After years of lectures, exams, and projects, you’ve finally done it: you’ve landed your first job as an engineer or data scientist. The hard part is over, right? Not exactly. The transition from university to a large corporate environment is a culture shock, and there are unwritten rules that no textbook can teach you. This is the stuff I wish someone had told me on day one.

1. It's a Social Network (And Yes, It's Political)

The first thing to understand about a big organisation is that it's a complex human system. "Politics" isn't always a dirty word; it's the reality of how decisions get made and how resources are allocated. Your technical skills are your ticket to the game, but your connections are how you play it. Building good relationships with your team, your manager, and even people on adjacent teams is not just "networking"—it's essential for getting things done. Find allies, be reliable, and make an effort to understand what others are working on.

2. Your Work is Useless Without Alignment

At university, you own your project from start to finish. In a large company, your project is one small cog in a gigantic machine. You can build the most brilliant feature in the world, but if the team that owns the API you depend on doesn't support it, or the marketing team doesn't know how to announce it, your work goes nowhere. Gaining alignment from other teams and stakeholders before you write a single line of code is often more important than the code itself. You can't get anything significant done alone.

3. Honest Communication is Your Best Tool

The corporate world runs on expectations. Your manager, your teammates, and your stakeholders all have expectations of you. The best way to manage this is with honest, upfront communication. If you're struggling with a task, say so early. If a deadline seems unrealistic, raise the concern with data to back it up. It's not about complaining; it's about being a reliable partner. This transparency builds trust and allows you to set achievable goals, which is far better than burning out trying to meet unspoken (and often impossible) expectations.

4. Efficacy and Maintenance > Cool and Complex

This one can be tough to swallow. At university, you're rewarded for using the latest, most complex models and architectures. In business, the rules are different. A simple, understandable logistic regression model that the whole team can maintain is often infinitely more valuable than a complex neural network that no one understands. Efficacy, explainability, and maintenance are more important than complexity and, at times, even raw performance. While this doesn't mean you'll definitely do less interesting stuff, it's very likely that the nature of "interesting" will change. The challenge isn't building the model; it's building the right, most sustainable model for the business problem.

5. Your Work Doesn't Speak for Itself

Finally, the "meritocracy" myth. The idea that simply doing good work will get you noticed and promoted is, unfortunately, incomplete. Visibility matters immensely. I'm still early in my career, but even from my inexperienced vantage point, I can see how good relationships and positive exposure to management can make a massive difference. This doesn't mean being boastful. It means you need to advocate for yourself: volunteer to present your work in a team meeting, write clear documentation for your projects, and ask thoughtful questions in larger forums. Make sure the people who make decisions know who you are and the value you're bringing.

A Final Thought: Your Authenticity is Your Edge

So, you need to understand politics, build alignment, communicate clearly, and make your work visible. It's easy to read this as a guide to becoming a conformist corporate drone. But that would be missing the most important point.

As AI gets more prominent and handles routine tasks, the value of pure execution will decrease. The most valuable human contributions will be the things AI can't do: intuition, creativity, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. Being proactive and proposing ideas that go against the grain is not a risk; it's a necessity. Diverse opinions are what make companies successful and prevent them from stagnating.

So while you learn to be a good teammate and navigate the system, don't lose your authentic voice. If you see a broken process, suggest a fix. If you have an unconventional idea, build a small proof-of-concept to prove its worth. In the coming years, your ability to play the game will get you a seat at the table, but it will be your unique, challenging perspective that proves you deserve to stay there.