How Do You Measure A Year?
One Hanep Year in STORM
This week marks my first year working at STORM Technologies. Some STORMers will be surprised: “it’s only been a year?!” because there exists a time warp in STORM. A quarter can go by so fast. Even a day in the office is short because one moment you’re having lunch and the next thing you know is it’s 3PM prayer already. (Side note: I don’t even understand why people are surprised: time flies when you’re having fun.)
But yes, it’s been a year. And what a year it has been.
In Minutes
In focused minutes. I’ve been tracking my focused time (so nope, this does not include meetings, learning sessions, and discussions) for the past year primarily because of ROWE (Results Oriented Work Environment). I knew that not having a time in and a time out would be tricky for me because I wouldn’t know when to tell myself to stop.
I’ve been using Pomotodo to gauge how long I’ve worked on what and when. I’m not really sure what to do with the data, but whatever I LOVE VISUAL DATA so here are my past four quarters in focused minutes:
I love seeing these charts after a busy work day because they remind me that I got stuff done — yay, instant gratification. Also, working in an open (and fun) office can be quite disruptive of flow so this is what I use to remind myself not to give in to too many shenanigans.
The past year had a lot of focused minutes… fulfilling minutes that moved my projects AND the people I worked with forward. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that I don’t feel like I’ve wasted even a minute working with STORM.
In Moments So Dear
The highlights of the past year, however, are actually the moments in between my focused minutes. The company I keep in the office is a fun bunch. We spend a couple of minutes each day talking about games, exchanging funny stories, and sometimes just being loony like trying to faceswap with a whiteboard drawing.
Sometimes these moments are why I even go to the office instead of working from home. These opportunities to get a witty one-liner into a conversation or to see what makes an officemate a weirdo fuel the playful part of me that needs these sorts of things to remain sane.
Although I can’t say that these are moments I got exclusively from STORM (I tried to bring the same amount of enthusiasm at previous workplaces), I can say that the quantity and quality of moments from the past year are exceptionally closer to my heart.
In Daylights, In Sunsets
When I held a corporate job, I used to save my errands for the weekends or pack them all in a day when I get to file a leave. And in my last job, I got out at such late hours that I barely got to schedule dinners with friends or family. The best part about ROWE for me was being able to deliver “Hanep Service” (a core value at STORM) to people who mattered outside of work.
I’m able to stay at home a little longer in the mornings when I had errands. We used to drop my sister off for her checkups before my dad drove me to the office. I had time to drive a brother to school or to therapy. Daytime isn’t always reserved for working anymore.
Being able to go home before sunset sometimes meant I got to have more quality time with my siblings. Sometimes it meant having time to pick up friends and drive them home. But most times it just meant showing up for birthdays and dinners.
In Midnights, In Cups of Coffee
Because I gave up some parts of my day for my life outside of work, I made up for it during nights. Sometimes though, nights were not enough. Apparently, I have made a hobby of taking in extra stuff for work so I had to pull a couple of all-nighters to get most of them done (evident on the screenshots from Pomotodo above). Whenever I didn’t feel functional, I relied on coffee to get me through those nights. It gave me anxiety, but it also gave me that extra boost to be relentless.
People who’ve known me for a while will say that I’ve always been like this, that this is nothing new. And there is truth in that. But what made the past year different though was that I was not alone. A lot of STORMers were like this too — people who clocked in hours past midnight and showed up the next day with a coffee in hand.
I’m not the only one who has taken a nap on one of the office couches. At STORM, I’m surrounded by people who are willing to give 110% too. Instead of burnout, what I got was more fuel. It was like we were all feeding off each other’s energies. Putting in extra, working just a little bit more — this is the norm in STORM. Sure, we do it because we want to, but it’s also because it’s a safe space to.
In Learnings*
Everything I mentioned up until this point is measurable. What I’ve learned in the past year, however, is immeasurable. No joke, STORM is a bottomless pit of learning. In our job satisfaction surveys, people actually complain that we have too many learning sessions.
I had lunch with our CEO (Peter Cauton) early this year and I told him that for the first time ever, I can’t even make a projection on when my personal growth in the company will start to plateau. There’s so much to improve on. There’s so much to read. There’s so much we can experiment with. There’s so much we can share. And what frustrates me the most: there’s so much I don’t know yet!
But what frustrates me the most is also what excites me the most. This means that I have a couple of more years with STORM just to even inch closer to understanding product, people, business, technology, and data — among all the other things I still have little knowledge about.
Measure in Love
I can go on and on about how I love so many things about the people, the work, and the culture at STORM. But I can summarize it all by saying that I especially love that there’s more to learn from the stuff I love.
(*Okay, this deviated from the RENT reference. Sorry.)
