Month: July 2015

We need to talk about startups… – Medium – Food for thought.

How’s the new job going? I’ve been asked that a zillion times recently, so it’s probably worthy of a job post. I answer, “So far so good!” To be honest, it’s hard to say. I mean, it’s great for a lot of reasons:

• I work with really smart and talented people who are all super friendly.
• Our product is a thing that people genuinely LIKE. (Sadly, I think this is a career first for me.) They rave about it! Several of my friends have actually used it and emailed me compliments about it!
• I’m learning heaps about things I never had a great deal of exposure to before (like content marketing, email campaigns, etc).
• The work I’ve done seems to be genuinely appreciated and the feedback has been great.
• I get to walk to work every day to an extremely cool office in Surry Hills where we’re fed by a wonderful chef.

So what’s the issue then? I guess it’s more just the ambiguity of figuring out where I fit in. It’s like switching schools. (Sudden 7th grade flashbacks.) There’s a fine balance between sitting back and observing, and jumping right in. This kind of situation always brings out my Imposter Syndrome, and it doesn’t help that I’m probably the most technical woman in the office. I feel the need to prove my bonafides to the guys, but I know how annoying that can be. And then there’s the perpetual issue of being a generalist in a team of specialists. Everyone wants to feel useful, right?

But ambiguity has upsides too. I have the freedom to get involved in all sorts of areas that I wouldn’t before. So far I’ve resisted the impulse to fall back to being a BA (well, mostly – I’ve created a couple Activity Diagrams that were like SCRATCHING THE WORST ITCH EVAR). Mostly I’ve been working on an email marketing strategy, but I’ve also been helping out on the recruiting front and have passed a couple leads over to HR. I’ve identified some bugs in our analytics tracking. I’ve lined up some speaking gigs on behalf of Canva and the company is extremely supportive of that. Next week I’m going to have a stint on Customer Support (with some other new recruits). All of this is new and exciting. Scary, but fun too.

So that’s where I am after three weeks. Looking forward to the next six months and beyond!

“VP of Gettin’ Things Done” is actually my current title on LinkedIn. I’m thinking of changing it up every six months. Any suggestions?

Pressure Cooker Pork Stew with Sweet Potatoes and Prunes – Dad Cooks Dinner – Made this for dinner tonight, and it was glorious.