Chapter 10 of 12 · Months 2–4
How am I doing?
- How do I know if I am doing well?
- My manager has not said anything. Is that good or bad?
- What should I learn next?
Around month two or three, many new starters wonder whether they are doing well. Silence from a manager can mean things are fine, or it can mean they are busy. Do not guess. Ask.
Ask for feedback directly
- What is one thing I am doing well that I should keep doing?
- What is one thing I should do differently?
- What would you expect me to be able to do alone by month six?
Ask these in a regular one-to-one, not in passing. Write down the answers and come back to them a month later.
Track what you can do alone
| Task | Needed help | Did with a check | Did alone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Triage a common alert type | |||
| Write a clear escalation | |||
| Find the right log for a question | |||
| Explain a finding to a non-expert |
Fill in a table like this with the tasks from your own role. Move each task to the right as you go. It is a far better measure of progress than how confident you feel on a given day.
The question you might not ask out loud
I made a mistake last month. Has that ruined my chances?
Almost certainly not. Mistakes in the first months are expected. What people remember is whether you owned it, told someone quickly and learned from it. If you are worried, ask your manager directly how they saw it.
Picking the next skill
Look at where you most often need help. That is your next learning target. It might be a tool, a type of investigation, scripting or writing. Learning what your job needs now beats chasing the next cert for its own sake.
Rule of thumb:Keep a running list of things you did and helped with. When review time comes, you will not remember them otherwise.
Remember that confidence and competence grow at different speeds. Many people feel least sure of themselves just as they are getting good, because they now understand how much there is to know. If your table shows tasks moving to the right, you are making progress, whatever your confidence says on a bad day.
If your manager is hard to pin down, send a short written update every couple of weeks: what you worked on, what you learned and where you got stuck. It takes ten minutes, it gives them something specific to respond to and it builds the record you will need when review time comes.