Thoughts of a "Nerd"

I’ve battled OCD since I was in 5th grade and had three “outbreaks”. During my latest battle, my therapist at the time used exposure therapy to help me overcome my fears. I hated exposure therapy. It was uncomfortable, scary, frustrating, and demeaning, but it worked. Honestly, not only did it help me build the skills to overcome my compulsive thoughts, it’s made a significant difference in my career. 

My therapist once told me about a guy that would stand outside Target and ask absurd questions just to get rejected. It sounds ridiculous but in a way that makes sense. If one of your fears is being rejected by a person, company, etc. and being rejected over and over again in a short period of time, you’d become immune to it pretty quick. Now, you may not be diagnosed with OCD but I think the majority of people have fears that impact how they respond to situations (and at times to the point of avoiding a situation entirely). And I’d guess that a lot of people are doing it subconsciously. 

If you aren’t ever getting rejected or failing, you aren’t taking enough risks and you aren’t learning. This does not mean go tell your boss that’s he/she is horrible, don’t quit your job without a backup plan, but try the things that could lead to different opportunities. Like Wayne Gretzky (or Michael Scott if you’re into the Office) said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Pushing your boundaries (to the point of failing) may enlighten you on what you are capable of and what you can handle. 

Here are some ideas:

Write a paper

Ask to present your experiences for one of your past professors’ classes

Ask for a raise/Negotiate your salary

Present at a conference

Start a new project

Start a side business (i.e. consulting, design, etc.)

Learn a new language (computer language or spoken language)

Volunteer for a non-profit

Tutor/Teach a class

Bring up an idea to your boss that makes something more efficient, your job easier, new product, etc.

Here are some of my favorite quotes about failure:

“I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” - Thomas Edison

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new” - Albert Einstein

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly” - Robert Kennedy

I've worked fully remote for the last 5 months and then 50% or more remote for the last 2.5 years. Remote work can be both helpful and hurtful for the work life balance and at times it is difficult to stay motivated. Here are some of the things I've learned so far to make working remotely easier: 

Finding Your Work Space I am an odd combination of introverted and extroverted. Where I am most productive when I’m working alone with head phones in, in a loud coffee shop. Something about being around other people but not interacting with them, I can put my head down and work on the same software program for 12+ hours. If I'm at home I get to spend time with my zoo but it's easy for my mind to drift and the day to creep by. Being out of the house for a few days a week also helps with the work life balance. I’ve noticed it’s hard to relax in the same area that I work (so having a dedicated home office is ideal if you don’t like coffee shops or libraries).

Use the Tools You Love  I get more motivated to work when I get to use the tools that I love. For example, I'm a Mac girl, where if I’m programming Python, Full Stack, or Java in Sublime, and writing up documentation in LaTex, MarkDown, or AsciiDoctor I'm in my happy place. Picky, but there is something to be said about getting the flexibility to work in a way that makes you most productive. From a business perspective this can be tough. During my work experience, I've been forced to use a Windows laptop and either PuTTY into a Linux host or have an entirely separately laptop that has Linux on it with little variety of text editors. This can be a cost effective option, if you do it right, but allows little flexibility for software engineers.

Work During Your Optimal Times Knowing your most productive time during the day can be an art form in and of it self. For instance, I seem to be the most productive when I program between 0630 and 1400 and then I like having meetings after that. I believe companies are getting more flexible, where they allow you to work when you are most productive but still have quality communication skills and processes, allowing the early birds to work with the night owls. That being said, I’d suggest putting a lot of thought into your schedule and sticking to it. Working from home, it is easy to allow your schedule to slip, but boundaries can be hard to keep while working remotely and I believe it makes the work life balance more stressful and harder to maintain if you consistently work very early or very late (or both).  

Split the Love and Hate It can be difficult to stay motivated if you aren’t enjoying the tasks you are working on. If possible try to split the things you love with the things you dislike to keep your motivation up. If this isn’t possible, try to take a different perspective and look at the distasteful tasks as learning opportunities. 

Every Sunday, my folks would get crotchety. They used to call it the "Sunday Blues" because they were dreading going to work the next day. My significant other was the same. We've been together over 2.5 years and everyday I ask him how work was, the first time I heard that work was "good" was last week (when he started a new job). When I was in college, I remember asking someone a few years ahead of me why he was getting into the field, he said for the money. He was probably only 21 or 22 at the time and I remember thinking that's a really long time to be unhappy for money. It is astonishing how many people with or without degrees accept jobs because they are jobs. I am thankful that I can be a software engineer. And although the money helps with student loan payments, payments for a reliable car, food on the table, and I can support myself without any help, that isn't why I got into software.

Did you know that "Engineering" stems from Latin ingenium, meaning cleverness, and ingeniare, meaning to contrive? (source) Honestly, that summarizes my love for software. I love problem solving and thinking creatively which makes me very picky when it comes to which projects I work on. I would hate converting Fortran to C or optimizing a piece of software just to appease someone's impatience. I love my field because I get to solve problems no one else can solve using software. I get to make a difference, constantly learn, and think out-of-the-box.

It’s interesting to see the reaction people have when they hear an inexperienced engineer’s rank when they are working on cutting edge technology. Some have the wonderful reaction of “it’s great you’re doing this at an E1 level!” but I’ve also heard “why are they having you work on this? I know someone with 15 years of experience that should work on it instead!”. For the people, who have supported those with less experience I applaud you. For the others, I implore you to think about a few things:

To be experienced you need to get experience

No one wants to call their own baby ugly, so why not have someone take a look at it with so little experience that they ask questions no one else knew to ask? You might be surprised what can happen. (It’s the same idea behind why people hire a non-technical person for quality assurance ;)). 

If it’s a problem that has never been solved, it may be time to look at it through a different pair of glasses

Those points being said, there needs to be a balance. If you hire an E1, with no experience in software at all and no degree, to build an innovative solution to the insecurity of embedded protocols, you’ll need someone to help with the software. However, that does not mean that the E1 is not a valuable asset to the project. 

I once asked my boss why he only hired 4 interns to work on an avionic security research and development project. His answer was that we thought about the problem differently. I also talked to him about why he asked me to lead a tech outreach program as an E1. He said it was good experience, he knew I could handle it, and he told me he’d correct me if I went to far astray. 

I was told recently that many companies are taking on an interesting approach to pay grades. They don’t use them. Instead, everyone is a software engineer, or everyone is a cyber security engineer, etc. This way people distinguish themselves from the masses by showing their creativity, initiative and drive instead of how many years of experience someone has. Which from one perspective correlates to similar attributes of drive, knowledge, and creativity. However, I’ve known a lot of lazy, in-the-box thinkers that got to E5 positions simply by floating by.