A Cog In The Machine

With an educational background completely unrelated to technology, I made the transition into tech soon after college for very clear and practical objectives: I wanted to make more money, and I wanted to have a sexy job title to share in passing with friends and families. This sounds silly now considering how common the Business Analyst/Software Consultant title is in the tech world, and how the barrier to entry is comically low. But I didn’t overthink at the time. To the young, ambitious, and naive 23-year old-me, the image of a young woman in tech was somewhat of a fresh college graduate and new immigrant’s modern archetype, quintessential to everything cool and impressive.

I lightly veiled my egotistical desires under every corporation’s favourite cliche: “I’m passionate about growth, technology and solving problems”. It wasn’t untrue, but it wasn’t all of my motivation either. I repeated the pitch to both potential employers and to myself for months. After countless job applications and interviews, a healthcare analytics software company decided to make the leap of faith. I made the transition and voila - just like that, my goals were accomplished. I still remember driving back from work one day during the first few weeks into the job, giddy with pride. I finally had a job that didn’t bore me to death, a higher salary than I ever hoped for up until then, and a sexy-enough-title.

About a year later, the rose-colored glasses came off, and my job revealed itself to be not at all any more glamorous than any other 9-5 job. Once I had gotten a good grasp of the software product I’m working with, got a couple projects under my belt, gained enough experience to allow me to navigate teams and processes with relative ease, my day to day started to become repetitive. I woke up, got a cup of coffee, glanced at my overflowing calendar & inbox, and started a marathon of meeting - prepare for the next meeting - meeting - squeeze in a couple emails/IMs in between - prepare for the next meeting. In the afternoon, I translated all the business requirements from these meetings into technical requests, follow up items, and push as many of them off my court as I can. After 6 years in the field, I can tell you being completely caught up and on top of things is not a thing. You’re forever in a contending race with your growing backlog of tasks, and it will always be a little or a lot ahead of you, leaving you with a very stereotypical mild to medium sense of anxiety.

There are bad days and good days. Some days, you or someone on your team or the client’s team overlooked something seemingly small that ended up having a massive impact. Some days, you’re finally able to solve an issue that has been a mind twister for everyone. Some days, everything is on a straight track to success. Some days, everything seems to be on fire.

It’s not difficult at all to get lost in the day to day and lose sight of the meaning of the work. However, whenever I get to take a step back to see what it is that I’m a part of, the big picture emerges as a complex, dynamic, and deeply humanistic adventure.

At the heart of it, my job is to make the technology work for people, and to help guide people to utilize the technology. The perfect outcome is for the software solution to be elegantly and seamlessly integrated into the business users' day-to-day, enabling them to solve problems or conduct their operations in a better, faster, easier fashion.

This sounds very straightforward until you roll up your sleeves and start digging into the project. Two major challenges will immediately reveal themselves to you after about 5 minutes beyond the exciting project kick off: The humans are not perfect, and the software isn't perfect either. The end users you're trying help guide and support could be extremely resistant to changes and new technology. The software could come up short in accommodating a seemingly minor business process that ends up being a complete showstopper. A project manager, a developer, a consultant on either your team or the client's team could still be finding their sea legs, and can't help but keep making mistakes, derailing, or prolonging the project. A tiniest detail overlooked, a question unanswered & forgotten, a simple miscommunication between two departments will always inevitably come back up when you're so close to go-live, making everyone drop everything for a fix/redo/workaround, and triggering another round of re-testing, readjustment of timeline & expectation, and a million tiny technical and logistical considerations.

In many ways, software product is an extremely black or white object to work with. You either does it justice - implement it right, have the right system and process to support it, or it would simply not work. There's very little room for negotiation and understanding. The machine and the codes would not budge.

Depending on the day, it could feel like you're just a cog in the machine, troubleshooting one thing after another, battling an endless to-do list. With a little bit of attention and imagination, you might find you and your team to be no different from group of missionaries trying to bring The Ring to Modor. The goal is unbelievably clear but the road toward it is unbelievably winding, difficult and full of detours. You most likely will get lost sometimes. You are definitely going to go through moments of intense pressure, difficult conversations, uncertainties. You might even get bitten by spiders. I mean bugs.

What I now love about my job is no longer the perceived glam, the pay, or the sexy title. I wouldn’t dare to claim that this job is harder than any other jobs, as every job is undoubtedly hard, but I can claim with confidence that the job is not easy. It’s the gritty work of the warrior charging forward in the face of constant roadblock, detours, distractions, changing scopes and priorities. It’s untangling one knot at a time, building one block at a time,, rebuilding if something is broken, adjusting, adapting, polishing while still pushing things forward. And what is the end of it all? When you finally get to Mordor, panting, sweating and emotionally bruised. You drop the goddamn ring in the lava, and then see the world bloom into the full technicolor it’s meant to be again. And you high five your teammates, high five your client, make sure they’re well taken care of by the next support team. Only to wake up the next day and do it all again. Another kick off, another client, potentially another product for you to learn all over again.

How do I impact the world through my job? Every day, I’m working on a tiny stepping stone in one tiny factory and one tiny project, on the grand scheme of things. Everyday, I’m sharpening my tools, partnering up with new companions to achieve a common goal. Together, we march toward a more technologically advanced future for my company, my clients, in the backdrop of advancing a more technologically-advanced humanities as a whole.