Before day one

What to check, set up and learn between accepting an offer and your first morning, so you arrive calm and ready to learn.

Also called offer letter, appointment letter

What: The signed document that sets your role, pay, start date, working hours, leave, probation, notice period and the rules you agree to follow.
Why: It is what counts if anything is disputed later. Reading it before signing is the only point where changing a term is easy.
Example: Before signing, list the pay, start date, probation length, notice period and any bond or training clause, and compare them with what you were told on the call.

Watch out

Signing on the day it arrives without reading it, then discovering a bond or a long notice period months later.

Also called non-compete, moonlighting clause, IP assignment, bond

What: Contract terms that give the employer rights to what you create, limit where you work after leaving, restrict side projects or ask you to repay training costs if you leave early.
Why: They affect your open source work, freelancing and your next move. Enforceability varies a lot by country, so understand them before you sign.

Watch out

Assuming a clause is unenforceable without checking local law, or quietly breaking a side work rule you agreed to.

Also called job scam, offer scam

What: A fraudulent offer that asks you for money, bank details or a paid "training kit", often after a chat-only interview with no video call or company email.
Why: Graduates are a common target. A real employer never charges you to join or asks you to buy equipment with your own money for reimbursement later.

Watch out

Paying a small "registration" or "visa processing" fee because the offer letter looked official.

What: Learning what the company sells, who its customers are, how it makes money, its main competitors and, where public, its tech stack and team structure.
Why: It gives the first weeks context: you understand why tickets matter and can ask better questions from day one.
Example: Use the product as a customer for an hour, read the last few blog or engineering posts, and write down three questions about how the product works.

Also called 2FA, MFA, password manager, two-factor authentication

What: Two-factor authentication on every work account, a password manager, a locked screen when you step away and never reusing personal passwords for work.
Why: New joiners are a favourite target for phishing because they do not yet know what normal internal messages look like.

Watch out

Approving a login prompt or sharing a code because a message claimed to be from IT during your first week.

Also called pre-start learning

What: A short refresher on the basics of the stack named in the job description, Git and the terminal, rather than trying to master everything before you start.
Why: Teams expect to teach you their system. Solid basics let you absorb that teaching quickly; cramming new frameworks mostly adds stress.

Watch out

Spending the notice period on a dozen tutorials and arriving tired instead of rested.

Also called impostor syndrome

What: The feeling that you were hired by mistake and will soon be found out, very common among new engineers in their first months.
Why: Naming it helps you act anyway: ask questions, ship small things and let evidence replace the feeling over time.

Watch out

Hiding confusion to look competent, which makes you slower and the feeling stronger.

Go deeper