Lack of Control Is Inevitable. Lack of Power Isn’t
Control is a myth
I’m thrilled to share this guest post from my friend, . She’s a tech professional on a mission to elevate empathy. We both understand the importance of people skills in tech, and we share a similar view on leadership.
Her post hits home for me. If I had to sum up my tech career in one word, it’d be ‘change.’ I’ve embraced change over the years, but I’ve also been forced to change. Change can be scary and make you feel powerless. But as you’re about to find out, it’s also a powerful growth opportunity.
Over to you, Colette.
I like math because I can predict the outcome. However, I did not always like math. When I was in the K-12 system and trying to understand how it was being taught, I often felt confused, and it felt like a grey area.
The grey area made me panic because I lacked control.
But the reality is, we have less control than we think, even when we feel secure.
We can see the weather report and plan, but on a day that was supposed to be slightly overcast with the sun, it turns into a downpour.
We sometimes see on the news that perfectly healthy people have horrific traffic accidents. Hence the word - accident.
We can even work at a company for 27 years and one day walk out with a box packed up and a cold goodbye. This is a true story, as I ran into an old colleague who experienced just this. Even after finding new employment, she is still reeling a year later.
What felt like it was in your control was an illusion of our making. It is a myth. The reality is that you were never really in control.
Your Job Is Gone, Your Value Isn’t
Imagine attempting to sign in on your work computer and being locked out.
You call the IT help number on your sticky note next to your cup of coffee. They give a vague response and say they cannot unlock you at this time.
You sit with your coffee until it turns to the verge of being iced coffee. Then the phone rings. It's Rhonda from HR, and your job has been eliminated, along with 5% of the company. You are instructed to ship your laptop back in the box, which will be arriving in the mail later this week.
It's gut-wrenching. If you work in tech, you might have experienced this in the past two years, as we have seen a wave of layoffs impact software engineers, data architects, operations, and other supporting roles.
But, let's think - who are you other than your job?
Are you a parent? Are you a spouse or partner? A close friend?
Do you have a favorite spot in nature?
Do you like reading a particular blog (cough: Substack)?
Is there an event coming up that will bring you immense joy?
Are you kind, empathic, and willing to lend a helping hand?
Who are you?
Think.
While not entirely in your control, your most important value is who you are.
Yes, we need to earn money; many of us do to survive but do not conflate this with your value. Your value is you, not your job.
Tech's Only Constant? Change
A friend of mine has a partner who works at a significant management consulting firm as a software developer, but in a unique role - he is the developer who knows the code that is many years old.
He has a shelf of old books, the size of old phone books, that contain long-forgotten information on this code. Think Fortran, COBOL, and Perl.
Think of the code we leverage today and how the dozens of languages have evolved in the blink of an eye. Change has been constant. Few are like my friend's partner to have retained knowledge of the old code.
But is it really that old? It has been a few decades in the blink of an eye. I have a colleague who graduated undergrad in the 1980s, and for her computer science degree, absolutely none of the tools she worked with then are used today.
A wild statistic is how I read that 65% of students today will work jobs in the future that do not even exist yet! Speaking for myself, if someone had told me in middle school I would work on data in data science, I would have looked at them completely perplexed.
We can fight change, but change is all around us in tech. It is the only constant.
Change Isn’t the Enemy, Stagnation Is
It is human nature to want stability and safety. Change, depending on its nature, can feel like a threat, but it is our constant challenge to accept it.
With some self-management, such as naming our thoughts and feelings, we can take the first step toward acceptance. Change just is. We can fight it, but it is generally futile.
We can extend our empathy to others and help them adapt. This action can be as simple as explaining something simply so they can grasp it and not fear it.
We are in this together. Change is an opportunity - a bigger opportunity for better, beyond what we can see, and a power to behold. Change is not the enemy, but stagnating in denial about it is.
Thanks to for teaching us to embrace change. Please check out her newsletter, , and follow her on LinkedIn.
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Love it. My partner and I were both made redundant during Covid (May 2020 and Aug 2020) and it was hard. We’d both worked for our employers for many years, and we both felt bewildered and betrayed.
This is an amazing piece full of truths about change. It's an experience where you can ride a full wave of emotions here: the discomfort of change, the shock and dismay of a layoff, and the challenge we face each day to bring courage with us for active choices to accept change and grow alongside it.
Well done, Colette! 👏