If you’re starting at a new job at a healthtech company

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New job, who dis

I've had a few friends start new jobs recently. Yes even in this economy, and yes they're all at AI or fake AI companies.

Starting a new job is so exciting, terrifying, and a very unique moment in your time at the company. You're about to make so many new friends, new enemies, and learn entirely new ways knowledge management systems can be set up incorrectly.

Today's question is what are some tips you'd give to someone just starting a new job. Other than punch the biggest person you see to establish dominance quickly.

I'll put my favorite answers in a future newsletter.

A few I usually tell people:

1) Write down all the things you find surprising as you're learning them. You'll be surprised how quickly you become desensitized and start operating in a “that's just how it's done” manner.

But a lot of the interesting ideas will come from revisiting those moments later.

2) You get like a 30 day window where you get to ask any dumb question you want - you should 100% use it. Ask as many simple questions to issues that confuse you as possible. Some particular things you should know by the end:

• What is every single step of the current process your customers do currently? What is every step of your company's process?
• How does your company get paid and where is most of the revenue coming from?
• Who are your biggest customers and exactly what are they buying? Why do customers NOT buy from your company?
• Every acronym and piece of jargon you need to know that will come up in this slice of healthcare.
• The place to get a martini lunch nearby. Just see how they react when you ask.
• Tell them you need to sign up for Out-Of-Pocket's healthcare 101 course starting 7/13, it'll show you're proactive about learning outside of the role.

3) Try to quickly map out the spheres of influence within the org because they're frequently not related to the title of a person. But these are the people you need to go to to get anything done. Spoiler, it is not the person constantly posting in slack and using 🔥 emoji reactions.

4) I got this from someone else but thought it was good - read the primary sources for healthcare rules in your area. You'll be surprised at things people think are legal rules but are actually guidelines, and they're flexible. Though I'm sorry to say that it's going to require reading.

When I was doing clinical trial stuff, it was interesting how many people you'd talk to that would say things like you need paper copy duplicates for everything or all checks have to be done in person, etc. But literally you'll go to the primary source around something like risk-based monitoring and it says explicitly:

“In general, FDA's guidance documents do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities. Instead, guidances describe the Agency's current thinking on a topic and should be viewed only as recommendations, unless specific regulatory or statutory requirements are cited. The use of the word should in Agency guidances means that something is suggested or recommended, but not required.”

If your model deviates from the regular way things are done - you are inevitably going to run into this problem and need some level of explainability and justification. The primary sources are a good place to start.

By the way, it's always good as a veteran to go back to primary sources every so often too.

5) If your company has any sort of name recognition, you should start cold outreaching to people to get networking coffees. You'll have more time to do those in the beginning, people are more likely to answer your emails, and you want to have a “get to know you” coffee before you eventually will be making some asks.

No one wanted to talk to someone from an outofpocket.health domain 6 years ago. Now? They never saw the email cause it went to their corporate firewall so we still didn't talk.

6) This sounds like a joke but if possible, try to get drinks with people you work with. Half of being good at your job is that people actually want to work with you. Take off your whoop band, have like 2 beers, and have a little fun.

Btw if this meme gave you chills you should apply to Knowledgefest, our conference focused on healthcare operations.

We've also done some really good sessions in the past about how to set up an EXCELLENT onboarding experience that sets the tone for how someone perceives your company.

That's all from me today, what are some tips you'd give to someone just starting a new job. I'll put my favorite ones in a future newsletter issue - gimme some less popular ones, not like “come in early and leave late”.

Thinkboi out,

Nikhil aka. “Hasn't started a new job in 6.5 years but giving advice”