Career Growth – Playing the long game

Playing the long game

In my first job, I ended up weeping in the restroom within the first 3 months

My team lead was a stickler for writing good code and rightly so. He added comments like a pro.

The first time he reviewed mine, he edited, formatted and deleted parts of it. He didn’t admonish me for it – just continued to format it while calling out how ‘our code is our legacy’.

As I stood behind his chair looking at him editing comments, I felt such a sheer sense of insufficiency at failing at the task that tears welled up in my eyes.

Now, rather than think of it as an opportunity, I castigated myself for how I should have done better.

We are taught to score marks and top subjects at school, but hardly to take failures as learning opportunities.

I wasn’t used to failing at college and thought it would extend to real life.

The incident seems hilarious now but hindsight is always 20/20 and Prathap‘s amazing note about careers reminded me of this.

Careers are a marathon and not a sprint.

So if you are having a bad day or have messed up – that’s all right, everyone does.

Confidence doesn’t come from not failing – but by accepting one’s limits, learning each day and playing to your strengths

Something you realise over time 🙂

So chin up and play the long game.

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Ranjani Mani

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