The best way to integrate in a new team

As someone who has either worked in distributed teams, or as a remote contractor, I know it can be difficult to integrate in a new team.

There are many challenges you have to face. Whether it's poor onboarding, lack of clear communication or direction, or a difference in time zones, it's hard to escape the feeling that you're not really part of the team. If not handled properly, this can lead to impostor syndrome, or a "us vs them mentality".

So what can you do to avoid this if you've just joined a team?

1. Avoid communicating through text only

This is especially important in the beginning.
Text is the worst form of communication, by far.

I know, I know, we all hate being stuck in meetings that seem to go nowhere, or have no value to us. But try to get as much face time with everyone as possible. Have a one-on-one introduction with everyone in the team, from the client(if possible) to the intern. Try and get to know the people you're working with, where they see the project going, what issues they are dealing with right now, or what problems they think might be coming in the future.

If you communicate only through text, there is a lack of context, tone, and body language. There are only words on the screen, and if the person you're talking to doesn't know you well enough, they can take things the wrong way.

I'm not saying that you should jump on a video call every time someone asks you to change a border color in CSS. But if requirements are unclear, or you need to explain something to another team member, you should use every tool at your disposal to make it easier to understand each other and push the project forward. Your team members will thank you for reaching out, and feel more connected to you.

2. Use screen recordings

I promise you, your clients love it when you keep them up to date on what you did. Creating a screen recording and walking them through a feature you just implemented is going to make everyone feel more included in the development process, give you quicker feedback, and make you more visible to the rest of the team.

As a bonus, you will also catch a lot more bugs before creating PR's, because you will basically be doing QA on yourself.

Your colleagues will also love it if they ask you to explain something, and instead of writing paragraphs of text, you just send them a screen recording, and all they have to do is press play.

This is especially useful if you are in separate timezones. I have actually gotten more higher quality feedback on screen recordings like this, then on live demos. Probably because people can watch and comment on it multiple times, at their own pace.

I use the scre.io chrome plugin, since it's the easiest to use, and convert the recording to .mp4 if necessary.

3. Take control of your tickets.

I know developers dislike managing tickets (almost as much as they dislike meetings that could've been emails). But if you can help your team organize the work better, they will be forever grateful to you, and you will be able to impact the project on a higher level.

If you can break features down into small tickets that are easy to implement, you can avoid merge queues, PR's being stuck in review hell for weeks because of unclear requirements, or implementing the same thing multiple times. Your project manager will like you because you'll be helping them out, and your QA team will love you even more if a clear Acceptance Criteria is provided with every ticket.
You are making everyone's life easier, and as a result everyone wins.

In conclusion

Remember, you are working with people. If you help make their lives easier, or if you at least try, they will appreciate it and help you out. Building trust may take some time, but a team that trusts and helps each other, is a great team to work in.