Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I was not also able to understand the product very well. Even seven months in, I started feeling an imposter for the first time in a few years. We were basically put in a position that after two weeks, we will need to go. I honestly don't know how I survived doing it really.
Hello there guys and welcome to the next episode. Today is going to be a little bit of an impromptu episode and honestly speaking a little bit also an experiment for me because in today's episode I'm gonna be alone without Ioana and as you might have imagined this is because at this period of time Ioana just became a mother for the first time. So we decided to make a little bit of a break while she's trying to settle down with her new role and I believe she will tell you more about it
in the next episodes when she's back. I hope so, at least. But meanwhile, to kind of keep up with the habit and also, you know, I kind of was on the wave and I already started having this habit recording weekly those episodes.
I decided why not keeping it up? Why not trying to record one episode myself and see if it actually works? And if you have any feedback, please do let me know if it's worth keeping up those episodes, even if some of us is alone and not able to have a guest or not able to have a second host of this show. Please let me know. That will be helpful for me and for Yana in the future to know if this format also works.
Cool. With that all being said, let's just get started with the topic of this episode. And in today's episode, I decided to cover the topic that is called, how does it feel to get started with a new job in 2020?
I have had a direct experience this year starting a new job and I do have a whole bunch of an opinion about how it feels. And I wanted to share it with you and see maybe some of you have shared the same experience. And if so, please do DM me and let me know how it has been for you. I will do my best to leave all the links about our hopefully upcoming social media presence on this podcast matter in the show's notes. Okay. So let me give you a little bit of a prehistory story.
In my case, I was working in a different company in the beginning of 2020. So in January, February and March, I was working on a different company. And the company I was working for was called NCR. It's the product that is focused on the POS systems, basically point of sales.
I was working on a product that was helping waitress to take orders in the restaurants and take payments on the orders. So it was definitely an interesting project. And in a long story short, I do think that that company was good enough to work for. I was working there as a contractor for one whole year. And in the beginning of the year, things felt really great and steady. But somewhere deep, deep inside, I had to be honest, I was not very sure about
about my progress as a designer. Somewhere super deep inside of me, I felt like maybe this is not a big of a challenge for me. Maybe I really need something
a little bit more of a growth in my career or in my daily job because even though I liked the product I liked the project I liked the team and even the tools we were using I kind of liked everything however I didn't grow so much as I was doing that work most of the work I was doing was about design system design deliverables developing new flows working with the project manager
But there was not so much of a user search done to back up my design decisions. And there was not so much of transparency on who is our user, how they are using the product. There was not enough design validation.
And so in a nutshell, I felt like internally things were good, but I didn't grow much and I didn't do enough of the sort of design things I really care and value in my process. So if I'm being very honest, deep inside, I felt like something is not exactly perfect for me in that company.
And maybe I was just not bold enough to admit that I might need to get a change. I might need to look for a challenge. I felt very comfortable and, you know, like things were going good. I had a very good manager, a design manager. We were planning to meet tomorrow.
in the summer 2020 in US for the conference and get together with the team. We were about to launch our product on the market and we were about to do a lot of usability testings in the summer and COVID then hit us.
And at that particular period of time, I think it was end of February where things started being a little bit crazier and crazier every single day. And Czech Republic started to first think about the lockdown and also all the hospitality services started realizing that things are not going to be the same. And as you understand, the POS system is the product that is mainly used by hospitality services, restaurants, cafes, and every other business that needs a point of sale.
So this company particularly started getting the whole hit. I remember that every single day you wake up in the morning and you see how much the stocks are dropping, the company stocks. It is a public company and the stocks were dropping every single day incredibly. And at some point we wake up and it's 300 down and another day, another 300 down. It's just crazy. And so then half a month later, after every single day receiving such a hit on the market and on the product,
the company just realized that it couldn't afford having so many people in the office anymore. And basically, the company was working mainly with the contractors, including myself. However, as you understand, in this moment, like 2020, being a contractor was not a very good position. And so, yeah, after about maybe less than a month, the company realized that they cannot afford having so many contractors. They could actually barely afford having all the employees in place and do not cut the salaries.
So they had to let all the contractors go, including myself. And so that happened. They informed us about it 15 days before the end of the contract. And we were basically put in a position that after two weeks, we will need to go. And honestly speaking, when I got this news in my email box in the morning, I was, I don't know, I felt like mixed feelings. I felt like part of me was shocked. Part of me couldn't believe it.
But also parts of me were somehow looking forward for this. And this is me being very, very honest with everybody and myself as well, because deep inside of me, I realized that I do need to change the company because I really need to have that challenge in my work.
So as I was not receiving enough of it, when I realized that I will need to leave that company, I think deep inside of me, I thought like, wow, this is a great opportunity for me to actually maybe look for a company that will have enough of the UX processes in place already established. And if you ask me, why didn't we try to implement those processes? The answer is we did.
The issue was that we mainly were outsourcing company, I mean, outsourcing office. All the clients were in US side and the person who would do all those UX tests, they need to be in place in the US and need to really talk to the customers one-on-one in the field, basically, in the restaurants and see how they really use this product because this product is very, very specific.
It's the product that works with the payment systems. So it's a stressful moment also in the rush hours, every click matters. So in a nutshell, like you really need to be in the context to understand how the product works and how to take into account all the aspects that goes into experience. And so for us being remote in Czech Republic, where we don't have that product in Europe at all,
it was impossible to do those tests and really validate our designs. And it was not even the problem of the company. I think company did value enough the design, but it was more of a problem of
of the locations. And to travel every time you need to validate a small piece of a solution, it was really not just a worth of an investment. So, okay, that was a prehistory about my previous job and what led me to sort of look for another opportunity in 2020. So in April, basically, I became jobless. Luckily, I had some offers for the freelance project. So I was doing freelance project. And also in March, when I still had a previous job,
One person I knew asked me if I'm open to apply for a design position. And at that point, I wasn't really interested because I still had like that job and I didn't know what's coming in front of us. But I was sort of, again, because of that challenge, I was not feeling enough lack of challenge, I guess, at my workplace. I was somehow feeling that I probably need to be open to those opportunities.
and sort of train my interview muscles and see how it goes. I don't need to make decisions yet until maybe I get a job offer. But in the beginning, I was just trying to really be open and see how it goes. So long story short, in one month, I got a job offer. And that one month was really happening exactly in the right moment. So when I had to leave my previous job and in April, I was still applying to different things.
I was also applying to TopTal and considering to go down the freelance way. And if you know, the TopTal is a very famous sort of top talent network of freelancers. However, moving fast forward, I got two offers basically. One, I actually got into TopTal network, so I was accepted there. A second one was this job offer for the full-time job. And so it was a big choice for me to take.
Honestly speaking, because I had a lot of experience being a freelancer. For some of you who doesn't know me well, I was a freelancer, UX designer from 2012. So literally eight years ago, I started doing this. And only in 2018, I stopped freelancing. I was really fed up with this. I realized that this lifestyle is just not for me. This is really healthy, not sustainable. And mainly it was because I was spending too much time working from home without anyone involved.
So it was really hard for me to just be remote all the time without a team, without anyone to sort of talk to and discuss my things. And really someone who could help me grow and point out on my weak sides and on my also strong sides. So I could build my confidence and really objectively see how should I grow further.
And when I was doing my choice between a full-time job for the first time in my life and also between coming back to the freelance at TopTel,
Um, I would base my choices mainly not on the financial aspect, but mainly on the team aspect and feeling of belonging and also feeling that I'll be a part of something bigger. And that was more important to me. Also, people are super, super important to me. So the team I'm working with is a huge part of my experience and my growth. And basically, as you might know right now, I decided to go for a full-time job for the first time ever in my life. Even
even though I have to admit that financially it was less paid than I could really get in the freelancing gigs, especially if I would apply for remote positions working for US. So I really had to make choices between sort of just pursuing financial benefits or also thinking about what's really important for me at my work.
What do I want to do? What would this job make me feel like? And would I be really excited to wake up in the morning and do this every single day? So yeah, I chose a full-time job. A huge reason for that was team. I really love the team. I really felt like they are open, they are cool, they are chill, we'll get along well there. And though it was risk, because we didn't really met in person, everything was happening online.
even though usually the interviews they were running would be happening offline and we'd have to meet in office talk to the manager in office really get the vibe of each other to see how we get along but that point we had to do you know based on the gut feeling and taking our risks and i took the risk
you know, go through all this sort of, I would say, very tedious and hard process to kind of get prepared. I would have to go and do a medical check, prepare 55 billions of documents. I think I've spent the whole May preparing a bunch of documents. It was a very, very bureaucratic month. But luckily, okay, everything was set up. And on June 1st, I've started my new job position.
And I would say that I was definitely super hyper excited. I was looking forward for it. I was imagining how it will go. What are the people there? What's the office like? What's the culture like? I was absolutely curious. And for me, honestly speaking, right now I feel like I've changed. But back then, just a half a year ago, I felt like offline means everything. Offline interaction means everything. The office means everything. People you see each day means everything to you.
I couldn't imagine that I could actually bond with people online remotely so much as I now realize we did. But when I was about to start my job on June 1st, I asked if I can go to the office to pick up my stuff, my laptop and stuff. And so, yeah, for the first time, I went to my office.
met just a few people there were maybe like 10 people in the whole floor and the office is for like 300 people at least so I met a few people few people were nice one of the person was absolutely nice to just spend a lot of time with me talk to me about things at that point I was not sure what we were talking about but you know I was like happy that somebody tries to explain me how things working and um now we got into this most interesting part of this conversation or monoconversation
And I'd like to really share with you how did it felt for me
moving forward so right now it is december 2020 and i've started my work on june 2020 so it's been it's almost seven months and as i'm working for this new full-time job and i have to admit that even after half a year at this work i still feel not very well engaged and i feel like we did absolutely everything we could the team is amazing people are amazing just as i was hoping for um
However, it's a really different experience. If I try to explain how I feel right now, it's something in between that, yes, we have bonded. Yes, we really did maximum of what we could. We had all those online meetings and jokes and fun hours when we don't talk about work, but we talk about life and situations and what's going on between US and Czech Republic.
And we do bond. People are super nice. We do, you know, send presents to each other. We have those hours where we play games in Miro. We have these innovation projects where we can work on the projects we like, not that the work really needs work.
And we really just have enough opportunities for us to spend time together, get to know each other and have fun. We just recently had a games event when like 25 designers from different locations
would, you know, start playing those games in Miro. And one of the game was to try to guess the baby photo and match it with your colleague right now. And it was really funny because I have never seen any of my colleagues. However, I was able to recognize at least like five people there at least. And those are like one year old babies photos. So it was really cool. And those type of activities absolutely bond us and make us feel much more connected and
kind of stress-free when we talk to each other because definitely in the beginning I was a little bit stressed, I was a little bit closed
And I'm being a very, very offline person. I can definitely show who I am in the offline setting. I can be open. I can be smiley. I'm warm person by nature. So by being online, it was definitely hard for me to sort of communicate those, my values or traits of the personality. And, you know, there are definitely people who are more like reserved and online people who can, you know, joke around in Slack and send emojis and be really online. For me, it was definitely a struggle.
And I do remember distinctively that after two, three months, I felt like I'm not a part of this community because I don't do all those online jokes and I don't feel very well sending memes and stuff like this. It was definitely a challenge for me.
And that also added a little bit to the feeling that maybe I'm not a part of this team. Maybe I'm not a part of this community. Maybe our values don't match very well. That was definitely a part of my experience in the beginning. But still, if I zoom out and don't focus too much on small moments, I feel like team is absolutely open, cool, and great. And if we would meet offline, we would probably bond instantly.
It's just that working remotely this whole year, first of all, people were more stressed. Second of all, if you have never met those people, it's really harder to understand them. So it takes time and you really need to allow yourself to take that time and be open and embrace that fact. Don't allow yourself to sort of boil in your own assumptions about how people feel about you, think about you and stuff like that.
So now in my seventh month at this company, I feel like things are much better than it was maybe in the third month or fifth month. But I am absolutely looking forward to maybe May when we'll start going to office and it will be almost one year as I work in this company. So now for me, it's really crazy to think that I have signed up to work in
For a company that has an office, that has all the people in Prague, but being remote for all this time, it's just insane. Like, I don't know, maybe for you, if you're an introvert, it's very hard to understand that feeling. But for me, it is insane. Like, I cannot live without people energy. People is the fuel for me. When I am in the room,
And I'm present. I'm much more engaged and I'm much more able to give my energy and my experience and my thoughts to the team and really contribute and feel that I'm connected with these people. So being this whole time online...
I honestly don't know how I survived doing it, really. Because again, back when I was still doing the freelancing, it was not about the connection. It was more like transactional projects that I would do for a couple of months, then they're finished, move on. For me, it was about gaining different experiences. And that was my trigger. But right now, my main sort of motivation is people and connections and the project I'm working for together with somebody.
And I honestly think like if Joanna would have been here today in this podcast episode, I think she would share it with me. Absolutely. Because from small conversations we had online in Instagram, I remember we were constantly discussing that this whole year was absolutely crazy. It was impossible for us. We are very, very offline people and
Ioana, if you're listening to this episode, hi there. High five there, I guess. But enough whining. The last thing I really want to touch base on is the product. Because I think like two main pillars for any job you're doing would be people and the product or the project that you're working on. Also, sometimes maybe tools would be important for you as a part of an experience.
However, for me, the main two parts are people and the product. And so with the people, I've already discussed a lot. I think that the product is also a huge part that you get to know through people. And just because we couldn't, I couldn't, you know, just pull people here and there in the office and ask different questions in a random way and joke around. I was not also able to understand the product very well, even seven months in.
I still feel like I don't understand the product very well. And part of it is because the product is definitely complex. It's the product for developers, for admins. And I'm not an admin and I'm not a developer. I've never been. And so it's very hard for me to, you know, put myself in the shoes of those users when I develop something for the people I'm
Um, that I'm not very well familiar with. So without this context, without having people in office who are the users of this product, and luckily we have those users of the product in the office, but without having them offline in the office right now, as we're working online, it was a challenge for me to understand the product.
And in many moments, I felt like, am I doing the right thing? It was definitely a test for my confidence, as well as I started feeling an imposter for the first time in a few years. Because I couldn't really understand if I'm on the right track. I couldn't really understand if the solutions I'm offering are relevant. Couldn't really test them on the users. Couldn't even run them by designers who are working on this product for a longer period of time.
So in many moments, I felt like I don't understand the product very well. It's very complex. It's very technical. It's a lot about APIs and HTTPs and building micro apps, which I've never done in my life. And so being remote and trying to build those things without any prior experience was a challenge. Absolutely.
And yeah, kind of my bottom line here in this whole episode is that two main things I chose this team and this product for is still a very hard part for me. The fact that it's not possible to work with people offline contributed to the fact that I couldn't learn the product very well and be able to use it as the pro user. And that, of course, contributes to the fact that when I'm doing my design decisions and I'm developing the flows, I'm not able to do it.
I'm honestly basing it only on my rational thinking and sometimes on feedback, sometimes also on the admins that I can reach out to online who are the users basically. So my bottom line here, and I'm not sure if I will go for any sort of takeaways in this episode. I'm sorry if you're expecting to hear them. I think like this episode is really me thinking aloud. And if you're curious about this topic, I'm really happy that you stick around for so long listening to it.
But I would just like to tell you the fact that if you start your job
and you're starting it for the team's sake online. And also, if you're about to embark yourself on the journey working for the product you have no clue about, you have no experience working or experiencing it as a user before at all, then it's a very, very hard journey you're putting yourself into. And so I don't want to whine, but I do think that was definitely hard here.
work-wise, making decisions-wise, connecting with the people-wise. But I assume that many people, many designers have gone through those moments. It was a lot of adaptation. It's a lot of resilience. And I'm really happy and proud of
how we have pulled it out this year. I think like most of us did a great job. And I do think like if you didn't fall apart, if you didn't give up, if you did your best with all the resources you have at your team and at your work and you've survived and you didn't end up being depressed, then you definitely did a great job and you definitely need to be proud of yourself.
So we'll see how the next year goes. I'm not sure what to expect from it. I'm definitely tired, but I just want to acknowledge this moment and say that we all did great. And on this note, I would like to end this episode and say that I wish you a merry, merry Christmas. I want to emphasize the words merry here.
Have enough rest. Think about your life. Think about your priorities. Try to understand what makes sense for you, what makes you happy, and see if you can make more of those moments in your life. I do really hope for all of us to find balance and find rest and really find that happiness and normal lifestyle next year. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope to see you in the next one. Otherwise, have a good day. Bye-bye.
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