As someone experiencing a job change for the first time, my first week genuinely felt like a whole new journey — a week where everything was unfamiliar and new. I still have a long way to go, but I wanted to put it down on record, so here are my personal experiences and perspective from my first week at Coupang.
HR ran a concise, tightly packed two-day onboarding program — a quick office tour, basic system setup, and various mandatory training sessions (disability awareness, workplace harassment prevention, discrimination and misconduct, etc.). It was genuinely lean and well put together.
Two things stood out. First, 1-on-1s happen extremely frequently and felt very systematic. Second, leadership principles are emphasized heavily — not just as slogans, but visibly and consciously applied to real decisions and day-to-day ways of working, which I found very positive.
Even though the business operates in Korea, it’s ultimately aiming for global business and is listed in the U.S., so senior leadership is almost entirely non-Korean, and many of the leaders I work with are also foreign — an environment where English is simply unavoidable. Speaking and thinking in English during week one was genuinely tough at times, but it also made me think that if I can handle it here, I won’t have any trouble doing business in English anywhere.
The work environment itself is very free but extremely dense. Nobody seems to care where you work from, and it’s common to see people with laptops open, talking work in lounges, cafes, even the cafeteria. That said, expectations for both process and outcomes are high, and while the workload is intense, it also felt highly systematic.
I’ve always lived close to work in the past, but I’m now spending about 1.5 hours each way commuting, which cuts significantly into my available hours in a day and takes a real toll on my energy — something I’ll need to think through. On top of that, I’ve had to rebuild my whole morning routine, which is a new challenge in itself.
That’s my week-one retrospective as a Coupang newbie.
#Coupang #Coupang #newbie
