Having been in the IT industry for 8 years now, I gained numerous invaluable experienced in terms of learning how to survive. Most of my time working was just learning how to deal with people and avoiding avalanches that could wipe out most normal people's careers. From this I've come up with some suggestions on dealing with the first 6 months of a new job that I'd like to share with young professionals:
1) Do more listening than talking initially. For established companies, this step is critical because you have to learn how to navigate the organization's structure. Learning the who's rather than the what's are equally, if not, more important than anything. The reason why is that people in IT have peculiar personalities and can be quite eccentric. You want to avoid stepping on people's toes because people can spread rumors around the organization that can permanently damage your reputation before you even have a chance to get started. Just learning what's around is important to doing your job.
With regards to systems and such, you want to quickly familiarize yourself on the code base, the servers, and the organizations affected by those things. You also want to know the history and people supporting and using it. Make it a point to take good notes in these regards so you're not caught off balance, especially in places which are high paced.
2) Avoid being pro-active. What?!?!?!?!? Keep a low profile until you feel comfortable navigating systems and people. Sometimes people want to spout off their opinions at every opportunity. When you're young this might be a natural tendency, especially if you see many opportunities in an organization. I've found that taking initiative early on really implies stepping on veterans' toes. Those people worked hard to establish themselves and hate it when some punk kid off the street starts telling them how to do things. In a small company, this might be okay. In a large company, expect to get squashed.
3) Always keep a low volume on your voice in the office. The less people who can hear your conversations, the better. People have good hearing and tend to be busy bodies. Avoid letting people's natural bad habits spread unnecessary rumors about you.
4) Watch out for people who are rumor mongers. It's people's natural inclinations to express their opinions on everyone or things in the office. When you're starting out, again listen to everyone before forming your own conclusion. I've been in situations where people would see me as a pawn for their political gain by attempting to manipulate my ego in doing some chore for them. In turn, I never became a hero for anyone but actually would end up hurting myself and my boss.
5) Respect your boss above all else. Hopefully, when you did your initial interview, you felt some form of chemistry between your boss (and your potential coworkers). Otherwise, there shouldn't be any reason to accept your job, right? But you need to get along with your boss because this is the person who will give you days off, raises and generally protect you from the wars in the office. If someone else attempts to give you extra assignments, tell them to use your boss as a pipeline.
6) Never accept work from anyone else except your boss (or unless your duty is explicitly outlined to handle). It doesn't help anyone in the end, especially yourself.
7) Forget being a hero. Especially forget being a hero programmer. Well, at least until you've mastered the place, or unless you are a god programmer. Those are rare so for the layman programmer, just follow this advice and handle what you can handle.
8) Don't expose your eccentricities too soon. You want people to gradually understand you, not form initial prejudices against you. Programmers tend to be a weird bunch just by the sheer nature of the desire to stay in front of a computer at all times of the day (minus sleeping). Let people get to form a positive opinion about your work, not your personality. It'll help you for getting good projects, bonuses, raises and other things since professionalism can easily be thrown out the window once people form certain categorizations of you.
9) Aim to survive for at least 6 months. In Japan, some companies force employees to have 6 month trials. In America, it's usually three months. Keep that focus present as if you were going to be fired tomorrow. You want to make sure that you're a keeper.
10) Under promise over deliver. Again, this goes back to my theory that you should only do what your job description and boss tell you. In fact, you should aim below that. Aim at 40-60% of what you think you can deliver and let that be your bottom line when giving things like estimates or quality expectations to project managers, leads, bosses, etc. Don't promise God when you can only deliver George Bush.
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