Relationship with Work: A Retrospective rumination
A post to look back at a year of working full time.
I am about to complete a full year of working as a Robotics Engineer, and it's been an interesting journey. I've enjoyed navigating the waves of emotional ups and downs. Each time I found myself deep in the sea, I emerged higher, armed with personal lessons learned. My relationship with work has undergone significant changes — I hope it's all for the better
Feb to May: Months of pride, awe and realisations.
In the beginning, I was filled with pride and awe that I had finally secured a position in a field I had dreamt of working in for the past two years. Moving to a new city, I rented a 1 BHK flat and set up everything required for the house. Beyond the joy of working my dream job, living solo marked a significant personal accomplishment. It fueled my anticipation, with the hope that each day's work would bring the same sense of achievement at the end of the day.
But that did not happen. The work I was doing was not what I imagined it would be. It felt slow and unimportant. Some days felt like a slump. I started questioning my choice of career and field. I was contemplating a lot of stuff that sound so stupid in retrospect.
Fortunately my manager (who also happens to be my college senior) intervened and we had a small “talk” about my progress at work and some deficiencies. That night, realisation hit me. I realised how delusional I was in terms of my pre-assumptions about work. That was the first time I reflected about my relationship with work.
I realised the expectation I had in my head versus the reality, was unreal. The first lesson I learnt was that I was paid to do a job. When I signed the contract, it became my duty to do the work that was required; not what I liked. My whole perspective changed then. In the subsequent weeks, I started making sure that I was completing the work that was required. Any personal outcome I got from it was a bonus and not a guarantee.
June to October: Intense work and growing involvement.
I was assigned a problem statement on May 31 and I wanted to make sure that I solved the problem and delivered results in the timeframe that was expected. I began working on it, making incremental progress. I made sure that at the end of every work day I saw progress in the right direction. During this time I made a conscious decision to detach “learning” from work. If there was something related to Robotics that I wanted to learn, I preferred doing it on my own at home rather than relying on work to provide that learning opportunity.
Earlier, I had a notion in my head that everything I did need to be a learning experience for me. But sometimes you have to do stuff that is uninteresting and boring, but is super important. This was the second lesson I learnt. I visualised this concept as a Venn diagram in my head
I made sure I tackled all sorts of tasks. If I couldn't do the “cool stuff” at work, I'd take it home with me. Gradually, I got the hang of balancing work and expectations. The next few months were pretty satisfying — we pumped out a bunch of features. Yeah, I messed up sometimes, but my team always had my back. We hit some bumps together, working long hours to get features out there, and I felt like we were making strides for the company.
In this whole process, I figured out a lot about myself. At first, it was all about Robotics — I loved those algorithms. But now, I'm more interested about the real-world problems these algorithms solve. I started to better understand the problems our company was trying to solve. I started liking my workplace more and more. It became enjoyable to hang out with my team, working on stuff together. I was genuinely proud of the product we were putting together.
I realised how important it is to get that, a great product comes from the collaboration of many skilled people. No one can do it all alone. But, at the same time, I saw there were folks above me deciding what product we had to build because that was their job. Ultimately that decides what work I will do. At the end of the day, my job was just to do my part the best I could in realising a broader product vision. Looking at the product as a whole, the lines between my work and other people's work got a bit blurry, but I also understood my limits.
Nov to Jan: Understanding my internal self.
The last part of the year was an emotional roller coaster. I was not sure about what to do in the future. I looked internally and realised that I was not yet ready to pursue graduate school and wanted to stay back. The process of introspection was not easy for me. All my life till this moment, I never had a free choice of what to do. I was never at cross roads taking decisive decisions that seemed to affect my life in a big way.
I realised, in the end, I want to use Robotics to solve real world problems that positively effect people’s life. It felt like even if did not work with cutting edge technology, I would still be happy working on a problem that has real world implications. Conversely, I sensed that I might struggle to find satisfaction working in the opposite direction. Hence, I decided to stay back until I stop finding interesting problems to solve.
Additionally, I've come to realise that my thoughts often circle around how I can contribute to making the field of Robotics more accessible for others. There is this persistent feeling that my efforts are falling short, and I find myself uncertain about the most effective ways to make a substantial impact.
What’s next?
I am super excited for what's might come up next year! The feeling about the chances to learn more and dive into projects really gets me going. As I ride the waves of challenges and victories, I'm hoping to get even better at what I do and make a difference with Robotics in the real world. It's been a wild ride so far, and I'm stoked to see what's around the corner. I also feel really thankful to my team for making this year so interesting.