Keeping Motivated and On-Track as a Software Engineer (And Dad)!
Arun Shah, SKOOT’s Software Reliability Engineer, chatted with us about what motivates him in the workplace and on a more personal level. We asked Arun a series of questions that varied from when he is most motivated to how he prevents himself from getting distracted while working from home. We wanted to share his responses with you.
When it comes to working style across a day, Arun suggested that although he is productive in the morning, after dinner until about midnight is actually when he works best. I don’t know about you, but I can hardly even make it past 9 o’clock since we’ve been in lockdown!
Before Arun starts work, he has a couple of things to do every morning that help him prepare for the day. Arun gets up at approximately 6 am to pray. He says he can’t go back to sleep after waking up, so he rather works for a few hours before the daily team standup. At around 7:45 am his baby wakes up for her breakfast — he feeds her most days. Shout out to all the dads out there doing the most! A star tip from Arun is also to make a huge flask of tea in the morning and keep it at your desk so that you seldom have to leave for refills. We’re here for the preplanning.
The fact that Arun is very excited about SKOOT’s future is one of his core drivers to work hard. He told us, “I feel like I am helping build something awesome and useful. I am learning a ton about clusters and scalable architecture which also keeps me on my toes!” Within the tech team, knowledge floating is key to good communication and it means that they are constantly bouncing ideas off each other. Arun felt this openness within the team inspires him to keep being creative.
Arun told us that some of his work as a Software Engineer can be a bit of a challenge and at times monotonous, requiring that extra bit of self-motivation! “It’s doing all the additional reporting for the cluster and downtime. I am often fixing and figuring out issues which is the part I enjoy, but the write-ups can sometimes be very same-same and I really need to psyche myself up to get them done to a top standard.” Tell us about it Arun, the only clusters we know about come in chocolate form…
Usually, Arun finds exercise to be a great motivator but says it’s been hard to carry this on since gyms have been closed. We are going to have to get Arun signed up for the weekly yoga classes that the team does — reflection, breathing and a little bit of downward dog usually help clear my mind.
Arun says he has found a really cool tool called Flow, which is similar to Pomodoro Timer (25 minutes on with 5 minutes rest). He also keeps a whiteboard at his desk that has a Kanban chart on it which keeps him focused because gives him a clear idea of job statuses — what’s a priority, in progress, and what’s done. Working in a fast-paced start-up can be demanding and Arun has so much to remember that he says he writes everything down anyway so that nothing slips his mind!
There are 2 key things that really drive Arun, one more career-focused and the other more about personal growth. Firstly, Arun wanted to be seen as an expert in his field. Being recognised for his contributions is important to him and he feels that much prouder about working at SKOOT because of the green ethos and helping out the community. His second biggest motivator is to improve his overall lifestyle. Arun says, “I would love a nicer house somewhere near good schools for my beautiful daughter and hopefully, we’ll have another child at some point.”
A definite commonality that we have found when speaking to people about what motivates them is that even though motivation often comes from yourself, the driving force is largely connected to family, friends, teams and the community.
Next up in our motivational chats with the SKOOT team we have our Head of Product, Mila, talking about what motivates her while working on a forever-changing app!
