What starting a new job feels like right now

I would like to preface this text with an acknowledgment - it's going to be riddled with privilege. I’m well aware that beyond the pool of light I’m bathing in during these “strange and uncertain times” lies a darkness of shattered businesses, hard-working talents seeing their life’s work boarded up, not to be opened in the foreseeable future. I thank whichever divine presence willing to take credit for having not pursued a career in entertainment, tourism, air travel or any of the other industries currently being put on ventilators. We’re enduring an earth-tilting, historical event that could only be truly appreciated from a distance, and I’m beyond fortunate for it to find me on the right side of the job market (for now...) now that we got that out of the way, let's dive in.

Some background - Less than a year ago I, while being of relatively sound mind, left the comfortable bosom of a well established, publicly traded, immensely successful internet company that pretty much made me the professional and individual I am today (I’m not going to namedrop, just look at my profile...) 

I did so with my head held high, leaving on the best possible terms, as I believe you should leave your job when it’s going well. I wasn’t the first person to ever leave a safe, recession-proof giant for a gritty, chaotic adventure in a startup a fraction of its size. 

It’s simple math - your impact on the organization and where it’s headed as 1 in 50 is larger than when you’re 1 in 3000. And so I took the startup gig and had a surprisingly humbling and teaching experience as their Director of Product Marketing. Cut to March 2020 and the world is thrown off its axis, unemployment skyrockets, uncertainty and fear are abound - and you can fill in the gap. I found myself under lockdown, looking for work in the worst possible time to do so, trying to keep it together (all the while my partner in quarantine still being very much employed)

Initially, this text was supposed to be about job-seeking during COVID. But as I started writing, I nearly burned the tips of my fingers off the privilege that emanated from the words I was typing. I could go on and on about the angst of scouring the slim pickings of middle-management product marketing jobs in the Israeli tech scene, and lament the compromises I was mentally preparing to subject myself to (You mean to tell me that once lockdown is over I’ll have to commute for 45 minutes each way? Are you listening to yourself?!) 

In reality, it took me little over a month to find a new job that sits right at the helm of my professional trajectory. And so I hardly feel like as though I've gained any perceptible wisdom worth sharing. Call it a mixture of luck and preparedness I suppose, mostly luck.

Ruins of an Ancient Civilization

I am however, beginning to gain some insights into how it feels to actually start a new job in this year of our lord 2020. I’ll be the first to admit this about myself, and I encourage others to do so as well - for me, many of the contributing factors for satisfaction at work are work-adjacent. The camaraderie, shared experiences, overblown drama, gossip, simply sharing an office with other people... I would usually try and get a feel for the office’s “pulse” before and after interviews. Eavesdrop on conversations, spot cliques, measure the frowns-to-laughs ratio, and factor that into my decision whether to take the job or no.

But you can’t really do that when it’s you, in your living room, staring into a webcam, can you? You can’t “check the vibe” when you’re only “meeting” one person at a time, after which you just… stay where you were. And whereas the application process itself is actually made more efficient from being done remotely, starting a new job is downright surreal.

I was lucky to have started after most lockdown measures were lifted, and a certain number of people were allowed to come in and work from their desk, with me among them. While this surely came as a blessing for parents as they could finally work from their desks unencumbered, the scene that welcomed me on my first day in a post COVID workplace was bizarre and eerie. 

Two people sit in an open space meant to fit 20. Desks filled with personal items, photos, potted plants, left by their owners as they fled for lockdown 3 months prior, now serve as a monument for some by-gone era. Elbow bumps, hand sanitizers, mask-donning weary faces in the elevators, now commonplace features of an office building. As you sit there at your new desk, alone, you find yourself wondering “Who were these people? What did this office sound like when they were here?” as the stark contrast between the world “up until” and the one we live in now becomes painfully palpable.

These people - my now colleagues - are very much alive and well, mostly working from home with some popping their heads in here and there. And indeed, meetings were set, video calls were had, acquaintances were made, working relationships were established. But the sauce - everything that’s peripheral to the work - is now all but unobtainable. It’s impossible to schedule time to gossip, or to have idle coffee, or to grab a seat next to a colleague and work something out. Not to mention establishing friendships that extend beyond the workplace, as that world doesn’t really exist at present. It all feels like “uncanny valley” - close enough to recognize, but also eerily unfamiliar.

Under-stimulation = Over-productivity

However, one undeniable truth emerges - cut down the background noise of the workplace, and watch how much more effective you become. You’re plunged into a myriad of remote management techniques - daily syncs, mandatory status updates and hard deadlines, not to mention the fact that hardly anyone goes on vacation or takes a sick leave - and suddenly you realize how productive one can actually be when one tunes out other stimulants and just focuses on the work. I mean, that’s one of the main reasons I was able to finish this post in one sitting.

I am the last person to hop on the “COVID is a blessing in disguise” bandwagon, but it certainly forces you, for the time being, to sit in your chair and meditatively work through your day, one task at a time.

And those colleagues you don’t share a physical space with? Turns out they’re just as hungry for interacting with a new human as you are.

We’ve only just passed through the eye of the storm, and there’s little that can be said for certain about the future of workplaces. More time will pass still before yesterday’s world is a faded memory we can hardly make sense of. But in the meantime, we can take solace in two things: we couldn’t have been better prepared for remote working, and we value the physical proximity of our colleagues much more than ever.