New desk. New people. New everything. And a persistent voice saying 'they're going to figure out you don't belong here.' ILTY is here for the transition.
You wanted this job. You worked to get it. And now that you have it, you're terrified. Everyone seems to know what they're doing except you. The systems are unfamiliar. The culture is unreadable. You smile through meetings where you understand maybe 40% of what's happening.
The imposter syndrome hits immediately. They hired the interview version of you—the one who sounded confident and capable. Now they're getting the real version, the one who has to Google basic things and ask the same question twice. Surely someone will notice.
Nobody talks about how lonely starting a new job is. You left behind relationships, inside jokes, and the comfort of knowing how things work. Now you eat lunch alone, don't know where to find the stapler, and spend emotional energy just existing in an unfamiliar environment.
ILTY is here for the transition. Process the imposter syndrome, the overwhelm, and the loneliness of being new. Because you're supposed to be excited, and you are—but you're also quietly terrified, and that's worth talking about.
Being new is disorienting by definition. You're not slow or stupid—you're learning an entire context from scratch. ILTY helps you calibrate expectations for yourself.
The voice saying you don't belong is loud right now. ILTY helps you examine whether it's providing useful information or just recycling old fear.
New people, new dynamics, figuring out who to trust. The social dimension of a new job is exhausting. Process it so it doesn't compound the professional anxiety.
You might miss your old job, your old team, your old competence. Even if you left voluntarily, there's a loss. Acknowledge it.
The first weeks are intense. ILTY is available each evening to process what happened, what confused you, and what you're dreading tomorrow.
We want to be clear about our limitations:
Most people say it takes 3-6 months to feel truly comfortable in a new role, and up to a year to feel fully competent. The first few weeks are the hardest. If you're comparing yourself to colleagues who've been there for years, you're not making a fair comparison. Give yourself the same grace period you'd give someone else.
Almost certainly not. People who've been at the company longer have simply normalized their environment. They felt exactly like you do when they started. New job anxiety is nearly universal—it's just not something most people talk about openly. You're not uniquely unprepared.
It's way too early to know. The discomfort of being new feels exactly like having made a mistake, but it's actually just the discomfort of learning. Give it at least a few months before evaluating. If the anxiety persists well past the transition period, then it's worth examining whether the fit is wrong.
ILTY is free during beta. Start a conversation and see if it helps with what you're going through.