Life is soon to change..

Transition from a student to junior software developer and back to a student all in a year..

I joined as a junior software developer at a firm right after my CS undergrad and quit after a year’s work to pursue my masters at CMU.

Its been a roller coaster ride last one year, professionally. Personally too. Meanwhile, I have come to realize that to maintain harmony in both your work and personal space is quite a challenge and requires maturity. The reason I say this is because, it is very easy to compromise on the time you spend with friends, pursuing your hobbies, learning and reading what you personally like and working on your long-term goals. All of these will easily take a hit when a high priority task comes to your plate at work. Honestly, i missed my music classes the day my manager scheduled a meeting to plan out the next few weeks of run up to a conference deadline. I am happy that I stayed on focus for roughly a period of five months that it took to prepare for my GRE and apply to universities even when I had to work from 9 to 7 everyday.

Having worked in a small team with direct visibility and interaction with my technical manager, here is a lesson i learnt

Always have a thorough account of the time you spend at work

One of the awkward situations i faced during this one year at work was when my manager told me that he heard from his peers that I was seen out of my place a lot of time. This naturally made him think that he wasnt giving me enough work to keep me occupied. But in reality, I was just getting better at a particular kind of task i was assigned at that point and finished my work earlier than expected. But the mistake i did was i took frequent breaks and hung around the office instead of just being in the groove and utilizing the extra time for better purposes. My role and tasks were immediately reworked after this incident. This is when i realised that people in your workspace watch you and can form unintended impressions about you. So, stay tuned in to work while in office ALWAYS. Or at the least, pretend to be tuned in :p

Anyway, all this is done now. The next two years, i predict is going to be a time for serious self-reflection. Its going to be that two years in my career that will shape the rest of the years. I hope all goes well :)