Manager Mind - How we work

 I often tell my team that there's 2 questions I constantly consider for our team and each individual in it (myself included). 

1. Are we working on the right things?

2. Are we working well and efficiently? 

What we work on (#1) is extremely important for feature and product execution. But how we work on them (#2) is more consistently in each individual's control and directly tied to career performance and will be the focus of this post. [Should add more disclaimers about #1 being important also, but maybe will save that for another time.]

How we work

It's not unusual for junior engineers to be assigned the similar tasks as senior engineers, but the expectations for execution and output are very different. I've categorized them into a few buckets below. 

• Velocity - Code and feature throughput. Frankly, senior devs should be significantly faster and more efficient than juniors.
• Thoroughness and completeness - Error handling, accessibility, globalization, edge cases, testing and automation
• Quality - Pixel-perfection, performance, craftsmanship, eng excellence
• Collaboration and leadership - Driving clarity, working with partners and dependencies, fostering positive energy, generating excitement and visibility. 

Implications

• You can excel with (almost any) assignment. While managers strive to give level-appropriate work to everyone, reality is that there's work that needs to be done, and "level-appropriate" can have a wide range.
• Expectations are not the same across junior and senior devs. This isn't new, but really worth internalizing. Using others, esp in different levels, as benchmarks for your own performance is dangerous.
• Be intentional and don't play down to your more junior peers, which is especially a risk for seniors working on feature execution. 

Micro-Rewards

After being at home in NJ for two weeks, I was reunited with my car today, and after small group, I snapped my phone into the phone holder thing, and started driving home. As I was driving, a feeling crept into my mind - I felt like I was missing out on getting credit for something. I thought perhaps I was momentarily mistaken that I should get Fitbit steps for driving. Then I realized - I was missing out on getting Waze points. 

It’s interesting how I have grown accustomed to getting credit for everything I do in my life, from walking to driving. While I’m sure there’s some fancy psychological term for these minute, meaningless points, I’ll call them “micro-rewards” (I fully expect to collect some royalty on this term in some point in the future). Whether it’s Fitbit, Waze, Bing Rewards, credit card points, or Yogurtland card points, the expectation for receiving a reward for everything I do seems to have engrained itself in my head. 

Expecting recognition and reward for every deed accomplished seems so petty, but if I’m honest to myself, that’s how I often view work and spirituality. While rewards (monetary and otherwise) are an integral part of a healthy motivation of work, it really shouldn’t be the driving motivation for me, and I should not get upset if there are things that I do that are not recognized or rewarded. This temptation towards entitlement and applause is even more dangerous in relation to God, and I hope that I’m not living to rack up “God points” which are redeemable at my death. Rather, that all my good deeds would be driven by a pure love for God which is self-sacrificing and doesn’t demand a constant ticker of micro-rewards. 

Career and Self-Glorification

Recently, I've struggled a lot with the feeling of purposelessness, questioning everything in my life, especially my career, and just asking myself "What am I doing with my life?". To me, it's been a mini quarter-life crisis. Until today, I've attributed all these feelings to a combination of loneliness and life and work transition. At church today, the sermon, titled "I need to be great", explored the desire to make a name for ourselves, to be great in the eyes of other people. While I've always known that this is something I've struggled with, I realized today that my recent existential crises and feelings of meaninglessness and purposelessness in my career all stem out of an understanding of the futility of the pursuit of self-glorification.

Living in Silicon Valley, I'm daily surrounded by people much smarter than me, much richer than me, and much more successful than me. I'm insignificant - a small fish swimming in an ocean of genius fishes and young millionaire fishes. And while this in-debt, reasonably talented fish does have an opportunity to end up with good money and a successful career, that's nothing special, nothing worth envying, praising or looking up to. And of course, he could wholeheartedly pursue the Silicon Valley dream of being a millionaire by 30 and retiring at 35, but he just simply isn't ambitious enough to "drop his nets and follow" that dream. This fish will never be "great", at least in the eyes of the world.

I've been pursuing self-glorification my entire life, especially when it comes to my career. And the reality that I am not and will never be "great" has put an end to that pursuit. And with my life and career's number one goal scratched off the list, I no longer know what to live for, who to live for. Knowing that I am not and probably won't ever be great even in Microsoft has sucked the joy and meaning out of work. I've also realized that a large part of my recent motivation to go into ministry is actually a desire to make a name for myself, as I tell myself that if I can't do it in the tech sector, perhaps my intellect, gifts, and talents will help me do it in the ministry sector.

God, I've always known in my head that I can't live both for Your name and for my own name, but I admit that I've been trying to do it in my career. God, I thank you for church today, that you speak through your Word and your servants who faithfully preach it. God, teach me what it means to do my work for your glory. Teach me what it means to live all of my life for your glory. I know I've prayed this prayer before but this time I'm praying this for my own sake, not the usual, admirable love for You and the desire to love the right Christian things. God, teach me to live for your glory because living for my own glory has brought me nowhere and will only continue to bring disappointment and discontentment, and I just can't live like that anymore. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.