How was the transition from school to work? Why do I feel like there's sometimes a disconnect. I don't know how people really use what they learned in school. I should really get an internship.
Since you asked about WLB, I can share what works for me. For context, I’m a staff engineer at a different faang company. I’ve pretty much always worked 35 hours/week my entire career. I can share 2 granular tactics plus 3 broader strategies that have helped me maintain WLB. tactic #1: I have a physical trigger to start and stop work. When I was in the office everyday, this trigger was a specific flavored water. During work hours, I only drank that water, that water "tasted" like work. Nowadays, I have dedicated "work" sweatpants that I only put on when I'm doing work. If I feel the compunction to do work outside of work hours, I tell myself that I'm not wearing my work sweatpants, which helps me give myself license to not work. tactic #2: I have a dedicated separation of work and non-work time. This will be different for everyone, but I am laser-focused on work between the hours of 10:30 and 6. Barring exceptional circumstances, I then give myself license to not feel bad about ignoring work outside of those hours. strategy #1: Clear-eyed goal setting helps with WLB. “Optimism bias” is a well-understood human cognitive bias, and as well as its associated phenomenon of the “planning fallacy” (you can look them up on wikipedia). This can lead to unrealistically aggressive goals that ignore how comparable projects have performed in the past, followed by poor WLB to achieve those goals. This is not to say that an aggressive but attainable goal is bad, but rather that it's helpful for engineers to be clear-eyed about how long different pieces of work will realistically take (with good WLB). strategy #2: Prioritize until it hurts. There is an infinite funnel of work that could be done, but I focus on the most important things possible, and make a conscious decision as to what won't get done. The "saying no" aspect of this has been difficult for me, but I've improved at it with conscious effort and coaching. strategy #3: I have the mentality that I work to live my life, I don't live my life to work. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy my work. I definitely do enjoy my work. I think I'm uniquely positioned as the best at the very specific thing that I do. However, I view work as something to advance my broader life goals. Work enables me to spend time with the people and activities that bring me joy in life. Those are 5 of the techniques I use to maintain WLB. I hope at least one of them is helpful for you.
This is so perfect. I am just finishing my internship this week and it's full of straight white cis men. They paired the only woman on the team with me and took me to an Asian place for my farewell lunch (I am Asian). I have laundry lists of complaints with this company and am so happy to get out. But I've been wondering how to find a better place once I graduate this year.
“straight white cis men” lol. Well you’re in the U.S. The majority of tech workers are white males, followed by Indian/other Asian males. So it’s not a surprise. We need more women in tech!
Today's vlog was wonderful, always the career that the person exercises sometimes becomes exhausting, if the plans are not organized on time and I admire your work that you do in technology, always at the forefront of the future, thanks Sarah!😊💯
Hi Sarah! thank you for all the effort you put on videos and for your useful tips, onestly all your videos are super chill and aesthetic and always put me in a good mood :)
