enough.
People loved it. But hey, that may not be the case here, and I may need to learn what people here really want and like and, you know, modulate myself, and that's very uncomfortable, right? So, you know, doing that reading, that thinking, that research that listening really helps you understand how to calibrate and modulate yourself to be successful in your new role, which is all about making the people around you successful.
Like, you cannot be successful in a vacuum, and if you are, you won't be successful too long, and nor will you be fulfilled, nor will the people around you be happy. You'd be amazed how much the people around you matter to your success. So the more you enable them, the more you align to their goals, the better off you're going to be to achieve yours and also to have better goals, goals that matter.
There's no point just having goals that nobody else shares in, in a company environment because it has to be aligned towards something. You've gotta be rowing in the same direction. So all of this [00:15:00] requires, like I said, a shift in identity and psychology, which also means that you gotta ask dumb questions, 'cause pretty much every question that you ask at the beginning when you're starting out will be dumb to somebody or
And I'm using that word quite liberally. But it may be an obvious thing to somebody else who's been around, but very non-obvious to you, and so you're gonna feel a bit silly about even asking. Try and get rid of that. Part of the psychology is to say that, "I don't care what other people think about this question.
Do I know this? Do I not? Can I reasonably figure it out, or is it more efficient for me to just ask?" That's on you to figure that out, right? And then you need to also strike the balance of How much is your past experience really relevant here? How much is it not? How much are you in learner mode? How much are you in sharing my experience mode?
Very hard, especially the higher you get. It's quite hard because sometimes you, you can come across as being the guy who said, "Oh, this is not how I did it previously in my role. This sucks." That's not the way you wanna come across. You wanna share your past experience to be constructive, to say, "Hey, look, this is what I've seen.
This is what we've done in the past. This is what's worked and not worked. I feel that it may not work in this context," or, "I feel that this may actually really work really well." [00:16:00] Or, "Learning from past mistakes, this is how I do it differently." And then listen to the feedback, because in that feedback will be a counterpoint of view that may or may not be valid or, often sh- shades of gray, it could be semi-valid, and that will then inform you on how to modulate your perspective on that because if it's semi-valid, then that means what you brought, your mental model that you brought from your past doesn't quite fit into this world quite right, and that's new information. That's really important, right?
And so lastly,
Self-Awareness & Communication as Core Skills
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Speaker: all of this, guys, comes down to self-awareness and communication, right? I cannot emphasize this enough.
If you're not aware of how you're feeling on the inside, you will not know how to conduct and behave to the outside, right? And this is not just in your personal life, it's also in your professional life.
So if you're not aware of what's going on inside, you can't take action to help yourself when you need it, to self-soothe when you need it, or to push yourself when you need it, like if you need to be pushed out of your comfort zone. And you absolutely need to work on your communication because you know, especially when you're new to a place and you're accustomed...
culture and culture and [00:17:00] culture. Because especially when you're new to a place and you're accustomed to a lot of authority, like in my previous role, I had, you know, almost a dozen people or, you know, nine or 10 people reporting into me directly and indirectly. I was just a certain level of authority in that situation.
And now I may not have that, right, for, for some time. And so in that case, I need to adjust myself to think like, "Well, I'm here to get a job done. I'm not here to you know, replicate what I've done in the past necessarily. I'm here to exceed that if I can." And so you need to change your communication for that, how you work with other people.
I'm not saying I've mastered any of this, and, and I'm pretty sure that every day I make mistakes, but I'm trying to be self-aware enough to say, "Okay, hey I'm falling into this old pattern. It probably doesn't belong here. What do I need to change? And if I change it, what does that mean for me, you know, in terms of my workload, in terms of my internal state, in terms of how I pre- you know, sort of interact with other people, and so on.
So look,
Closing: The Start, Stop, Continue Framework
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Speaker: starting a new job is very hard. I just wanted to share this because these thoughts are on my mind as I write little notes to myself for what I should start, stop, and continue doing, right? So those [00:18:00] are the three ways I try and break down my own behaviors, things I should start doing, things I should stop doing, and things I should do more of or continue doing.
And you may find that framework quite useful for yourself as well, whether you're starting a new role or whether you're trying to invent or reinvent yourself in your existing role and step up to a new level. Anyway, I hope that was helpful and I hope you continue to push yourself and grow as much as you can and give yourself the room and the space and the grace to not feel like you're in control of the situation all the time, but knowing that you can and you will eventually feel much more in control.
You just have to go through that uncomfortable period of you know, taking action despite the anxiety till you get to a point where the actions come from you without any anxiety, right? That's, that's what growth looks like. That's what getting to the next level looks like. Just like being at the gym, you know, maybe a few months ago you couldn't lift a, a 20-kilo barbell or weight or whatever it is, a- and now you can do 25. You know, that's growth, right? Well, hope that helps, guys, and I'll see you next time.
Just subscribe, you know you gotta do [00:19:00] it.
