No, this blog is not about the World Cup. For as big of a sports fan as I am, I just cannot manage to muster up any interest in soccer.
This blog is about another type of goal — career goals.
As part of my performance evaluation for work, I had to write down my career goals for the next three years. It was tough. I’m so new at this that I’m not 100% sure where I want to go. So I went with very broad answers.
Here’s what I wrote:
Year One: Developer
I’m still starting out. I’m new at this. So being a developer is enough. For the first year, I don’t need to do anything other than write code and develop products. Everyone starts at the bottom, and I’m perfectly happy to spend my first year learning.
Year Two: Developer and Mentor
By year two, I’ll no longer be the new dev. Based on the way things seem to be growing in the dev world, I’d guess that there will be some newer devs starting at my company. And I’d love to have a chance to mentor those devs — help them through their first days (substituting for the onboarding that my office doesn’t seem to do) and be there as a resource for them when they have a question or need some help.
I’ve always been someone who loves to help others, so serving as a mentor for a newer developer would be a great opportunity for me to get a little more joy out of work.
Year Three: Team/Project Lead
This one I’m not quite as sure about. Our tech leads sometimes seem less active on Slack than others (probably because they’re super busy doing actual work). But some of our project leads and more senior developers tend to be active on Slack at 2AM when there’s a problem that needs to be solved. I don’t want that responsibility. I want to be relatively undisturbed when I’m not in the building. I’m generally sleeping at 2AM, and I like it that way.
In an ideal world, I’d like my career trajectory to take me to a position with a lot of responsibility, because I love being in the thick of things and knowing that I can help other people do incredible work. But I know that there’s a possibility that my personal time will suffer if I take on too much responsibility, so I’m hoping to find a good balance between responsibility and life … even if that means that I have to give up some responsibility. (Which isn’t to say that nobody can have all the responsibility and still have lots of personal time … I just haven’t yet found a way to make it work for me)
It was definitely hard for me to think of my career goals, even if it’s just for the next few years. I don’t know where I’m going to be in three years. I don’t even know if I’ll be at the same company. But I do know that I want to continue to learn, grow, and help others learn and grow, and I’m hoping that writing out my three year plan will help me in that endeavor.
And finally … go whichever teams are playing in the World Cup!
