Job Reflection: 5 Months

Working and school are quite different. Now passing the five month mark, I take some time to reflect on my experiences so far.

So I’ve been at my job for 5 months now. A lot has happened, and I think I can start talking about the things I love about my job, and the things that I don’t really like, and the things I need to work on.

First, I like the autonomy of my job. By that, I mean being assigned a task, and being able to work on that task at my own pace (dictated by a certain priority, of course), and having other things to do when I’m waiting for things on my current task. At the same time, that’s a double-edged sword.

Right now, I’m tasked with one main project, with two (sort of) smaller projects on the side. I’ve been struggling on my main project for the last few weeks. I’ve found that documentation on my umbrella team to be quite lacking (and at times, out of date) for someone trying to get up to speed, so I had to spend some time updating our team’s relevant cheatsheets and my own notebook. My changes, especially right now, require me to compile three different sets of code due to dependencies, so that takes up some time. In this sense, having other tasks to do is great: I can context switch and work on some other things while I’m stalled waiting for my other thing to compile.

Sometimes, I find myself unable to judge the pace that I’m going at. I guess it sort of ties in the with the above, but I always want to be going faster, and when I get stuck, it’s frustrating. I’m getting better at asking for help earlier, but I still don’t want to be literally bugging people when I could spend at least an hour on it first, and learn in the process. Perhaps this way of thinking is not efficient, and it’ll be subject to change as I get feedback from my colleagues during our performance reviews.

Temporary home office set up: beside the display cases.

Everyday’s a learning day. There’s always something to learn, so there is never really a status quo on what I’m doing. I’m really grateful for the colleagues around me. They’re always ready to help, and that kind of attitude and culture rubs off on me, too, and I try to do the same. I still feel that I’m slow on the pick up, but it’s going.

Also, with COVID-19 becoming a bigger and bigger threat, our company has just strongly recommended us to work from home. This is a new thing for me, too, as I’ve only worked from home a few times, and only on one day periods, as opposed to an entire week. It’ll definitely take some time to get used to, but I’m happy that my manager has set up weekly sync ups again to keep tabs.

All in all, I’m happy with my current job right now. I hope my teammates consider me a team player. When review season comes along, I hope they’ll provide me with things I’m doing well, and areas that I could improve on.

Anyways, that’s all I have for now. Until next time!
~Lui

Injabie3
Injabie3

Just some guy on the Internet that writes code for fun and for a living, and also collects anime figures.

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