My key takeaways in the last decade
Let me tell you what I learned in my journey over the past ten years. I wish I had known these things before to improve myself and contribute to the community.
This article is a compilation of crucial learnings I got in the last decade of my life. Some of you have already experienced or experienced the same, but I reckon some of them might help you in the future. Without delay, let’s jump!
Every human being is unique
Whenever I reflect on my nomad life of moving to different places to work and live (Hyderabad, Kochi, Bangalore, Nuremberg, Ansbach), I think of my friends and their life too. How different is their journey from mine? Maybe with varying comfort or pain, but undoubtedly unique.
We all start at the same point in life and move in every possible direction in this complex world. In that process, everyone makes thousands if not more decisions. That is what makes people unique. They manifest their ideas and choices, good or bad; they have taken many. Next time, whenever I see a human being, I am surprised; they have a different life than mine, with lots of experience, adventures, failures, and wins.
This uniqueness is the biggest reason others are as beautiful and valuable as me.
Women are underrepresented in tech, Sadly.
I know this point will repel many readers from going further in this article, but honestly, I think women are not encouraged enough to take and survive tech jobs. It adds weight to the first point of accepting someone (irrespective of race and gender). In the teams I worked/working with, the percentage of women engineers never went beyond 10%, which is alarmingly low. There are multiple ongoing types of research to find out why this turnout is minor. Still, we can do our part to increase women’s participation.
Whenever I interview a candidate for a job role, I do not roast/load test them but make them feel comfortable bringing their free views to the table. If every interviewer does the same to a female candidate, more women will get offers and thereby contribute to a diverse team. The positive thing is that organizations are actively trying to develop more organic ways to encourage women in the tech industry.
On this topic, I should applaud these women leaders I know (but not limited to) and who are excellent trailblazers of craft:
I honestly don’t feel the situation improved over the last decade. I would like to play a bigger part in encouraging more women into tech in the near future.
Take more risks
Taking more risks is easy to say but hard to implement. Why? Because we are more pleased to live in the comfort of our position. I have seen people who are constantly recognized because they speak their mind, are never shy to put their ideas on the table and strengthen their relationships by thinking out of the box.
Whether it is your career or personal life, if something makes you uncomfortable (in a good sense), go for it. Few examples:
- Baking a never tried cake recipe
- Propose a radical change in a work meeting
- Take an exciting ferry wheel ride (I did that recently)
Re-quoting a famous statement from the web,
“lost opportunities cost more than rejections.”
Taking risks ensures you don’t lose opportunities and therefore limits your loss.
Being part of a community is an art
Being part of a community can mean different things. One can be part of a team in a company or be a member of the family. The latter is easy, as you already know the game’s rules.
In contrast, when you join a new organization, it’s an entirely different clan with unique culture, domain, and even ideology (Ex: Amazon’s customer obsession).
You can follow these steps to mold yourself into a new environment:
- Observe and analyze the environment (Is it dynamic, calculated, or conservative?)
- Be a critic about better as well as inefficient processes, and note them down (you have a fresh pair of eyes being a new member)
- Slowly merge yourself into the new environment by diligently speaking up about your observations with the right people.
- Volunteering to help right from the beginning
The more you help in your career, the more you grow.
Why should I help someone so that they earn the same/more than I do? Because the world is smaller than one thinks, one will bump into another in a surprisingly short time. As in the Hindu concept of Karma:
“Karma is a concept of Hinduism which describes a system in which beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Hinduism
the more you help, the more you grow in your career because you are improving your chances of getting back help exponentially. Similarly, the more you reject, there is a high chance of getting ditched.
The people you help will have more connected people, opening up many doors. Only shortsighted people resist helping others.
Whenever someone approaches for:
- Job referrals
- Career advice
- Mock interview requests
- or any X, Y, Z
I try to help in every possible way. It costs me time and energy, but it's also a chance to build a friendly bridge.
Are you an introvert? Speak more
The current era is a sound stage built for extroverts. As an introvert, I need to work harder to make others hear my opinions, and there are two reasons.
First, in the case of an extrovert, interacting with the environment is natural and easy. In contrast, introverts should go an extra mile to broadcast their ideas and make people listen to them.
Second, people are busy; they don’t have time to ask an introvert how they feel or what plans they have in their minds. Extroverts, on the other hand, help busy people by speaking out loud.
In the last few years, I observed that the more I speak up, the more people turn severe and curious about my thoughts.
I suggest introverts speak more on any given day and make it a habit, and that’s the way to thrive in dynamic environments.
Be open to critical feedback and new ideas.
At the start of my career, I struggled with someone correcting my opinion. That shut down my analytical brain and blocked many learning channels. I would say false pride is a big culprit.
A few examples are I felt terrible about a critical comment on my blog articles or a code review. I couldn’t see the effort others put into giving feedback and additional ideas to improve things. I should have embraced them, but I ignored them due to immaturity and lack of knowledge.
But, I see a clear value in feedback loops now, inside and outside work, and trying to capture every detail and learn from it. A clear sign of improvement now is “I like to see critical comments about the books I authored on Amazon.”
I also got rejected for many job offers before. Instead of turning them into my enemies, I happily request them to give proper feedback about why I failed in an interview. Some companies do, others don’t, but it shows I am ready for critical feedback.
Why be open to new ideas?
The world is not the same in 2022 as in 2012; it evolves at jet speeds, and so does the environment we interact with every day. Replacing an old idea with a new one is constant, and we should be open to it. And also, I feel there is a massive return on investment(ROI) by being open to new ideas. The investment here is listening to others and adopting new ways to work and live, and huge returns will be in gaining knowledge and craft.
Conclusion
I know this article is imperfect, like myself, and I might unconsciously make assumptions and jump to conclusions in a few places. If you see any such points that sound subjective, please feel free to comment. And thanks for reading this article.
Genuinely excited about the next decade!
