Time to Reflect

Eight years ago, I started my first job at a web agency. The fact that I got to do programming for a living was very exciting to me. Only a few years earlier, I didn’t really know what to do and wasn’t sure if I could find a job that I would like. Now, I got to work on a lot of projects with a bunch of creative people and was super excited going to work every day. However, after a bit over a year there, I found that I preferred doing more long-term product work rather than continuously jumping from one project to the next.

That’s when I discovered a startup was building access control solutions for festivals, so it seemed like a cool job for someone who only recently graduated. I joined them and spent most of my time on building out a cashless payment system which would allow festival goers to pay for drinks via the NFC chip in their wristbands. We went through a lot of stressful periods there, especially the first season we deployed that software, but I liked the adrenaline rush. While we were at it, I learned a lot about building and maintaining software over a longer period of time.

After three years of that, I got a message from one of DataCamp’s recruiters. By that time I wasn’t necessarily planning on leaving my current job, but I did build up some frustrations about their processes, which in my opinion weren't good enough and didn't allow us to tackle recurring problems in a better way. At the same time, e-learning was something that excited me, because it had helped me in the past and I felt like it leveled the playing field, so I decided to make the switch and joined them by the end of 2016.

At DataCamp I initially spent a lot of time applying what I had learned previously and getting some technical debt related to the CI, payment and learning management systems under control. We started growing fast, and as we were hiring more and more engineers, the opportunity presented itself for me to become a team lead. I wasn’t really planning on that, but because of my frustrations at my previous job, I had spent a fair amount of time reading management books and was curious about what would happen if I could apply some of that knowledge, so I agreed. The job was quite a bit different than I expected in a good way, and I enjoyed it a lot. I loved helping people in 1on1s, collaborating with the team to improve processes, figuring out how to set clear expectations, recruiting new software engineers, and everything that came with building a highly-functioning team. I worked with some of the most talented people I’ve met here, and tackling challenge after challenge with such a team was very fulfilling.

Nevertheless, over the last half year or so, I’ve felt my excitement fade and start to be replaced by various frustrations for which I couldn’t pinpoint the root cause. I tried working through this with the help of various people, but I feel like I wasn’t making progress fast enough and decided the only way for me to get unstuck is to take a break.

Throughout the past 7-8 years I was learning continuously and never gave much thought about what’s next. There always seemed to be some clear, shiny problem ahead of me and I tried to tackle them all one after the other. This was great while it lasted and I’m grateful for it, but never having taken the time to reflect is what got me into this situation, so now I’m giving myself some time to catch up. Last week was my last at DataCamp. Today, I’m starting my sabbatical which will last for at least the summer, potentially longer. This will help me clear up my thinking, re-explore what interests me, and allow me to make better decisions about what’s next.