Early In Career Software Engineers: Live Panel Recap

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hey folks I'm just leaving the office um it's going to be a pretty long drive over an hour which uh I'm not very excited about but that's okay this is what we uh have to deal with sometimes but maybe I'll get in the fast lane and it'll be all good um I'm not going to go to Reddit and I don't have any pending questions so um I'm probably going to talk about some events from today which are pretty interesting look at this is can you see get ready oh yeah I like that a lot I usually only like German cars but I guess we make an exception um yeah so I'm I'm just like I'm super burnt out it's not changing for at least at least another month um unfortunately and probably only getting worse until it starts to get better and uh yeah I

figured like there is some stuff today that would be interesting to talk about um that's completely unrelated to all the things that are causing burnout for me and it was kind like an enjoyable experience so it might be a little bit um I don't know refreshing for me at least so um I want to talk about uh this panel that I was speaking on today which is pretty fun um so for context um uh I've been doing early in career mentorship at Microsoft for a few years now um so I've been at Microsoft for just under five years it'll be five years in August and um I don't know when I started doing they call it EMC like early in career mentorship circles and I can't remember when I started but um for me it was like once I heard about it I was like

oh man this will be such a cool opportunity because number one um it is something I'm passionate about like I've spent um you know a lot of my career working with interns so really people that are like they're not even in their their full-time career yet and just getting started and uh you know as as a manager being able to help people you know grow in their careers is really fulfilling for me so I'm like this is another cool opportunity where there's people and I totally get it like you join a company and this is your first job and you're like I don't know what the hell I'm doing and like everything's scary and uncertain like you just want to do a good job and like now you layer on all these other things like people are freaking out about Ai and you name it

uh there's a million reasons that people are scared now um and yeah like I just think that for me it's a cool opportunity to be able to try and have a a small part in some other people's careers and um it it really is for me like the sum of all of these little things that I can hopefully try and help with you know if I can help a bunch of people um in a small way on their Journey then that feels good for me like it is fulfilling so um this week for uh part of our org there is a hackathon and they structure a lot of learning sessions and presentations and stuff during the week so um that way you can layer in like if you wanted to attend a session about learning about AI or something else like you can do that

and in this case it was a session for um like basically Q&A for uh some of the folks that lead uh some of the circles they call them circles right little groups for early and career folks so um I got to participate on the panel because I've been doing it for I actually don't know why they selected me in particular but I've done it I've done uh mentorship circles for a few years now so I'm sure there are people have done it for many you know I don't know many more years or at least more iterations through than me uh so maybe I don't know maybe I was top of list maybe I was bottom but I was available I don't know uh but it was a good experience so uh on the panel they had a sort of a range of uh backgrounds and

stuff so you know one of the guys that I was sitting with had been at Microsoft for 19 years and moved from like engineering into product management um the woman to my right I'm just trying to visualize the woman to my right was I think at Microsoft for 10 years um and beside her was a CVP that's been at Microsoft for 29 years um so really cool just to have like um a bunch of different experiences I don't think the CVP participates in the early and career mentorship circles but um you know super awesome that they could invite him into to speak and I figured like in this little chat that I'm doing now just kind of talk about some of the things that came up maybe dive in a little bit deeper into some of the conversations but um a friendly reminder for folks

like if you want your questions answered leave them in the comments um and then otherwise if you would like to be kept Anonymous or write down more you can message Dev leader on social media it's also my main YouTube channel and um yeah let's kind of let's kind of chat through it so um the way that I just want to kind of frame up how this worked right so there was a panel of four of us there were some preand questions that we got to look at ahead of time that they would ask us and then open up the conversation to um The Wider group right you know if there's questions online that were coming in or from the audience we could chat through that with them um but it was cool because we got to you know each of us are offering our own

experiences I feel like we're pretty aligned with a lot of what was being said but um just a good opportunity to hear like you know a different take on it or a different Spin and so one of the things that came up was like where do we start I want to see if I can do it chronologically probably not cuz my brain's all over the place um so I might not be able to kind of go through it in the order that it came up so I'll bounce around a little bit sorry there was I was switching lanes and then a car that was coming up behind me was going significantly faster than they should have been driving so uh I would have cut them off if I didn't speed up fortunately my car is slightly faster than theirs and it was no issue okay

um the how did we start this off there was questions around like okay well we'll just dive into the Imposter syndrome part I think one of the coolest parts of of this panel conversation was there was this like this idea of like um and something I talk about a lot which is like getting comfortable being uncomfortable so they were asking about like um you know as a as someone who is early in their career right like what are some common misconceptions about um getting promoted um you know focusing on your career growth and stuff like that sorry this is actually an earlier question and it's slightly different than the the comfortable being uncomfortable but I'll I'll get back to that and so when we were talking through some of the the common misconceptions um one of the things that I say on almost every single

Vlog came up is like you know people should be doing this and it's really like that uh people aren't they're they're kind of assuming that they don't need to be in the receipt of their their career progression and even this CVP was like remember you know the person that cares the most about career progression or like your career progression is you right like a good manager will help but like you care the most more than anyone ever will so if you're not being proactive about these things like that's a that's a missed opportunity right and you might get lucky that you have a manager that cares but like maybe relying on that's not a good strategy so I thought that was really helpful framing but the the part that that I was saying comes up in almost every one of my my Vlog entries was

like having conversations with your manager right so if you're sitting again framing here is for early and career people if you're sitting back and kind of being like I just hope my manager is going to put the important stuff in front of me and everything will fall into place like yeah you you might get lucky that way but instead of doing that especially if you're uncertain right cuz a lot of people that are early in career they're curious they're like I want to I want to do well in my career like I want to make sure that I'm working in the right direction and it's interesting I find like the the really Junior people and the people that are really senior at least from my experience are having with me the most conversations about career progression and I find that folks that are not super

junior or not super senior um it kind of like uh dies off a little bit and I think it's because they're probably it's not that they're not interested but I think there's probably they understand a little bit more and there's a little bit more um idea about some of the trajectory there but people that are brand new are like I have no idea what the hell is going on what's expected um how do I like how do I just make sure I'm doing a good job and it really came up that was like look you got to be having these conversations with your manager right so um it was kind of cool to hear that from the panel as well it's like it's it's a I don't want to say it's easy but it's a like it is a simple thing to be doing easy

and simple mean different things uh I understand that that could be a hard thing for people to do but the concept of having a conversation with your manager is a simple thing and so I was sharing that Sor I'm going to move over Lanes here I was sharing that from some of my my mentorship circles um you know I'd have conversations with people or sharing some struggles or challenges that they're having on their team or with their manager and um you know totally totally justified why they're feeling like it's a challenge or like they're confused or something doesn't feel good totally justified and we'll be going through it and one of the things that I'll I'll often say is like so like tell me about how that conversation with your manager gone and you know I'll kind of get this silence or like a funny

look and it's like oh so like you know you you have not yet had the conversation with your manager right it's it's one of those things that yeah it's it's probably going to be a what feels like a difficult or uncomfortable conversation right and people avoid this kind of stuff so I'm I'm mentioning this because it came up on the panel especially for early in career folks that like trying to get in the habit of of how you can have those conversations and doing that early will be very very helpful I have a huge yawn oh yeah there he is I could feel it coming and it's one of those things like you keep talking and you're like it's about to interrupt me at any point but we got it um it says 25 minutes specifically of traffic I don't know how long we've been

going 10 minutes or so it still says there's another 55 minutes of driving just a absolute nightmare um okay so on some of the other where other common misconceptions um you know drive your career oh there was like people were asking about impact okay so this is a good one too um one of the questions was around like okay so I keep hearing that impact is what's really going to help me with uh getting promoted and I think that's a valid statement um I think for early in career people it may not be as applicable and even the CVP was like when you're you know early in your career and you're sort of just starting out it's really just like get executing on things right like and I think that's spoton it's like when we keep talking about impact some of the the stuff right

in the beginning is like just get that momentum of being able to deliver you know someone else has probably hopefully done some of the consideration for like you know this is this is important enough work that you should be looking at um it's understood enough work that you should be looking at we think you're capable of it deliver on it right like we need to build the confidence in you we need to see the consistency we want to help you be successful so keep executing and then what will happen is that as you're growing in your career there's like more uncertainty or more un more ambiguity put in into the work you're doing it stops being like hey this is a well understood problem please go execute on it and you'll have more and more like this is a challenge that needs a solution and

please go figure it out right obviously depending where you're working you might have some stuff that's super ambiguous right when you're starting I'm not saying it's a rule but as a as a general guidance right you will likely see more complex more ambiguous tasks coming up as you're getting more SE and then the impact becomes a greater and greater Focus but super early on it's less of a it's less of a thing but what is important and this is like one of the questions I was answering on the panel was okay so if you do want to think about impact and people were like the question was framed essentially like I'm working on a team and I don't think that there's impact in the work that I'm doing like what should I be doing about that because I I keep hearing that impact is important

for me to progress on my career totally valid concern so I started by saying like I would like to challenge the question itself and because the framing was I don't think that there is impact in the work I'm doing the the the reason or the way that I wanted to challenge that was like is it just that you don't understand the impact that it has maybe someone has not told you that right and I think that I think it is really important to understand why you're doing work now there's different ways that you can ask why and if I think if you're genuinely curious I think and I think you should be you should be genuinely curious to understand like you know I've been told that this work is what I should prioritize and what I should focus on but understanding why that's valuable is

really important and so in this case it's like is it just that no one has told you is it just that um you haven't asked or is it legitimately that it's been explicitly said like not a lot of value in this which I would find kind of strange so I think most of the time when people say I don't think that there's value in my work it's because they just don't know yet and that's okay but I would recommend that you try to get that answered so being able to have this conversation with your manager your product owner and understanding why is helpful it's different than saying like why am I doing this like kind of how you ask uh could suggest that you you're implying you don't think it's important uh which can come across maybe not great but if you're more curious and

you're like hey like I I hear from you it's important but I would like to understand the impact um what's the business value here how does it impact customers big yawn God just a long day it's been a long year um I think you should be asking that stuff now um as a manager I would say like if I had people coming to me on my team and they said like hey I would like to understand why this work is important like number one I would first of all I'd be like I feel like I've missed an opportunity because I feel like everyone I would want everyone to know so I would feel like I missed an opportunity so it's good feedback for me to hear like hey I could have done a better job um but number two is like I want people to

understand why I've been in situations like and sometimes it's not my fault like I've joined teams and uh had conversations and basically ended up explaining to someone why their work was impactful and I remember them going thank you like I actually didn't know that so they were working on something that had impact but they no one had ever really explained to them the significance of it so to them it was like I have a work stream I trust my leadership that this is the right thing to do so I'm going to go work on it I'm going to do a good job I'm going to put my head down I'm going to work on it and that's that and again like that's not I'm not saying it's bad I'm just saying like if they if they had known the impact I think that that could

have been a better thing for engagement um depending on their curiosity um you know if someone said here's what we're trying to achieve why maybe that person could say oh now that I understand why you're trying to do this maybe I could even propose alternative Solutions instead of you just telling me what and then I go build it right when you don't understand the why you don't have much of an opportunity or as good of an opportunity to propose Alternatives but I think understanding why can make a tremendous difference with engagement right so if imagine a situation where someone says Hey like you need to go work on this feature and you're like okay I trust you I'm going to go do it kind of a shitty thing to work on but like if you say so and then you're like okay I'm going to

do this work and I should do a good job but like getting motivated to do it is kind of tricky but then if someone explained like hey like you know this work uh I don't know like I worked in digital forensics before so in some cases it's like hey uh some cases literally uh some investigations right it's like hey this would have this type of impact um we've seen cases come up where there's an active case where if they had this feature they would be able to help make progress in their case and they're investigating a murder or they're investigating something with children and you're like holy like this went from being something where I'm like if you say so to like oh man like I'm going to have meaningful impact here now depending on what you're working on that might look different not everyone

is working in digital fix and that's fine um you know but understanding why I think can have a really big um difference in your engagement how do we get in here I got to switch lanes we're running out of room I don't have the insta 360 going but this would be a fun day for it CU I got to get to the fast lane or I'm going to be stuck for years on this highway and you don't want to hear me talking for years I'm sure of it but this Lane beside me is not moving actually probably a bad day for the insta 360 because you'd say sitting in traffic's boring Nick um okay so where did we go from there um I want to get back to like the um the rist taking and stuff but I I got to I got to think

a little bit because I'm trying to switch lanes here and I'm looking for an opening and this guy beside me has really got to speed up I think the truck behind me figured it out thank you okay one more Lane okay we're at least moving um so talking about how did we get to that conversation about we talking about fears um yeah what were some people's fears because that was a question like um for me I was saying one of my fear like when getting started uh was or a a fear in my career was like you know jumping into something that I was uncertain about so the framing for this for me was like you know even a team switch into a new domain um like that's uncomfortable like I don't know about the domain I'm going to be with a new team like

everything about this is like a reset and that feeling that discomfort is scary right like you're in this position where you've gone from being maybe an expert to just totally a newbie now and I said for me like that's been a fear in my career right so even coming to Microsoft uh for me was like I went from building desktop software for digital forensics to managing a deployment team responsible for getting hundreds of services oh to hundreds of thousands of machines across the planet and I'm like I've never done that I've never done that before and they're trusting me to do this oh no and then the impostor syndrome kicks in and you know it it's one of those things that's like you will go through it multiple times and each time I don't want to say it necessarily gets better but you have more

experiences to draw upon where you're like hey like like I have been put into situations where I felt like this before and I came out of that on top right I felt like I learned a lot um and each time it helps me advance in in my career growth and my learning like everything about it ends up being a positive thing in the end despite it feeling uncomfortable in the beginning so I was trying to share that and I was kind of saying that you I was introducing impostor syndrome as part of our chat and um trying to think someone of the other fears were oh um the CVP had a really I think a really cool one um so I'm going to I'm going to butcher his story a little bit I apologize this is the first time I've heard it and I don't

know the exact details but he talked about a situation later in his career where he was saying he had a sort of like this fork in the road for his career and he was given an opportunity to go work on uh a project that is going to have high visibility he'd be essentially promoted into a higher role to go lead this effort and um so very like on paper looks like a very attractive opportunity and um on top of that was getting sort of feedback that like hey you this should be a really good thing for you to do like so not quite pressured into it but like kind of nudged in that direction and then he said the other path was like um not necessarily tied to something that was like a promotion or an obvious advancement in his career but he said you

know between the two I didn't really believe in the first one he's like the product space that I would have to be leading he's like I didn't feel I didn't feel like that was for me so I I don't no his exact wording but essentially along the lines of like I don't believe in that product or I don't believe that I'm going to have um sort of the impact that I would like to have on that versus the other one he was like in my head I have a Clear Vision for that being successful and like me being part of that success and so he said like I I went with you know what might not be the obvious option on paper so didn't go take the promotion path and um he was saying that sort of the lesson from that and like that's a

the reason it's a fearful thing is because there's uncertainty there right like I'm about to go against the grain here like this feels uncomfortable it's it's uncertain but he wanted like the the takeaway lesson there which I thought was really good was like you need to start building up like your viewpoint on things your perspective respective on things and um he wasn't saying like start now so that no one can dissuade you of things he was saying quite the opposite right like you need to be starting to practice actually having your own perspective on things and he said and you should go have that tested um have people like basically get feedback on it and re-evaluate your perspective um but he's like you should have a perspective not just go through your career where you're being told like do this and therefore just follow simply

and you know not ask questions or not challenge things um so I thought that was a really cool Insight where he's like I basically I had my my perspective formed on this I had my viewpoint and no it wasn't in line with what I was being told by others despite you know them being people that he looks up to and and whatever else it was like this is this is my viewpoint I'm convicted on it and I will go do that um in the example he gave he said that the other path he didn't take it ended up working out in his favor because the other path um sort of I think the direction that whatever that product or service was going in uh did not continue on eventually but he's like the other thing that you don't do is like you know because you

have conviction on a you know your your Viewpoint if you know if you're saying no to someone else you don't like go laugh in their face after and say haha like told you so he's like no it's a it's that's not the point the point is that you want to have a perspective that you can continue to to have challenge have challenged and grow and change um so I just thought it was cool that it was like yeah like be able to form your own opinions and like he was kind of telling this audience of like uh very early in career people like you should be doing this right so I thought that was cool um so then we started talking a little bit more about imposter syndrome like I I feel like that was a a key point that was in the talk and

uh so everyone was sharing their impostor syndrome stories and so I'm trying to recall some of them in more detail because I don't want to start blabbing about them and then I'm like I can't remember but um the the gentleman to my left was talking about how um there's this kind of like this common message that came up that was like when you're being and I've talked about this on other podcast episodes uh podcast Vlog episodes my God told you my brain not working um that this idea of like being promoted right um the the expectations go up as your level increases so what you're doing now and like you're you're sort of trying to do the work of the next level so you can get promoted there that becomes the new set of expectations for you right it's not do a good job once

and like great now you got promoted now you can slack off it's like no that the bar is now set there that is the new expectation of your new level so he was talking about this from the perspective I of like early on in his career um and I think this is pretty common for most people right like in terms of promotions and stuff like advancement starts to feel I don't know like it's you get an understanding for it and like but over time it slows down like the rate at which you're promoted slows down so he's like number one he's like don't be concerned about that right because it's sort of the C nature is that like as you're getting uh as you're growing in levels like you will slow down the rate at which you're getting promoted um but this idea of like

I'm going to be stretching beyond my levels expectations to try and do the next level's expectations so he was like I was able to do this for a bit until like it reached a point and I think he was saying around like the principal level for him where he's like all of a sudden instead of being like I'm going to stretch to do more it's like holy am I like am I even cut out for this um which I thought was kind of like a I don't know I thought it was a super interesting take like to be going from I'm going to keep trying to do more do more um and when I say more I mean like of the next level's expectations until reaching a point where it's like I don't know and now he's second guessing himself right like am I cut

out for this am I smart enough for this am I capable of it and so like the impostor syndrome kicks in uh we didn't we didn't get to talk about the specific details of this I guess but the idea um not that it solves the impostor syndrome problem but like if your manager has put you up for promotion and you know to go say to go to principal level and you get it it's like your manager wasn't just like hoping and they're like I'm going to you know they seem like maybe they might be able to so let's just give it to them and see if it works like your manager is very likely you know convicted that you should be able to operate at that level like they have confidence and um cuz it's extremely rare from my experience that people get promoted and

it's like we're hoping that when they're promoted they're they'll do well it's almost always the opposite of like uh we're extremely confident they'll do well at the next level because they're doing it at the next level so so you know something to try and remind yourself when you're experiencing this kind of thing is like look you weren't put in that level by accident right someone really believed in you uh your manager had to go up to bat for you and put you up for promotion in the first place and they're not going to do it they're not going to try to to you know say like I think so and so should be promoted to a principal level or senior level engineer um if they're not feeling confident about that they don't want to look like an idiot and someone's like well why do you

think that and they're like I don't know like uh they they do good work no they're going to be going in prepared ready to sort of fight for you for that promotion they should at least so again it's this reminder that like it's not an accident you're at that level so that was his kind of thing about impostor syndrome was like you know am I actually cut out for this once once reaching that level for him it really stood out I can't remember um the woman to my right I can't remember what her her story was I have another yawn coming I'm so sorry I should probably get to bed earlier tonight um my impostor syndrome story was uh what was it I think just kind of the general sense that I've already shared on this Vlog entry which is like just being put into

new spaces right not knowing um but I tried to be funny in the panel conversation because there's this CVP sitting there with us so he's 29 years at Microsoft he's he many levels above us from the rest of the panel even though I'm at principal level CVP a a few few levels above that um so I said I'm going to hijacked this a little bit and I said I don't mean to put you on the spot but I am I said would you mind telling us like have you experienced impostor syndrome and uh I'm so glad that I had the opportunity like that it kind of played out that way that he was the last person to speak to impostor syndrome on our panel cuz not every question went to every person but I wanted to make sure that he could speak about it and

like I knew I I've never met him before today I knew the answer was yes he has experienced impostor syndrome and I know that or I could say that with a high degree of confidence because most people have and especially people that are very successful uh I think there's a higher likelihood that they have experienced imposter syndrome so I'm like this guy definitely has there's no chance that he hasn't the other reason I wanted to bring it up though was because not that it's a cure or a fix for imposter syndrome but I find that when people see others that have experienced imposter syndrome especially if they um look up to that person right so someone has a CVP it's like wow that's pretty impressive like you have a you know long career at Microsoft you've obviously been very successful like that would be someone

I'm not saying you automatically have to be impr by them and admire them but I mean those are admirable things in general so when you have someone like that where you're like wow like very impressive and hearing them say and yes I've experienced imposter syndrome yes many times I find that that's such a powerful thing and as I'm telling you this you might say I don't really care um and I get it that's fine but when you can hear these other people sharing their experience of imp Oster syndrome I have found that that is uh a very helpful thing because you start to realize like wait a second even someone like that can go through imposter syndrome it's not just me like you know if they're I think that they're they're so great and if they can go through impostor syndrome like wow like starts

to put some things into perspective for you like I said it doesn't solve it or cure it but like I think that it's very helpful and anytime that I've done uh whether it's uh presentations on impostor syndromes or on imposter syndrome Sor or other conversations um I find that if there's a group of people and the more people share experiences about imposter syndrome the more you look around the room and you can almost like feel the I don't know some of the weight lifting off people's shoulders because they're like oh like okay like it's not just me right it's kind of like when you realize that um as you're trying to adult and you're like man I don't really know anything about being an adult like they everyone seems to have their figured out and then you realize literally no one has any idea what's

going on at all kind of like that you start to go hey maybe it's not so bad right no one else knows what's going on they're doing okay okay um so I thought it was really cool that he could share his impostor syr um perspective um what else oh man okay there was there was a really good question that came up in the end um I got about about 10 minutes left in the drive so I love this question and it's uh it's it's going to seem like a bit of a tangent from everything else we were discussing but the whole topic pick up the conversation was what came up in this panel so the last question we got from the panel um was around uh it was from a a product manager and she said um what is like what's your approach or like

your thoughts on like how do we how do we celebrate like our successes if um if there's if the software is never done right like if we're always if there's always one more thing or more things to build or to fix like if we're never actually like done done building stuff like when do we get to when do we get to celebrate or like what are what are your thoughts on that and I thought this was so good because um because I don't think that people think about this enough and it's it's unfortunate and we need to do more of it so the I feel like the unfortunate common reality again it's not like a universal truth but I think it's pretty common is that there's always a ton of work to do right part of that's good because we get to keep our jobs

right so there's lots of work to do not necessarily a bad thing but because there's always work to do and because things aren't ever 100% finished like when is the time to celebrate because a lot of the time we think about celebrating like at the end once we've arrived at the destination right we've done the amazing work now we're allowed to finally celebrate so let's assume that there was a an end right and now you finally get to celebrate the unfortunate reality of that would be that you spent however long working on something and yes you get to celebrate but it's a small a small Moment In Time and when I was kind of responding to this question I was saying like I'll I'll kind of share what my answer was but um there have been times in my career where uh like I definitely

am a workaholic I I love feeling productive I love working on things and Building Things and I feel like if you give me a set of problems and move out of my way if I'm if I'm excited about the problems like I will I will go solve them and I will love doing it um and it's like almost like a problem for me because I will be too focused on doing it and i' said like there have been times in my career where maybe I'm working on things for a year two years too long it's too long before you get to you know air quotes the end of it or you're not even at the end but you find finally like come up for air and you're like you know that you've done good work you know that you've had impact but like if you're

thinking back over the last year the last two years you're like you know there was there was no time to celebrate or to be proud it's almost like you just pressed fast forward like for me that's the feeling of like okay over the last year over the last two years again different points in my career it's like it it's just a blur it's just a blur and now I I have this moment where either I'm celebrating because I've achieved the goal or I'm like just reflecting and being like it's a blur so I said to her I think it's incredibly important that we do take the opportunity to celebrate successes and Milestones along the way I think it's super important said but one of the challenges is that like we can't just say that's our team culture we can't just say it's our team's culture

to celebrate the wins along the way and I said the reason we can't do that is because culture is not a thing that you assign right you you cannot tell people this is the culture and then it happens so I said the way that culture works on teams and organizations is that culture is observed it's the result it's the observed uh you know result of all of these actions that are taken on a regular basis so you don't tell people the culture and then it happens the culture is the outcome so I said I think the way that you achieve what you're you're asking for is like you are the person that needs to stand up and say hey we should celebrate these milestones and then by you doing that and getting other people to do that along the way you create the culture where

that's a thing that your team does but I said I think it's incredibly important to do it because it's so easy to fall into like this call it a trap of like I'm just going to put my head down and work we have to you know I sometimes people I don't think think about it this way but like you have to enjoy it along the way right not every moment's going to be enjoyable I told you already at the beginning of this video I am burnt the hell out I am so burnt out from everything that's going on at work um like I have I was talking about this uh on a live stream or something or on no I think I was doing a Reddit uh red Reddit thre readout from like on code Comm dude and I was talking about like people having

physical implications from from being stressed and I think as of yesterday I started to have my first symptoms of like I actually think that I'm having some not quite medical issues but like I think I'm starting to have some some physical symptoms of being burnt out aside from just being like irate and tired uh or I was like hm like if I if I don't pay attention to this I might have to go to the doctor um like potentially and the the thing is like I know that for me at least I know that there's a Time range on on what's causing me to be burnt out I know that there's uh a line of sight to that um and I think that's one of the differences right is like at least I know that if I didn't you know we're just working through stuff

and it's like you don't have these opportunities to celebrate things like it's uh it's too easy to just get caught up doing stuff so I have to enjoy it along the way not every not every week not every day is going to be enjoyable that's okay um but yeah if I if I if I felt like what I was going through right now did not have a um like an end Insight I can one say with 100% confidence not sustainable uh and I would need to say I I need to change my career like that that significant right because I know that based on how burnt out I am like I I will not be able to operate effectively and I I want to clarify to like I know people have said in like comments and stuff like hey like you know slow down on

the videos then it's fine like no different um because it's not uh it's not everything it's not just doing a lot of stuff that is causing burnout it's doing uh it's doing enough of the stuff that causes disengagement that causes the burnout right so when I'm able to do things I enjoy which feels like it's more rare when you're going through burnout when I can find those things I want to do them right no one's making me film code commute no one's making me do that I enjoy doing it there's stuff at work that has to happen and there's stuff at work that I'm not enjoying currently and that is causing burnout so I think it's important though we have to celebrate the wins along the way as I'm going through this stuff I am trying to make sure we are celebrating wins along the

way because I think that it's critical I know there's a like I said I know there's an end in sight I don't just want to get to the end and say this is the first time that we're allowed to celebrate that we're allowed to be proud not at all we should do that we should be doing it when we hit our Milestones along the way when we have successes so it doesn't just happen on its own though people need to take action to do it right even in my situation like I'm saying I'm only one person and I can try to do that and lead by example especially as a manager and like a you know in a position of leadership to be able to say like hey look I should demonstrate this for other people to see because you know in my opinion what's

cooler than having a manager say to you like hey great job team is like when you have colleagues and peers going hell yeah we're killing it this is awesome when you're hearing praise and like um feed like positive feedback from colleagues and stuff I don't know sometimes it kind of feels like like I can say this as a manager when you have a manager saying great great work team you're like really like is that is that do you really feel that way or do you feel like you're forced to say it and I don't know I feel like I'm I don't want people to think that about me when I say it uh and I think I think one of the reasons why it feels so impactful for me to hear peers talking about that kind of thing is like because you know it's genuine

you know it's genuine when you have people on your team going hell yeah like awesome work uh giving you kudos for something right it's it's genuine and I think that means a lot so very long-winded way to say that uh I I really appreciated that question of like you know if there's if software doesn't end when do you get to celebrate and I think that you should celebrate often and you should try as much as you possibly can to enjoy the process like is waiting till the end um I think will be very very disappointing if you wait till the end to celebrate so I thought it was a very enjoyable panel I am very happy that I had the opportunity to do that um would love to do that again and it was a good reminder that once all this stuff is cleared up

I should get back into the early and career mentorship because I had to take a little bit of a break because of the stuff I'm doing at work so I will do that because it is enjoyable and I've made it home my wife's not home yet which means I'm going to have a lot of animals that want to see me when she's home they don't care about me which is fair I I understand okay thanks for watching I appreciate you being here and I'll see you next time take care