Time really flies! In what seems like a blink of the eye, it’s been more than six years since I started working full time, and those years have been with the same company!
Throughout this last year and a half, I’ve been working with so many talented software engineers on building out a software solution for switch stacking within our product line, and I have learned lots from this experience. Everyone on the team has a unique contribution to make towards the project, and each piece is critically important. There are several people on our team (like AG, SB, and JP) managing the project. and I cannot fathom how much time they both have spent in meetings coming up with ideas on how to design all the different pieces of the system, and keeping tabs on what everyone has been working on. I have a lot of respect for them, and hope to continue to learn from them. My other coworker, TY, has been super helpful, and we’ve been bouncing things off each other. He also helped me take over some stuff while I was away in Japan for my trip, so I also appreciate and respect him a lot. It’s not only them. As I work with more people, I’ve come to appreciate the different strengths of everyone. This project has deadlines, and the folks assigned to different parts of the project are all really capable, can be trusted to get things done, and always give me opportunities to learn from them.
I’ve been involved in different aspects of the project. For a better part of the project, I was triaging failures flagged by our automated testing infrastructure. I came to terms with it: it might seem to not be as fun as working on new features, but it is an important part of being able to ship a quality product, and someone has to do it. In retrospect, I’m glad I was assigned to take the lead over the last half a year or so. Recently, I was given the opportunity to add support for a new product platform to support stacking. I was also helping keep tabs on various upcoming product support within our stacking solution, so that was a nice change of pace. I’m currently now working on adding new feature support. It’s a bit of a daunting task (I do feel a bit nervous about it), but I’m looking forward to scoping out the design and getting it implemented. I am grateful to be working with my other coworker VH again. We haven’t been working too closely with since I was moved to this project, but we get to do this feature together! 🙂
From time to time, one concern that does pop into my head is that my line for work-life balance is blurring. I don’t think I’m running into the same burnout scenario as I did when I was going through my first year of actual, full-time work: I feel my mental stamina since then has improved a lot. That being said, the number of responsibilities and things I’m part of are starting to demand more of my time, and leaving less time for the actual work I need to get done. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve committed a bit more time outside of core hours to get things done. Obviously that’s not super great: I’ve talked with my manager about my concerns here, and I’ve started to offload some of my responsibilities onto others to re-balance myself, and to shift my working hours around. This is especially true for me on Fridays, as I like to take a longer lunch and spend time with my parents or shave a bit of time to do my own thing: I end up working later in the night or on the weekend to cover for that. Though, it ends up being a little bit more, but not to the point where I dread work.
Anyways, that’s all the ramblings I have this time around. Here’s to another adventurous year, full of learning and problem solving!
Until next time!
~Lui
