I’m still in software, but I left the toxic combination of health information technology and a troubled mid-sized EHR company that was being further ruined by PE and bad leadership.
My new job is a start-up, very small team with a pretty run of the mill stack. I expected to come in hot and heavy to get them up to speed in a flurry of shock and awe. There was no pressure, no red tape, no standups or scrum ceremony, I didn’t have hours and hours of meetings every day anymore, just a set of priorities and some rough expectations on timelines. I had no fucking idea what to do. Not because the requirements were bad or the code was difficult or the expectations were unreasonable, but because I had been jumping from one dumpster fire after another for honestly two decades and thus had no idea how to prioritize or manage time outside of an emergency or urgent deadline. I absolutely collapsed and struggled for a few months to really get much done. Fortunately, my boss is an old friend who had been through the same thing and expected my transition to be difficult, not because the new job is hard but because I would need to unlearn so much bad behavior and process my trauma/stress. At the same time, I realized how that constant sense of urgency hamstrung the way I approached problems as an engineer. It was clear I didn’t work “best” under stress, I had merely learned how to survive in that environment. That was my great re-awakening.
My new job is a start-up, very small team with a pretty run of the mill stack. I expected to come in hot and heavy to get them up to speed in a flurry of shock and awe. There was no pressure, no red tape, no standups or scrum ceremony, I didn’t have hours and hours of meetings every day anymore, just a set of priorities and some rough expectations on timelines. I had no fucking idea what to do. Not because the requirements were bad or the code was difficult or the expectations were unreasonable, but because I had been jumping from one dumpster fire after another for honestly two decades and thus had no idea how to prioritize or manage time outside of an emergency or urgent deadline. I absolutely collapsed and struggled for a few months to really get much done. Fortunately, my boss is an old friend who had been through the same thing and expected my transition to be difficult, not because the new job is hard but because I would need to unlearn so much bad behavior and process my trauma/stress. At the same time, I realized how that constant sense of urgency hamstrung the way I approached problems as an engineer. It was clear I didn’t work “best” under stress, I had merely learned how to survive in that environment. That was my great re-awakening.