What is work, anyway?
I recently learned that I won’t get that promotion I’ve wanted for a year.
It was a crashing feeling. I cried and cried, then eventually became calm. In the end of this tantrum I started asking myself - why was I so upset? What is my work, and what have I accomplished in this company since my college graduation?
When I lived in mainland China, I was immersed in a school culture where grades are the only thing that mattered in my young life. From the moment I entered first grade till I transferred to a school in the U.S. as a high school junior, getting a higher mark on the next exam and thus obtaining a higher rank on the school stack-ranking system were my only goals in life. I was instilled with the doctrine that if I do well in school, I would do well in life. Because hard work will always pay off, right?
I have always prized myself for being extremely adaptable to new environment, evidenced by my fluency in a second language (English) and acclimation into American culture. However, recently I’ve realized that the competitive school environment in my childhood and adolescent years had largely shaped me into who I am today - I constantly compare myself with my peers on everything in my life: job titles, salaries, promotion velocity, popularity, etc. I rarely spoke about any of these thoughts with my friends, or even with my partner, but deep down, I’ve kept a secret list of things that I measure myself against my peers and kept tabs on them.
This mentality is certainly unhealthy and exhausting. I realized more and more that it kept me from living in the moment and made me always think about what I don’t have, instead of appreciating the things I do have. For example, I was so upset about not getting a promotion because I felt that I am so behind in job levels compared to my peers. But I forgot that I am very lucky to have a high-paying job during a global pandemic, still remain healthy and all of my loved ones are healthy too. I was laser-focused on the one thing I don’t have right now and ignored many other blessings in life.
Yes, to be honest, most of the people who was hired at the same year as me are at least a level or two higher than me right now. But I did switch teams two times, had to go on an extended visa leave last year when my US work authorization had run out but my Canadian work permit was still pending (a story for another time!) and one of my work projects lost some of its priorities. And partially, I also do think it took me a long time to understand how to be a program manager in an engineering team, and figure out what my day-to-day responsibilities are to my team.
What is work, anyway? I suspected that the ingrained Chinese school culture in me also played a role in my confusion during the first two years of my professional life. I have always been a good student all my life: I attended lectures diligently and always finished my assignment on time. Most importantly, as an engineering student, there are always standard answers to my questions. Working in a big company, on the other hand, was a 180-degree change for me, because working isn’t about doing what exactly my manager tells me to do every step of the way, but instead, it is more about coming up with solutions to problems that sometimes no one, not even my manager, knows how to solve (at least this is my tech company experience. Other industry jobs might differ). I was so used to being told by my teachers in school what the correct answers are to exam questions, so I was expecting my managers to assign me “homework” every day and tell me whether I did it right later - I was wrong to think that way!
For the first time in my life, I face the daily challenge of solving issues where standard answers usually don’t exist. Working almost feels like getting mini-PhDs every day: you only get your PhD when you’ve contributed to a new area of your study where no one else had done the same discovery before; you’ve done good work when you’ve developed a new feature which didn’t exist before or solved a new issue where no one knew how to solve in the past. You’ve gone from zero to one. It’s terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
Comparing myself professionally with other people will never make me happy, and it will not help me enjoy my current life. I’ve learned that as long as I have my goals, and I work hard to achieve them, I shall have no regrets and start to enjoy every minute of my current life. Let’s cheers to that!
[7/17/21] Happy note: it looks like I will get that promotion this year in the end! I was pleasantly surprised. However, my thoughts above remain the same.
