https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39777223&utm_source=tldrnewsletter

meet 1 on 1 with every member of your immediate team. This of course serves as a “get to know you” meet, but your real goal is to get them to explain their work to you. Have them go into as much detail as time allows on whatever they’re currently working on. Ask followup questions that start with “why” on everything. Have them show you their part(s) of the product, have them share as many docs as they’re willing to (for you to read async later), etc.

  1. No-one’s going to go out of their way to guide you. Esp at smaller companies, the fact that you’ve been hired means you’re joining a time-poor company, and there likely won’t be a formal onboarding process. So…you’ve got to onboard yourself.

Anytime I got stuck on a problem for more than a few hours, I asked the greybeard for a quick chat. He was pretty always willing to hear me out, let me break down my understanding, then rebuild all my faulty assumptions. His time was relatively cheap but his knowledge base relatively valuable, so with him I did deep dives.

where to actually focus in the next 3-6-9-12 months.