In our career, when we change jobs, or companies, it is common not to master all the aspects of this new function. This is why it is necessary to keep in mind certain methods in order to best facilitate our training and the transition. When I became a devops I had to face these same difficulties and I decided to talk about the methods that helped me.

Agree to start from scratch

When you take up your position, most of the time you actually know very little about it. The normal first reaction of most people is to believe that they are in complete control and that they have been hired because they already know all aspects of their new role. However, this is not the case and it is important to keep this in mind. The first step to training well is to accept that we don’t really know anything about our future job. This may seem frustrating but it allows you to avoid starting with bases that may be erroneous and that could mislead you. Imagine going from developer to manager. You will tell yourself that you know how a developer should do his job and therefore you are capable of leading a team of developers. However, the mechanisms of communication, time management and the capacities of each of your employees are unknown to you. Because most of the time, you were on the other side of the “barrier”. Your manager would assign you tasks to perform, track them, and coordinate the efforts of the entire team. You were never given the opportunity to do all that he did. In summary, it is not because you know a trade and that you excel in it to the point of being offered a promotion that you will immediately excel in this new position.

Learn to learn

In the performance of your new duties, you will regularly be confronted with a situation to which you have no answer. In times like these, you have to learn how to learn. What does it mean ? Well, that means that you will have to regain the ability to document yourself, to learn, and to experiment. It’s a skill that most people forget when they graduate. However, it is essential if you want to progress in your career. Knowing how to learn and apply new skills is vital to advancing professionally. Most often, the fear of not knowing how to do things pushes workers to improvise or perform their task poorly. If you are able to put aside your ego and take the time to reclaim this skill of learning, well, your professional skills will never stop progressing, at the same time dragging your career behind them. accept help In the same way that you will have to learn how to learn, you will have to accept the help of your collaborators. Indeed they are an almost inexhaustible source of knowledge and skills that could be useful to you. It is neither more nor less than a source of additional training. For example, if you arrive in a new team of developers, you may know how to code correctly, it is not said that you know all the subtleties and working methods of this team. Rather than improvising or searching on your side for hours without success, try asking for help from your collaborators instead. They will almost always be happy to help you and your involvement will never be frowned upon. Asking for outside help is not a sign of weakness or a sign that you may not be qualified, on the contrary, it shows that you are invested and want to do things right.

Take the time to train

Now that you know how to learn and are not afraid to ask your colleagues for help. you have to accept that training does not happen overnight. Even for the simplest of tasks, if you don’t know how to do it, learning won’t be instantaneous. The most precious resource in a company is time, of course, but if you take the time to train yourself properly, it will never be wasted. This may seem counter-intuitive because while you are training you are not working. but it’s something you have to know how to put behind you. as I said above, you have to know how to accept starting from scratch. the time you spend training in a skill will pay off when the task requiring that skill comes up again. You won’t have to reform again. In addition, when a person performs a task for which he has just been trained, he will tend to apply the latest good practices required by this task and mark the way to establish these good practices in the company’s methods. Getting into a good habit following a training for which you took your time will establish a new standard of quality and this will be appreciated by your colleagues.