Successfully Navigating Boundaries to Success
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
Overview: Overcoming personal boundaries that we face, life situations.
Why did you consider moving between academia and industry? It's important that your definition of success align with their definition success and that you enjoy the majority of what you do to enjoy your job. "There is no green grass." you should like who you work with and stay away from bad people and you enjoy what you do, then you are in a good situation. Must also be valued in this situation.
How you use your strengths to cross your boundaries and during career? Understand what your key strengths are; use a profiling tool to help discover (strength finders index - now discover your strengths), you get a summary of 5 key strengths. Despite changing roles, stays pretty consistent but can change a bit. Find out what you liked and didn't like about the jobs you have had, what made you unhappy? What made you happy? Reflect, sometimes you may find that you are not properly using your strengths to your advantage. You should work on development areas, but you should also be strengthening your strengths and focus on them more. They are also less painful to work on!
What strengths, training, and education did you leverage to move into new roles? Get a masters in the new space that you want to end up in; baby steps are good if you can't work on it now; volunteer in the areas that you are interested (medical devices - hang out in the ER); you manage your career, so you need to seek out opportunities that will help you. You can open other doors by trying completely different path at a good place, networking is great from these opportunities. Sharpen your saw, just because you get a masters degree doesn’t mean that you are set, you should keep your skills fresh. Take an online course or certification course to keep everything fresh or to stretch you in ways that would be valuable.
How did all the moves affect your career and your skill set? You take your skills with you, sometimes you don't even recognize them. Sometimes you are pushed into roles you may not have been enthusiastic about it, but it can stretch you in good ways. You have to continue stretching yourself in many and different ways. Open source is a great way to keep your skills fresh and can help have meaning. It's important to find meaning in your work, its OK to seek that as a requirement in your job search. International and mobile technologies are a great way to affect the world; your life is a canvas.
Why industry to academia? Needed a challenge; academia is very challenging, pays lots of money, lots of flexibility; she didn't see anyone in the company that she wanted to model herself after, enjoyed school. Don't be afraid to ask for a recommendation. Feels like an entrepreneur as a faculty member, you get to choose what you are doing, you can totally change where your focus is so at you can stay challenged and engaged in what you are working on.
Transitions that were challenging? First time moving from engineering to management position; had been an individual contributor for 10 years, suddenly you are not the expert anymore, you have to be OK with that and still be confident so that you can lead your team effectively; first thing she did - pick a team member to being the sounding board and technical contact that she could tap for information. Someone you could trust, someone that you could tap and get a good perspective; understand the approaches you used previously may not directly apply to your new problem set, you may need additional training to be able to lead the team in the way that it needs to be lead. Rethinking how to spend your time, leave 25% of your calendar free so that you have time to be able to respond to issues that pop up last minute, schedule the fires! Understand the culture of the environment that you are going into and that you would like to create. You may not know what is valued in the new environment; invest a lot more in the software skill sets in addition to the technical aspect.
Discuss cultural difference between industry and academia. There are similarities; standard industry position you don't have a lot of control over your situation, more so in as a consultant and as an academic; ability to influence your environment; relative position to the people that surround you, similar to working though college, starting as the new person on the block and become senior and then the cycle pops up again.
Discuss the movement from academia to industry Control over your environment, more of an entrepreneurial spirit; if you start a company you are the boss and the janitor; in academia you don't have a good support system, everything is different, people spoke a foreign language; change something is very difficult in the academic world, much slower in the and then noting seems to get done following Robert’s rules of meetings. She had to support herself and the infrastructure is not there, seek out mentors.
What are some attitudes and assumption you had when starting with not for profits? Thought they didn't know anything about best practices, here’s rule number one ... Don't start a new job with an attitude; non-profits are often bootstrapped, you don't have a lot of resources, quickly alienated colleagues and figured out that it wasn't the best way to proceed, grassroots organizations are important; when you work on projects you can see what its like in other countries; the commitment and passionate belief on what you are working on, but it actually has a big impact. They are creative, it's a special skill set, advocating on behalf of great issues.
How did children fit into your career? Continuous assessment and reassessment of priorities and values and life, calibrate every season or year and make sure that your family is in tact, how's the marriage, how are the children, do you like your work, is it still worth it? Know yourself, know what type of person that you are; appreciate your time with the children more and is a better mom because of it; you are the decision maker in your job situation, which makes it very hard; your SO can share his preferences on your work situation, but you need to do wheat is best for you; don't let them talk you out of your passion, but if you find that you value spending more time with your family, you may want to reassess. It’s never a final decision, you can always go back to industry if you feel you need some time with your family first.
How have you made family compromises for new opportunities? You can do it all, but not at the same time. Sometimes you need to pass on opportunities, but they don't necessarily go away forever; expand your definition of family life and there may be a way that you stagger moves in the family. Never let your kids see your guilt (they may use it against you), let them feel that they are more independent and benefited from it. Try new things; e.g. family moved to Asia, but daughter ended up hating it and asked to moved back, had already contacted her aunt and grandparents and set up a living arrangement; she had to let her stay home with her grandparents to salvage the relationship; she came back a lot to visit the children, she had a cell phone, they did Skype video conferences; may have been harder on the mom, but they go tshrough it. Traveling less helps to be a better parent to be close by, being a working mom can be a very good for your children. Your children will be proud of you.
Transition from stay at home mom to the workforce? Fairly smooth because she made sure that her number one job was family; value ranking: kids, self, job; skip lunches so that you can get out early and leave when the day is over; use your day more efficiency, use project management skills on the personal level.
How long is too long after you leave school to go back for the PhD? It’s not too long if you made a good impression; it can be daunting, but you bring all types of experience to what ever you do, don't worry about asking people to give you a recommendation; life is not a static thing it evolves, sometimes it's slow and fast; if you don't feel like its the right time, don't do it. You have to want it so badly, otherwise you will not stick it out. You wont get past the BS if you don't know you are doing it. You will know when its time, if you made an impression on the professor they will remember you.
When you do a transition, what are the liabilities and also benefits to bringing a new perspective in the new environment? You may need to demonstrate the value that you are bringing with the new perspective, may have to prove yourself again, especially in the technical arena. All organizations will have positive and negative perceptions of what you are bringing to an organization, need to overcome stereotypes.
