School was easier: the path is laid out for us and we just need to, more or less, follow it. At work, not so much. Everything is ill defined and you're sort of expected to "learn by osmosis" (by going to meetings, listening to your team chatting and then forming an understanding). I'm terrible at this and the consequence is that I don't always prioritise my effort and work well.
The obvious answer is to ask, but I'm not always aware of what I'm missing or the explanations come with loads of other lingo and assumptions about my current knowledge. After failing to understand an explanation, I feel I shouldn't ask again for fear being labelled "dumb" (after all, everybody else seems to be doing well). I also try to take notes, but after a while I just end up with a pile of disjoint pieces of information.
Has anyone felt like me? Have you found techniques and strategies to cope with this that you could share?
Or anything really. Points of view and opinions are very much appreciated as well.
In my opinion, some companies are just not set up to allow employees to see the big picture. For example:
> The smartest and most productive employees are given the most tasks. It can be hard to see the bigger picture when you're drowning on multiple complicated projects with no occasional breathing room to assess and reflect and make good long-term decisions.
> Information is siloed. The only communication you ever have with customers or decision makers might come strictly from your boss who might be a project manager. If they don't think that one piece of information is necessary for you to hear, you'll never come up with some amazing insights into the business. The failure could be your bosses, not yours.
> Employees are micromanaged to death. Every decision that you're not specifically authorized to make puts your job at risk. If you treat employees like children, they're not going to stick their neck out and are only going to do what they're told.
If there are specific parts of the big picture you're not seeing and should be seeing, you should be told -- with reasonable clarity -- what they are, or at least given some very concrete and actionable examples.
If the implication is that you're just not understanding your industry domain, there's no substitute for experience and independently motivated learning. This takes time, and you can't bake the cake faster if you set the oven to broil, impregnate 9 women and get a baby in one month, etc. Your manager will just have to be patient.
On a more important note, do you know the big picture of your own life? What do you want to do with it? How do you see yourself in 10 years? Are you a better person today than you were yesterday? Knowing what you want to achieve in your life is thousand times more important than knowing what others want to achieve. Focus on what is within your control, not outside of it.
1) Relentlessly pursuing all that I could to learn 2) Having a come-to-terms moment that yes it was okay to not know and not feel bad for asking questions
Work is different than school. In work, it is more important to be self-motivated. What this tangibly means is that if I'm working on something that I have questions about, I go to the person who has the answer to my question to ask them. I'll do this many times throughout my day if I don't already know the answer. If you are feeling afraid to feel "dumb", I don't know exactly how to force it, but you need to have a moment where you accept the fact you will not know things and will have to ask questions to get the answers you need. It becomes easy to ask questions once this moment happens.
Also, be the one who initiates change. Don't wait for your manager to tell you what to do [once you have a good idea of your tasks]; be self-motivated and say yes to everything and dive into everything and learn as much as you can. The more you do this, the more you are exposed to, involved in, and talk with others and can pick up enough "background noise" to understand more of the big picture [without explictly asking what the big picture is]. I would say after about 2-3 years you get a good intuitive understanding of your job and role, but I assume that runway depends on various factors that vary by individual.
I need to staple this (or maybe the whole answer) to my wall and read it many times a day. Thanks :)
Among developers the most common missing big pictures may be things like micro-optimization, over-engineering things 'just in case', inappropriate creation of or elimination of tech debt. Refactoring can be a large sink as it sometimes means rearranging earlier teams' work to fit current team's sensibilities rather than along the lines of where flexibility/speed is needed for upcoming/anticipated areas.
As for suggestions, not focusing too closely on particular aspects, thinking pragmatically with the opinion that each thing "is not important" until you can find solid pragmatic reasons for them to be with some leeway for important things you feel but can't exactly pinpoint. It's not easy, takes lots of practice. Do your work 'in the open', share early, share often, get feedback from both devs and non-devs. Participate in non-technical discussions. Maybe lots of pair programming with someone seen as getting the big picture would be valuable. Then you can experience exactly when, where, possibly how that a picture was recognized and acted upon.
Also realize that even if you only get medium sized pictures, that's ok too. Not everyone has to be good at everything. Lean into your strengths while putting some effort into other areas, don't let it be a perceived/imagined failure.
Richard Feynman was famous for asking dumb questions - sorry about the dumb article but it was the quickest one I could find (1). There's more if you Google, he wrote about it autobiographically.
Life outside of academia requires this kind of emotional grit - and it's absolutely something you can learn. It takes practice and reflection, and accepting that nobody starts out with the answers.
1 - https://philipliao.com/feynman-and-dumb-questions (edited to add the link)
Did you stakeholders not share quarterly/annual roadmap?
> the explanations come with loads of other lingo and assumptions about my current knowledge. after a while I just end up with a pile of disjoint pieces of information.
Do you have 1:1 setup with your manager, stakeholders, skip level? It’s a perfect topic for those meetings and regardless of you bringing it up, it’s their responsibility and part of their job - to make sure the org vision is shared and understood by everyone in their team.
Or, maybe check in with your professional circle, if the problem is unique at your workplace, then it’s time to move on.