Transitioning
Going through another big transition in my career. This week marks the end of my time at Koddi. Next week is my first at a new place at Ritten. Still doing backend engineering with mainly go.
As I was leaving Koddi though, I had a conversation that really stuck with me. One of the younger software engineers that I helped sponsor when he was first coming on asked me a question that got me thinking.
"What would you change earlier in your career?"
My answer to this wasn't much different than the non-answer of "eh nothing much; what happened happened." However, in typical me fashion, I did turn my answer into a long rambling about things that I feel have helped me. That came to the following:
- be curious
- always be learning something. find things to read (books, articles, etc), projects to try, and new challenges to dive into
- be observant
- this one I find that not a lot of people give credit to. one thing people have said about me is that I often know pretty much everything going on. that depends on organization size and such, but staying up to date on what the product and programs teams are doing is always a plus in my opinion.
- be human
- this is especially true of remote work but is still applicable elsewhere. when there is a disagreement, misunderstanding, or just general misalignment, find ways to hop on a call or get in a meeting. talk directly to people. you will often be surprised by the extra context you gather.
- find ways to push forward
- this one has a sort of double meaning. don't always fall back to the easiest path forward and learn how to utilize momentum in your organization. a large part of this is understanding tradeoffs and how to be super effective with your time. engineers will love to hear that you found a way to push the stack forward on a new project (avoiding the easier path) and product folks will appreciate when you are able to collect quick wins while building towards a greater goal (utilizing momentum)
Maybe some of this resonates with you. But it was really nice to sit back and think about the 8+ years that I have put in. Was especially good to think about things that have really helped me throughout.