Comment by pas

> How much time is normal for a team/project to get its bearings? (It depends, I know...)

If you mean figure out their process, this can happen incrementally, starting simply and building up as you go, with a team of people who are open to that.

It can also happen that some people come in and want to recreate the fleet of tools and best-practice processes that they know from a different company. This isn't my style, but it's not necessarily a bad idea, if everyone is onboard with that. But their prior experience might not fit the different situation (e.g., trying to do things the FAANG way in a post-ZIRP early startup).

If you mean get their bearings on what they're going to build, I don't know, but it usually starts with figuring out your users'/customers' needs, and the business constraints (e.g., resources, milestones that need to be met for revenue or to get funding, etc.).

If there's a new or unfamiliar technology, there might also be exploratory/learning time with that, in parallel (e.g., there's a bias that you will use certain emerging tech or an approach someone thought of, to solve what you initially suspect is the MVP problem, and you have to play with this a bit, and see what you can and can't do with it, in parallel with figuring out what problem you're actually going to solve for MVP).

> How do you know when people are not aligned or honest,

I'm not an expert on this, but do have some conventions and thoughts, so partial off-the-cuff answer...

Of course, at some point, actions will speak pretty clearly about alignment or honesty.

Before that, a lot of tech workers aren't deceptive by default, even if they're approaching the culture assuming a mercenary environment, and they will tell you straight what they are thinking. Maybe especially more if they think you are straight with them. I tend to think you can discuss and find common ground with these people.

Some tech workers have a "California nice" persona that can obscure a few distinct categories, some fine or innocuous, one of them non-deceptive mercenary (once you start talking with them), only one of them deceptive mercenary.

IMHO, just treat everyone honestly, and they will often meet you there, or often indicate when they aren't meeting you there. If you don't meet people honestly, some people will immediately adapt to that too.

I think if you create an alignment-nurturing culture, and communicate and demonstrate it consistently from very first contact, you will scare away a few people, and onboard a lot of people who either are looking for that, or willing to try this unusual thing.

As soon as you start introducing perverse incentives (e.g., individual performance metrics), or mercenary culture (e.g., why is this option pool so small and have worker-hostile terms), or signs of misalignment yourself, or even just sound like more of the same (e.g., "<we're-arm-fuzzy> <we're different> oh btw leetcode frat hazing bro do you even lift"), I think people will revert to the default pretty mercenary tech industry worker culture. And that's rational of them, because the worker's dominant strategy for a mutually-mercenary tech industry environment was figured out a couple decades ago, for a reason.