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hi everyone welcome and thanks for tuning in today uh I'm going to give a
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talk titled how can I move forward when I don't know where I want to go
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uh the beginning of this talk I like to do a little bit of audience participation so if you are comfortable
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participating um you can raise your hand if any of the
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following prompts resonate with you currently or if they have resonated with you in the past
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so a show of hands if this feels applicable to you that you know exactly where you want to go in your career
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I usually don't get very many hands for this one all right how about this one show of
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hands if you have a skill that is previously boxed you to a role that you did not enjoy
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yeah I'm seeing some raised hands on this one for sure yep all right and then
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my last one is show of hands if you've experienced decision fatigue or decision
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paralysis and again either with recently or in the past me absolutely for sure
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so this last one is especially especially applicable to me and it is a
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really big reason why and how this talk came to be so uh hi I'm Mo my pronouns
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are she her hers I am currently a senior software engineer at speedly and I'm passionate about four day work weeks
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utilizing open PTO policies and mentorship
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um I have decision fatigue in so many areas of my life and a big area is my
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career and my future but I also don't want it to hold me back so that is what
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we're going to talk about today how to move forward so disclaimer before I begin
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I'm going to share a bit about my journey and how I got here I'm not here pretending to be anyone
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other than a human in the tech industry that has a bit of experience climbing various ladders and learning from those
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Adventures I also want to recognize that I have a level of privilege and resources at my current company that
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have made a lot of this possible I recognize that some of this won't be as easily attainable for others as I wish
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it was but my hope is that everyone here gets something out of this talk whether
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that be ideas on how to map out your next steps for professional development nuggets of wisdom to ponder in your
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hearts or motivation to explore new things that excite you so
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what are we talking about here today I will start by giving you a bit of history about my journey some of those
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different adventures and career ladders that I've climbed then we will get into how to map it out
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what your navigation could look like some potential roadblocks that you might
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find along the way and lastly looking ahead what can you do with the information and resources that I'm going
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to throw at you today so is talking about the journey so well
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um I went to college in the mountains of North Carolina which is known for their
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clay um we don't have very good soil in North Carolina it is mostly clay so I got my
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BFA in ceramics um very fun Endeavor to be on when I was
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in college very random piece of information about me now I get to use it
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as one of those fun facts in like two truths in a lie type scenarios and things like that but it is very much not
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a thing that I utilize anymore in my life but I don't regret it at all
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but when I graduated from college it was very much like okay what am I gonna like what do I do with this
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um and I had student loans that needed to be paid so I did what a lot of folks I know did when they graduated college
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and just looked for the first thing that they could find like not applicable to my degree at all but I
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dove into the food industry specifically I went into coffee so I'm a pretty organized person just by
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default and it led people to recognize that in me and I moved into Management
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in the coffee industry so moving into management was kind of one of the only ways you can move up in
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that in like the food industry um you go from being like a barista to
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maybe a shift leader and then eventually you can become a store manager and that was uh what that Journey was like for me
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but in moving into Management in that industry it also led me to burnout
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and when I hit that point of burnout it was very quickly a realization that I
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needed to get out of there and I needed to go into something else so I actually found a project management
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role at an art consultant company which was cool because I got to use what I had been referring to as my useless art
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degree I actually got to use it and talk about art in my day-to-day which was fun and exciting
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but as with my previous industry people recognized that oh you know she's really
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organized and it's kind of this like natural leader when put into group
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situations um so let's promote her and get her into management
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so again I got into management which led to emotional burnout for me and then
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that again went into this cycle of like okay I need to get out of here what am I
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going to do next um and at that time that was when I
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heard about going into software boot camps so this was back in 2018
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and I went to a software boot camp um located here out of North Carolina
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and that landed me into the tech industry and so I got my first job in
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Tech in April of 2019. and off she goes
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so that's a bit about how I got into Tech and like my career my professional
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career life cycle so far um but I am now at this fork in the road
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again where I have to decide what Adventure to pursue next do I want to
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stay uh in this IC role or do I want to pursue a management position
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because one of the reasons I got into Tech in the first place was that you can move up without being a people manager
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um but yet again Here I Am Naturally at this Crossroads of like maybe I wanna maybe I do want to be a manager
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um so I'm here to share with you some of the tools that I've been using recently to help Guide Me In One Direction or the
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other or spoiler alert a little bit of both so
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let's talk about how to map it out so the main career track options that
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I'm going to talk about today are at the IC the individual contributor a great option if you have no interest in being
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a people leader if you love being in the weeds of technical challenges and you
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just like to like get your tickets done and think about those complex problems in a technical world
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people manager role is a good option if you're passionate about leading if you want to make an impact at your company
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on the People level if you um are passionate about helping lift
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other folks up in their careers and advocate for them and then there's this hybrid role so
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the hybrid rule can look like a lot of different things depending on the company depending on the size of the
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company the age of the company it could be a tech lead on your team where you're
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the subject matter expert for the product that your team owns it could look like mentorship
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um while still being in ic but still taking on those some like leader capabilities without specifically being
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a manager uh and then there's the split rolls so I've seen some split roles at
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different companies where the expectation might be that you're a people leader 75 of the time and you get
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to spend 25 of your time still writing code um obviously that number and ratio can
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vary from place to place but they're out there so the hybrid role is the route that
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I've chosen for myself for now and we'll talk a little bit more about what that looks like later so let's talk about resources
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um disclaimer again I don't have dedicated slides for every one of these
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resources some of them I do some of them are pretty self-explanatory so you'll get a sneak peek of my dogs during one
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of these uh slides all right so the IDP which stands for
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your individual development plan um in my experience this is something that you work closely with your manager
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on apologies for the kind of small print on this one but this is just kind of a basic template of what an IDP could look
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like um this is mine from 2022. you participate in setting goals for
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yourself career goals short term and long term so think about where you want to be in 12 to 18 months or like one and
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a half to three years and you can address what you know your strengths and
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your opportunities are so that you can lay it out and identify where you might want to put more effort into building
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your competencies and then you can plan out these critical behaviors or goals
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very much treated like smart goals so they're measurable time-based there's
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ways that you can track them with your manager to work towards those larger career goals
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uh so if you might notice on uh on mine specifically I left the three to five
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year mark blank uh when I see forms like this it's really
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easy for me to think in black and white that like I have to fill out every field but like I barely know like who I'm
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gonna be as a person in like one to two years let alone what it is that I want to be doing in my career in three to
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five years so I leave that blank right it can very much be like a cake what serves you and leave what what doesn't
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so um but this time or in April of last
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year when I was filling out this ADP my one and a half to three year goal was to work towards senior engineer and so my
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critical behaviors and goals were doing things that would um help me move in that direction based
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on some of the expectations of the company on where I currently work
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so that's another way to to kind of build out what your IDP could be
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so the second resource is just to apply an interview so this is one where I
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don't have a dedicated image um so here are my dogs uh Jackson on the left and Lydia on the right they're just
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here for moral support so with the application and interview process um I think we've probably all heard of
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the phrase like you don't know what you don't know and something that is a really big thing
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that gets exposed when you go through the application and interview process for a position that you might be
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considering so you can just go for it you can apply for the job and get
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through the interview process and see what you learn throughout that Journey throughout those conversations with
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folks um that can really open your eyes to details that maybe you weren't aware of before and it can also maybe help you
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decide if you even want to do that role or not um this was something that I had the
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opportunity to do last year at speedly so while I was working towards becoming a senior engineer there was also an open
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engineering manager position and so I went for it I have management experience but it's it
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my previous management experience had kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and so I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back
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into that this industry is very different the company that I'm working for is very different than the places
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that I that I was previously when I was in management but I still had that hesitation of like uh I know what this
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has done to me in the past it's a slippery slope for me and and like my
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work life balance um and so when I was going through the interview process I was very honest with
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every group of people that I spoke with that I wasn't actually sure if I wanted the position but I wanted to go through
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the experience to learn more about it and ultimately to help me decide if that was an Avenue that I wanted to pursue
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so I'm gonna do a little sidebar with a tip here if you think you might want a
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position and you're gonna apply and go through the interview process for it um don't tell people that you aren't
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sure if you actually want the role so I was going through this interview process at the company where I was where
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I've been working for like two and a half years at this point in time and now
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I've been there for almost three and a half years so like the people that I'm working with and that I got to interview
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with know me pretty well as a human being they know that I'm very honest
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they know that I don't have much of a filter so it wasn't surprising for folks for me to be brutally honest in this
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interview process by saying like for the record I don't actually know if I want this but I also know that I can learn a
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lot by going through this process um but they were very gracious in their feedback to me afterwards of like if you
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do decide that you want to pursue this in the future by all means go for it but like
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don't tell everyone that you aren't quite sure if you want it because they want to put someone in the role that
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they know really wants it otherwise they're taking a risk at potentially needing to backfill that role again in
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six months so that was what I learned from my experience but I still have no regrets
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um of being brutally honest throughout the interview process sure so thematics
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um somatics is a really interesting thing and may not be something that you would have expected to hear about during
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a talk on um career development but uh show of
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hands if you aren't quite sure what somatics means
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like the context of that yeah cool sweet it's something that I
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just learned about recently and I was kind of fascinated by it and I thought it was a really interesting
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um tool to kind of bring into this conversation and consideration for
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myself so um somatics this we're not going to watch
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this talk this is just a this slide that shows up from this YouTube link so Amy Newell gave a talk in Portland in
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railsconf of 2022 called let your body lead and one of the things that she talked
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about in this slide and that the the kind of like single sentence pitch for somatics is that you're paying attention
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to the way uh to like Sensations in your body when you are kind of confronted
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with a decision or when you're in a certain situation so it's it's really
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just kind of tuning in to Sensations in your body um
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I'm not a mental health professional so that's where I'll stop my explanation um but if you if that sounds at all
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interesting to you I encourage you to to read about it it's um it's pretty fascinating so one example that she gave
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in this talk was to like okay you're trying to decide between two things and we've heard of them like let's flip
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a coin to like make a decision so her thing was okay think about something
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you're trying to make a decision on don't make it so extreme of like should I move should I like relocate to another
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country for this job that's a little too extreme for this um but uh so let's bring it down let's
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bring it back to like maybe you're trying to decide between two places for lunch this will be a simple example to give and she's gonna say Okay
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um option one we're gonna designate to heads on the coin and option two we're
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going to dedicate to tales on the coin all right so assign your options to
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heads or tails and then I'm gonna flip the proverbial coin and make this
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decision and the uh the coin says tails okay so in that moment when you flip
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this coin and you see what the coin has decided for you how did like what was your immediate
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mental thought when that happened or like how did that feel in your body so
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if I said okay tails you have to go with option two if your instant gut reaction
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was like oh man like I kind of wanted you know I was really the name more towards option one great like that's a
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piece of information that now you know like oh I guess I was leaning more towards option one when maybe I thought
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I was pretty neutral between the two um or if option two was the one where
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you're like sweet that was actually the one that I wanted and it's like great then like you did have a preference between those two options and so you can
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just use that exercise as just some additional information and helping you make a decision
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um but I thought that was really interesting right to think about like
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when you're trying to decide between two things chances are you you aren't completely neutral even if you think you
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are and so this is an interesting way of just you don't have to listen to what the coin says but think about how
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you thought about that decision or how you felt about that decision when the coin I say this in quotes when the coin made the decision for you
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so uh pros and cons list we love a tangible list pen and paper
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you can use online tools like miroboard my therapist loves to tell me to write things down Journal about something
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write lists to justify or validate decisions if that is something that that
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speaks to you that that you know helps you um another reason that I love writing
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things down is that it allows me to slowly process things at my own pace and
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it gives me something to come back to like multiple times and kind of reiterate on that processing and on that
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consideration so you might be trying to think about two different career options right
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management or IC you could be writing down what some of the advantages benefits or impact on your future might
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be for each of those positions uh what your cons might be risks challenges impact on others right and some examples
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of that right like for management a pro for that would be that there's like generally going to be a pay increase but
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that's also a pro if you want to stay in ic and just pursue the next level um a risk of going into management is
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that simply stated I mean there's more IC roles out there than there are
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management roles it's just the nature of the Beast like there's a ratio of more contributors than managers it is what it
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is um but you also have to think about like how that impacts your emotional energy
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or mental energy like what fills your cup things like that we'll talk a little bit more about that later
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mentorship so I could probably talk about uh mentorship for a while the
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great thing is that there are a lot of conference talks about mentorship I'm really passionate about it I do it both in and outside of my current company if
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you don't have a mentor or you're not mentoring someone and you want that to change uh please reach out to me I love
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talking to folks about how to kind of kick off that process Adam cuppy is also a person who does a
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lot of mentorship Cups talks at um Ruby Central conferences and so he
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gave one recently earlier this year in Atlanta at rubyconf called mentorship in three acts that was really solid
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um Ruby Central in general has done what seems like a very intentional push to
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include more mentorship related talks in their conferences in the last couple of years so their YouTube channel is full
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of mentorship related content which I really am really loving so the tldr on
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mentorship is that a mentorship can look like a lot of different things
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it depends on the level of commitment that you have but it's very much not a one size fits all and that's really
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great um I realize I forgot to change my slide for this one because I love to just rant
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about mentorship um a lot of people have been using AI to generate like great slides and content
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for presentations lately and I I have not figured that out yet but I felt like this was too good to not show
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um so the the quote uh one animal mentoring another animal in the style of the Muppets was the prompt that I gave
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an AI like image generator and this was what I got out um and I just thought it was really
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silly so I wanted to include it ah but um all that to say uh I am of the
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belief that you're never too green to be a mentor no matter where you are in your career stage
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um if you have learned something that means that you have something to contribute to someone else so if you're
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interested in being a mentor but you feel like maybe you're not quite ready um it's not true you are ready you can
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do it so anybody can be a mentor and there are a lot of tools and resources out there
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um to kind of guide folks and provide templates for what that could look like
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um so yeah mentorship mentorship is a really great way to to take on that like leadership role
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without being a people manager right because like leader and manager to very different things
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um but this is one way that you can kind of stay in ic take on some leadership responsibilities or like help
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lead others in their Tech Career um while still writing code and not
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being a people manager build relationships so let's talk about
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uh the joys of networking right so if you
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follow folks on LinkedIn and you see someone that has a role that you're interested in or you're curious about
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send them a message you can ask them questions you can pick their brain about what their experience was like or find
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out um you know if it's someone in a management role find out what their transition was like from IC to manager
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um General networking uh the boot camp that I went through would always tell us
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like humans hire humans and so networking was um was really emphasized throughout that
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process of of doing the job hunt so lots of different networking
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opportunities in the tech World um these are some of the ones that have
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impacted me the most uh being able to find local meetup groups so that I can
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go chat with people in person but in like a low pressure way um so there's meetups for all sorts of
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interest groups um so I encourage you if you're looking to do some in-person meetups with other folks with similar
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interests um I've also noticed that a lot of the quote-unquote like nerd communities are
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like there's a lot of overlap right so in in my town there's a lot of like board game meetups and a lot of the
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people in board game meetups are also in the tech industry so that was that's also been an interesting unexpected way
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to do some networking for me um but yeah talking to folks asking them
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questions picking their brains um I would also say that if you reached out
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to someone on LinkedIn to ask them questions uh and they haven't responded
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and like some time has gone by but you're still really interested in talking to them or let's say You're really interested in the company that
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they work for don't be afraid to follow up with people I'm personally a space cadet so if someone has ever messaged me
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and I didn't respond um it's likely that I read it and then got immediately distracted with
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something else and I'm not the best at going back to things like that so um well I might be organized it I'm
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still definitely a space cadet so feel free to follow up with folks gently you know
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um and then if uh if more time goes by and you don't hear from them maybe reach out to a different contact at that company if that's a networking
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opportunity that you are really feeling like you want to pursue so um a women who code Meetup in my area
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was actually what led me to meet the very first uh manager that I had in the tech industry
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um and so that holds a very like near and dear place to my heart because that was um
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like the the community group that really launched me into my Tech Career so
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I always love to uh talk about that one okay and then your own experiences right
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so like all the resources in the world may not help you if you don't take a
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good hard look at yourself and your own experiences alongside all of these tools and resources some of them might apply
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to you all of them might apply to you it's possible that none of them might apply to you I feel like idps probably
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apply to everybody though so but anyways um like assessing your own habits know
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yourself be honest with yourself right I had to assess that I'm not the great at
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maintaining a work-life balance when I'm in a management role I had a really hard time turning off that emotional empathy
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at the end of the day so when I was in management that was something that I was carrying home with me even after I was signed off
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um so my brain didn't get to disconnect and have that space so
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uh also addressing like the things that excite you do you like being in meetings
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do you like socializing with other people at your organization or do you prefer to squash bugs I love
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moving a ticket across the jira board that is like so validating it for me to
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be able to move something into done and get to move on to my next task uh and things like that are a little bit harder
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when you're in management um if you know that you don't like meetings and you're constantly wishing
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that you had fewer meetings on your schedule like management just might not be for you but there are ways that you
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can be a leader without being a people manager so just be honest about what excites you and Chase that in in your
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work all right so let's talk about some potential roadblocks I don't have
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individual sides for this many of them could be their own talk I'm just gonna give you like one or two sentences on
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each one here so lack of opportunity I mentioned this already right there are more IC roles
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out there than there are manager roles it's the nature of the Beast so if you know that you want to pursue management and you don't want to change companies
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you might just have to wait for a role to open up or if you're comfortable changing companies that's another thing
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that you might just have to consider as far as opportunities go so social anxiety is a big one
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um like know how many spoons you have each day and what the cost of the different tasks and things might be if
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you aren't familiar with Spoon Theory um that's what I'm referencing when I talk about like know how many spoons you
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have um there's a fun Wikipedia page on it if you wanted to know more about that lack
00:28:03.480
of mentorship if you know the mentorship is important to you like be sure that you're building a relationship with a
00:28:10.020
mentor if your job doesn't give you that you can find one elsewhere you can find
00:28:15.539
one through wnb you can find one through women who code there are lots of other
00:28:20.820
community opportunities out there to seek mentorship if that is something that's important to you
00:28:26.220
lock your representation this is very much one that should be its own talk at
00:28:32.820
some point um this lack of representation can be made lighter through mentorship but it's
00:28:38.279
still a very real problem in this industry this is still a white male dominated industry
00:28:43.860
um but there are Community groups out there this being one of them as a wonderful example of unb
00:28:50.940
uh oops decision fatigue uh we touched on this a bit at the beginning right but it's real there was
00:28:57.059
a while where I could not decide what I wanted to do with my life and that had
00:29:02.580
me like frozen I did not know how to move forward I felt like I had to decide
00:29:08.159
between these two things um and that's not true right I found
00:29:15.059
that there is that middle ground and I refuse to stay frozen so figured out how to move forward from that decision
00:29:21.059
fatigue uh and then lack of support right um it could be lonely sometimes when you
00:29:29.100
get a job and you're kind of building that new internal Network um but hopefully you are able to find
00:29:36.659
that in your peers in your media team members um and then if you feel like you're
00:29:41.880
lacking that still um know that you have this wonderful community of people to to stand by you
00:29:48.000
and that um you're never alone yeah
00:29:53.279
all right so looking ahead I've shared my journey um if it feels at all familiar to you I
00:30:00.480
hope that it gives you hope that you're not alone in like this unknown um we've gone over some of the resources
00:30:05.940
some of the potential roadblocks you might have encountered or might encounter in your future I'm personally
00:30:11.520
pursuing that hybrid role like I talked about I did get that promotion to senior engineer which I was really excited
00:30:17.460
about um and so I'm still focusing on developing myself as an IC in that technical role while also taking on
00:30:23.940
things like mentorship and being a subject matter expert for some of the products that my team owns within my
00:30:30.240
company um and those are just the things that fill my cup right now and it's really great to to be in that in that space so
00:30:37.620
what can you do with this right so what do you want to be when you grow up
00:30:43.200
or at least when you grow up like six months or an hour a year from now right um what do you want to be doing what
00:30:49.860
drives you I'm also gonna go off on a little side tangent and say that I am someone that believes your passion does
00:30:57.659
not have to be what you do for 40 hours a week that was something that was really pushed on me to do when I was getting my
00:31:05.580
art degree in Ceramics right people thought oh if you're passionate about this then um then like I expect that this is what
00:31:11.760
you want to do when you graduate um and it wasn't uh
00:31:17.220
sometimes when you decide to pursue your passion as your full-time job it can also lead to burnout right it can take
00:31:23.399
some of the fun out of it when you put that monetary Challenge on it so I'm a firm believer in that your job
00:31:31.260
should not be soul-sucking but it also doesn't have to be like the thing that drives your
00:31:37.980
life uh it's okay if it is but it doesn't have to be if you don't want it to be
00:31:43.140
right um yeah so dig deep figure that out connect
00:31:48.179
with peers leaders that you look up to strangers on the internet there are so
00:31:54.000
many of us ask questions explore what's out there um you might learn that there's
00:31:59.340
something out there that you hadn't considered for yourself and then go for it and know that you can change your
00:32:06.059
mind accepting like realizing that and accepting that for myself has been so freeing to me going back to that
00:32:13.440
decision fatigue it has saved my anxious brain to know that a choice that I make
00:32:18.600
today to pursue um growing as an IC as an individual contributor and growing my technical
00:32:25.140
knowledge if if in six months I'm like you know what I really actually now I feel called to like dive into management
00:32:31.799
I can change my mind I can do that and the things that I've spent time growing
00:32:36.840
myself in personally right now um are only going to help and support me
00:32:42.299
in that future decision so it's great
00:32:47.700
and in the fine words of Moira rose rock onwards and upwards you are radiant
00:32:54.840
and even though a lot of this stuff is hard just remember like you can do hard things
00:33:00.000
so that's it thank you so much
