First Job Out of College Survival Guide — Post Pandemic Edition

Working from home? Here’s what you can expect. Here’s what’s different.

Congratulations! You received an offer!

You’ve slowly checked off the #adulting boxes and getting that first job out of college was a long time coming.

Maybe you’re wrapping up your last semester and you already have a job or an internship waiting for you the minute you swing aside your tassel. Maybe it’s been a semester or two since you got your diploma, and your job hunting has finally paid off.

Finally, you’ll get to rock that shiny new degree of yours in the “real world!” Your family is unbelievably proud of you. You’re just happy to be done with school forever. Watch out, world! Here you come!

Since you were a kid, you’d been asked plenty, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Maybe you knew exactly what you wanted to be, and that diploma is printed with exactly what your eight-year-old self claimed.

Or maybe you flip-flopped between superhero, astronaut, ballet dancer, movie star, professional athlete and finally came down to earth and became a software engineer. Okay, maybe as a software developer, you did come full circle in your dreaming and became a superhero anyway — that’s just my bias talking.

As you came to terms with being an engineer, you read about name-brand companies, and the perks and the benefits that came with them.

You knew which companies you wanted to work for. You had earned it. You were ready. The free food, the fun slides, the arcades and the sleep pods at work were going to be epic.

Then the pandemic struck.

And the offices shut down. All the fun distractions at work gathered dust.

Even as restrictions lifted, no one wanted to go back. Working from home was the ultimate perk. It became the gold standard. Many workers would leave jobs they held, often taking cuts in pay just for the ability to work from home.

Your new job? Also work-from-home.

You won’t really know what you’re missing

The thing is, you’re probably not even that excited that you get to work from home. Since it’s your first job, you don’t have a frame of reference to what it’s like to actually work in an office.

You probably just think it’s cool to say you will get to work from home, because you’ve heard it’s cool.

It is cool. But only if you’ve tasted the opposite. It’s the same reason people who live on tropical islands don’t dream of island vacations to “get away from it all.”

You’ve heard other people brag about it, and well, you will get to as well.

But for you, working your first real job from home, you will actually get to miss out on a lot of life-changing and life-learning experiences.

You probably finished the last semesters of university having attended several, if not all classes over Zoom.

Meeting people and listening to instruction over a video conference is old hat to you. It’s really NBD to you. You’ve mastered the art of partially paying attention to the professor, keeping up with social media and chatting with friends over Discord.

The butterflies you’ll get on the first day showing up to your virtual orientation just won’t feel the same as they would walking through the door for the first time.

You won’t be able to judge your coworkers’ body languages to see who you click best with. You won’t see whose welcoming smiles are real and whose are forced. Seeing people on Zoom or Teams or whatever just isn’t the same.

You’ll feel alone on your first day.

You won’t get a sense of camaraderie. Or a sense of belonging. Or a sense that you’ve actually arrived.

A normal first day of work, at a first job no less, is usually filled with a sense of wonder, a sense of exploration and exhilaration.

As you click into and out of meetings, you’ll feel disconnected. You’ll go through orientation either as a group or on your own, watching company trainings and filling online paperwork on your own.

Sure, you can get up, grab a coffee, play with the dog, water the succulents and catch a TikTok or two in between Sexual Harassment training and Best Security Practices.

But you won’t have the ability to learn about your coworkers by casually chitchatting over a cubicle wall. You won’t find out that your teammates have the exact same breed of dog and even the exact same succulents.

Typically, as you onboard, you’ll get the frequent visits from your manager asking how things are going. Encouragement and guidance is typically given as the day wears on.

When you’re self-onboarding, you’ll miss out on the friendly encouraging smiles. You’ll probably get the dry chat messages reminding you to reach out if you need help. That’s about it.

The feeling of being lost in the parking structure, the building, and in the office…it’s all part of the first day jitters. It’s all part of the excitement. It’s all part of the memories you’re creating.

Your biggest challenges on day one working from home, involve trying out your new credentials, figuring out which software to use and making sure your video and audio is working. Not exactly that exciting or memorable.

You won’t get the welcome lunch with the team. Instead, you’ll make yourself your favorite avocado toast and eat at your desk. Or maybe, you can squeeze in a quick yoga session. Ah, the sweet joys of working from home.

In an office, part of the challenge of the first day and week is remembering everyone’s name. That kind of goes away working remotely. Everyone in chat sessions or in meetings usually have their picture and full name right there.

How boring.

Before the pandemic, handshaking was a thing. Getting the right firmness was an art. Some places had rules on hugging and other types of physical contact. You won’t have to worry about that! The most common faux pas these days is being on the wrong side of Mute.

Another artform rarely talked about is that of the meeting doodle. Typically, in meetings (with actual people in the room), attendees are prone to doodling. The real skill was to doodle but look as if you were paying attention to the speaker. Working from home, you can freely doodle all you want during the meeting without too much regard for the speaker.

Confession: I used to be a doodler. Now that I work from home and can freely doodle during a meeting, I haven’t. Not even once.

When the day ends, you won’t even get to rush home in excitement with loads of stories of how the day went, because, well, you were home the whole time as was everyone else. They saw you working and from afar, and it probably didn’t look that exciting.

It was just you at your computer, filling out online PDFs and watching training videos.

They even already “met” your coworkers too, as they listened and watched on the side, off-camera.

We won’t work from home forever

After a few months or years, we’ll likely return to working in offices again. Many, or most, companies will probably all revert to in-office structures, leaving workers little bargaining choice when negotiating work-from-home options.

By then, you’ll be a seasoned worker who knows how to navigate your teammates and your work life.

You will have missed out on the first-job-first-day jitters, though. You’ll already know all your coworkers’ names. You probably will already have learned who shares your same love of succulents.

The calls to return to offices have started. Former Google exec, Eric Schmidt, is a staunch proponent of in-office work, even as Elon Musk suggests turning Twitter HQ into a homeless shelter because “no one goes there anyway.”

Whether we fully return, or do so in some hybrid fashion, it seems inevitable that the “workplace” will become a real thing again.

When that time comes, at least you can prepare for the meeting doodle and how to get away with it. There is a learning curve to it, and you will have to learn it on your own.

Best of luck to you.