Fearful Enthusiasm
I joined a full-time role not long after my internship.
I was brimming with excitement and enthusiasm.
Yup, I was pretty naive of how the corporate stuff works.
Who knows the onboarding journey and experience is the total opposite during my internship.
Everyone is communicating through tons of corporate and technical jargons.
No one is communicating "normally".
I was assigned a buddy who were apparently a newbie that just joined 3 weeks ahead of me.
Naturally, she couldn't answer much of questions.
Then, a senior was appointed to teach me on the jobs role.
It was hard
And I need to learn fast as everything moves super fast here.
After 3 weeks, I was put into full responsibility for the role.
Oh boy,
How I never knew suffering until I'm here.
The Corporate Pain
In here, every minutes count.
I need to get current and future things done FAST.
No room for error and compromise.
As I was 3 weeks old.
I made tons of "costly" mistakes.
Miscommunication with stakeholders.
My planning is short sighted.
High yield on production.
Customers is not happy.
The data is inaccurate.
And the lists just goes on…
The stress started to pile up.
I started to have negative thoughts.
↳ I might be incompetent.
↳ I'm probably not smart enough.
↳ I didn't work hard enough.
I was miserable.
But I will never throw in the towel.
If I started something, I'm gonna finish it.
I started calling everyone that is involved in the works I'm doing.
It's around 20 people or more.
I started to learn from each and everyone of them.
Bits by bits, I connect the dots and solve the puzzle.
I test things out and use any tools and method at my disposal.
It might be out of the norm that the department is used to.
As long as it gets the job done effectively.
I shan't complain.
I work with automation where others are still manually doing it.
I started to work less and focus more on making quality analysis and decisions.
It works.
I struggle a lot but it works.
What Happen Next?
Oh well, I just decided that it wasn't my calling.
I couldn't picture myself doing it for 5 years.
Heck, not even another year.
It's the toughest jobs I ever did.
I learned many things through the hard way. Here's what:
Data is useless if it doesn't help you plan for the next step.
Clear, precise and simple communication/reasoning is vital when backed with data.
Negotiation goes both way in terms of understanding/empathic, it's either win-win or no-no.
Planning requires more than one scenario use case and outcome. Prep contingency plan.
Do not overcomplicate things, simplify as much as reasonably possible.
There's more to it than the listed 5 here but those 5 are the most memorable as it taught me lessons through the hard way.
Through making many mistakes and finally make things better than ever.
All of this is possible if one decides to embrace changes and work in a new way rather than old practices.
