What I learnt from my first 709 days at work

A couple of days ago, I received an amazing mail from a mentor, that included a few things to remember for all working professionals. And that got me thinking, what have I truly learnt from my time at Deloitte? Before I started working, all my thought processes were influenced by seeing my father and how he worked. At Deloitte, I have come to add to that knowledge base, and now, I think it is time to reflect how exactly that has happened.

When I started working in 2015, I had no idea how the ‘corporate’ world worked. I had notions, mostly from shows like Suits and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I soon came to realize (often the hard way) that these notions were widely misguided – when someone puts a gun to your head, you do not have 146 ways of saving yourself. Often, you just have one. And even that may not work.

Therefore, I feel like I should share what actually works. While it is rather presumptuous of me to think that I have figured this out, I still think that there are lessons to learn for all, irrespective of how long they have worked. Plus, it lets me combine two of my favorite activities, writing and telling others what to do. So, in an ode to nothing, here goes:

Actions have consequences:

This is by far the biggest lesson that working has taught me. I was wondering if this should go on last, because this could be the conclusion of all the other lessons, but in case you have a short attention span (or really dislike my writing) and don’t manage to complete the entire blog, this is the most important thing you should know. A lot of the following lessons are variations of this simple rule: Almost everything you do will affect you, sooner or later. You think you can skip unit testing your code because timelines are difficult, or (and this is more likely), you’re just plain lazy? Well, be prepared to put in far more effort when a defect comes out and the manager makes you document every single small thing as atonement. Want to just ignore that extra work just because it is low priority right now? Soon enough, there will be a mail making it high priority. Want to ignore indenting your queries? That you can do, that rarely ever matters.

However, this does not always have to be negative. In fact, this was my biggest advantage in my last six months at Deloitte. I had earned enough goodwill to take a few privileges towards the end of my tenure. You can use this to your advantage if you want, or not. When I was in the process of earning goodwill, I didn’t do it to earn goodwill, but just to do my job better. The trick is to just give your best and be your nicest at all times, and it will come back to you eventually. Which, when I think of it now, is what the Gita calls karma. Now, I am not saying that this blog is pretty much a condensed version of that epic, but you should.

Try to be the best you can be:

Hi, it is me, Captain Obvious. It is clear that we all need to try to be the best version of ourselves. And we all do, as long as it’s easy. However, what distinguishes the great from the good is what they are willing to sacrifice when it isn’t easy to give their best. Choosing between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ is easy, the real tough one is to choose between ‘good enough’ and ‘amazing’. And the first choice, like all the other easy ones, is unfortunately the more popular one. The decision is a direct function of how enthusiastic you are about your work, which itself is often an inverse function of how long you have worked. This is where my inexperience was a boon - I had an enthusiasm and earnestness at the beginning that was yet to be replaced by a cold indifference and the knowledge that nothing really ever matters in the end. And this attitude worked wonders. I always took on more work if I possibly could, and sometimes even when I could not. I tried to finish my tasks quicker than anyone else, just because that made me feel happy. Often, there’s a lack of motivation at work, but I realized that if I just tried to be the best, that was almost always enough to inspire me to get the job done.

Do your work without worrying about what you are going to get from it at the end*

Yes, I plagiarized the Bhagavad Gita again, sue me. I rarely worked hard because I knew I had to get a good rating or get a promotion. I did it because it was literally my job. There was an incident within my first three months at Deloitte that really shaped my thinking going forward – I was working till 2 am for the third time in a row, and when the time came to send the status mail to my onshore leads, I considered keeping my manager in the CC list just so he knew I was working that long. It was the first time I considered doing so. I am not proud of it, but I felt that a little appreciation would be nice. But then I thought to myself, was I working that long to finish my deliverables, or was I doing it to make my manager think I was a hard worker? I eventually decided against doing it, and the next day, my onshore lead sent a mail to the leadership commending me for the efforts I was putting in. Like Raymond Holt once said:

 

However, the asterisk at the end is important. I could afford to do this, as the people around me were really good. My onshore senior manager had no need to send that mail, and in that case, I would have been feeling victimized instead of vindicated. I guess there are two approaches here, either gauge your team well and act accordingly, or work and just hope that someone in the end appreciates your efforts. The latter is what I did, but if I had to tell anyone to choose a way, it would be the former.

A good turn begets another, but don't do it just because it does:

This is a direct combination of the first and the third lessons. I tried to help my teammates as much as I could, because I genuinely liked them. And that almost always came back to me. I worked weekends when I was not supposed to, and analysed issues late nights when I did not have to. Later, when I had to go for a trip to Hyderabad, everyone put in extra efforts to ensure that even though I was officially working, I did not have to put in much time on my laptop. I knew that if I ever needed help, nobody would say no. I had solved enough issues over the phone for others to know that if I ever was stuck, they would do the same for me.   

Complaining isn’t going to solve problems:

Don’t get me wrong, sharing how terrible your day was or female dogging about a co-worker can work wonders for your morale. However, complaining is never going to actually solve a single problem. They are not going to make your work (or your female dog of a teammate) magically go away. The only way of solving issues is by actually doing something about it. And if you cannot do anything about it, then thinking about it will only make it worse.

Denial is pretty understated as a mechanism to cope. I have often heard that we were not paid enough, that we were not appreciated enough, that expectations were unrealistic, and another million things that are bad about work. But if I had thought of that, I would never have been putting in optimum efforts. I tried to ignore the bad things and focus on the good – that I was being valued and appreciated at work, that I was confident of doing a great job every day, that I had a genuine bond with all my teammates – these were the things that motivated me to put in efforts every single day.

First impressions last, but you can change them:

This again ties back to the first lesson – if you do a good job long enough, people are going to trust that you will do a good job. And on the off days you don’t do, you might even get a pass. But earning this trust is the most important step. You cannot tell your team lead that you will take half the day off and finish it in the remaining time if you haven’t proven that you can finish work quickly before. And if you haven’t created that impression yet, you just have to work that bit harder now. I could write a whole paragraph more, but the video below explains it a lot better:

Own your mistakes:

You are always going to make mistakes, so you might as well take responsibility for them. There are times when you feel like you can avoid responsibility and put the blame on someone/something else, but doing so, in my opinion, is pointless. Again, this lesson should be taken with a pinch of salt; in my case, my leadership was asking the right questions. The focus was always on ‘how can we fix this?’, and not ‘how could you mess this up?’ And also, in my case, I had done enough right things to ensure that the wrong ones did not reduce others’ trust in me too much. But generally, it is a good idea to say that ‘I did this wrong, but I am going to try and fix it’.

You never know enough:

This is the biggest lesson any place will teach you – that it cannot teach you enough. I thought I knew enough to write an entire blog about work lessons, and I still did not know 2 out of the 4 things that my manager wrote in his mail. In my last month at Deloitte, I knew enough about the project to guess what exactly was wrong even before looking at the data, and yet, almost every single day, I saw something that I had never seen before. I guess the only way is to just keep learning, and I hope to continue doing that in my next journey.

…And, that’s that. I probably have learnt a lot more, but I think that experience is far better than a blog to teach you those lessons. I can safely say this at the end of the blog, after you have read everything in it. I hope my experiences can help others in some way, and if you have some of your own to share, please do. Like a wise man once said, you never know enough.