- Embrace the ups and downs. The past year has consisted of a mix of emotions for me. There are some days where I feel elated and unstoppable, and there are other days where I feel dispirited and frustrated. Every professional has their own set of obstacles, but engineers seem to have a very special set of them 🙃 I find that we’re constantly fixing things…even when we’re building new software, we’re still fixing the build errors that we initially encounter, the testing environment that eventually fails on us, the pipeline issues that are never-ending, the bugs that inevitably arise….the list goes on and on. One day your setup could be working perfectly, bug count is low, and you finally receive a +2 on that code review. But the next day you might find that literally nothing is working in your favor. Just like that, your emotions go from up to down; when this happens it’s important to embrace the opposites of the spectrum and everything in between. Without such challenges I wouldn’t have been able to grow as a person or an engineer in the last year.
- Invest in yourself. And no, I’m not referring to clothes and spa days 😆 While in school I never really thought about doing things for my own learning. I read the books that professors assigned me, finished coding projects only because they had a deadline, etc. But in the real world, it’s important to take on the role of the professor and assign yourself with actionable items that are essential in moving your career forward. One piece of advice that I’ll never forget came from Pat Gelsinger (former VMware CEO) during his intern talk at my internship. He emphasized that you should always be working towards your next big career move. Of course, focus on your current role and do well, but never lose sight of your midterm and longterm career goals either. You should constantly be working on improving your skills outside of work and luckily VMware is extremely supportive in advancing your career. For example, through the Take 1 program, employees are offered a generous stipend for any certification, course, or training of their choosing. Now that I have completed a year at VMware, I’ve been able to take advantage of this program and start a course that’s of interest to me.
- Mentorship matters. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have such amazing mentors at VMware and can’t stress enough how important it is to seek out mentorship at any company you work for. I have two main mentors with whom I regularly have check-ins with. One of them works within my org and was assigned to me through our Cloud Management mentorship program. Therefore, I’m able to relate to my mentor from an engineering perspective and I can receive relevant advice about the BU. I was matched with my other mentor through the VMinclusion program which helps carry out our Diversity and Inclusion Initiative. This mentor of mine helps me talk through my career aspirations and sets actionable goals during our meetings. Overall, I’ve greatly benefited from these mentorships and feel fortunate to have received such great pairings through VMware initiatives.
- Personal connections are key. Work gets boring really quick unless you have some kind of camaraderie in the workplace. I’ve realized it’s extremely important to build personal connections with coworkers. This allows you to know them on a more personal level and will translate into a deeper level of trust at work. Due to the pandemic and everyone working from home, I realized I was missing out on building these personal connections with my team, which is why I started a virtual meetup on Fridays. Outside of my team I’ve also been able to connect with other new grads through the Flight Alliance Initiative and have been able to expand my network in this way. One of my really close friends is actually someone I met through the new grad Slack channel, which just goes to show the long-lasting connections you can make with others if you just put in a little bit of effort 🙂
- Have faith in yourself. Keep a goal in mind and know that you’ll eventually get there. It’s hard to imagine myself 1 year from now, but what I do know is that I would have learned new things and accomplished so much by then that I would never think possible in the present. That is what’s most comforting to me…knowing that I can only get better, do better, and be better compared to now. This mindset also applies in the short-term. Sometimes there are tasks that I work on at the beginning of a sprint that I have very little experience or knowledge on, but by the end I can look back and see how much I was able to pick up in a short period of time 👩🏽💻
