Fjob Ways Of Working Note

---
name: fjob-ways-of-working-note
description: Prepares the questions to agree with your manager (how they like updates, what urgent means, how long to be stuck before asking, the 1:1 rhythm, feedback style, how you work best) and a half-page note of what you both agreed. Use for "run fjob-ways-of-working-note", "ways of working with my manager", "how does my manager want updates", "how long should I be stuck before asking", "agree 1:1 rhythm", "working style conversation new job", "how to talk to my new manager", part of the Nail Your First Job with Claude Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Ways of Working Note

## When To Use
You cannot tell how your manager wants to hear from you. Do they want a message every time something moves, or a Friday summary? Is "when you get a chance" today or next week? Use this before or right after one honest conversation in your first two weeks, so you stop guessing.

## When Not To Use
If the question is about what you deliver rather than how you work together, use First Goals Draft. If you need to know how everyone else on the team works, Who Does What Map covers roles and owners across the team.

## Inputs
- Your manager's role and how you usually meet (in person, video, chat)
- Anything already said about updates, urgency or 1:1s, in your own words
- What has helped you work well before (study, placements, part-time jobs)
If you have none of this, I start from a standard set of questions for both sides and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
The ways-of-working conversation is a practitioner convention with no single public originator. Its rule is two directions with equal time: your manager's preferences and yours. The failure it prevents: a meeting where only the manager talks, you leave with a list of their habits, and three weeks later you are still sitting on a blocker for two days because nobody said one hour was fine. The note afterwards records agreements only, never your read of their personality.

## Workflow
1. Ask at most three questions: may you use Claude for the follow-up note on your account, under your employer's AI policy, and which Claude account are you in (work-provided plan or personal)? Is the conversation booked? What is the one thing you most want settled? The note holds no confidential content by design; if you want to add anything internal, run Data Check Before You Paste first.
2. Draft your manager's side: when they are reachable, the update format and rhythm, what "urgent" means here, how they give feedback, what they never want to be surprised by.
3. Draft your side, the same length: your best hours, how you take in new context, what helped before, feedback that works for you.
4. List the mechanics to agree on the spot: 1:1 day and length, where updates live, the stuck rule (how long before you ask), and how you share AI use (AI Disclosure Note helps with the wording).
5. After the conversation, turn your jottings into a half-page note: agreements only, dated, in plain words. Anything not agreed goes under "still open", not into the note as fact.
6. Set the revisit points at day 30 and day 90. You send the note; your manager confirms or corrects it.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Ways of Working Note
[Me] and [manager], agreed on [date]. Revisit on [day 30 date] and [day 90 date].
## Questions for the conversation
| Topic | Question for [manager] | My side |
|---|---|---|
| Updates | [how and how often do you want to hear from me?] | [what I will send, when] |
| Urgent | [what counts as urgent here?] | [how I will flag it] |
| Stuck rule | [how long should I try before asking?] | [what I will try first] |
| Feedback | [how do you prefer to give it?] | [what works for me] |
## What we agreed
- 1:1: [day, length, where]
- Updates: [format, channel, day]
- Stuck rule: [time] then [who to ask]
- AI use: [how I say when Claude helped]
## Still open
- [item, who will settle it]
## Decision
I send this note to [manager] by [date]; [manager] confirms or corrects it, and we revisit it at day 30.
```

## Done When
- Both sides have questions of similar length
- The stuck rule has a time and a person
- The agreed section holds only what was said and agreed
- The note is dated and has revisit points

## Quality Bar
- Agreements, never observations about personality or style
- Half a page; if it runs longer, it has turned into minutes
- Unclear points go under still open, not into the agreed list
- No confidential content in the note
- The note records only what you both agreed; you send it, and your manager confirms it.

## Next
Run fjob-weekly-plan (Weekly Plan) to plan the week inside what you agreed.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).