Behold! An arriviste appears

You’ve managed to get your development team working together well for the last few months. They are creating good work and getting along well with each other. Life is good. You just need that one extra team member.

Then you finally hire someone. And in their first week it becomes clear that they’ve come to shake things up.

Almost immediately they start being critical of the work that’s been done so far. Of the tech choices. Of the code style. Of the product design itself.

They come to you and say that they want to make some big changes, and it’s only Thursday of week one.

What do you do in this situation?

Has this happened to you? Perhaps you’ve been guilty of this yourself in the past (I definitely have never done this. Nope. Never. Not once. Oh no.)

Tomorrow we’ll look at some possible approaches to this situation. But in the meantime, please reply and tell me a story about a time this has happened to you in the past.

It could have been when you were an existing member of the team, the team lead, or perhaps you were the arriviste. Tell me what happened and how the situation was handled, and what you might do differently if it were to happen again.

All the best,

– Jim