First Taboolaversary Reflection
October 14,2024
Early last week, I celebrated my one year at Taboola or my first Taboolaversary. During this year, I have sharpened and discovered many things that will help with my career path. The following are some reflections from my first year.
Healthy Distance Relationships
Similar to my previous jobs, the word “family” is frequently used in the company. While it is important to be nice and friendly with your peers, it is also important to create a healthy “distance” with your co-workers. In my opinion a “friend” or “family” is someone you can share personal stories with and participate in outside activities. This is something that cannot be done with co-workers as they will take things “out of context” and use it against you or for their benefits. Even a small discussion of what you did over the weekend will be used against you. Thus, it is important to create a respectable distance where it acknowledges others about work and only work.
Always Prepare For The Worst
We have all heard the common cliche, “Nothing in life will go as planned.” Despite this being a cliche, this statement will summarize my daily tasks as a Solution Engineer. For example, a client can provide details about their website that are completely different from the truth or change their plans which affect yours. Even if things do not go as planned, we can still be mentally and technically prepared for the worst case scenario. Let us take the client not providing every detail. This is usually caused because the client representative is not necessarily tech savvy. Therefore, I should have taken the time to prepare a set of questions for the client to forward to their tech team. Another example is when clients change their plans. Recently, I had a client who said they would be removing the infinite scroll from their site. However, three days later they changed their mind and kept the feature. Luckily, I had my personal doubts and prepared a back up plan for this scenario. While some may perceive this as a negative outlook.
Learn And More Importantly, Re-Learn
Looking at my surroundings, I am constantly reminded of the importance of having modesty and meekness. Thus, the one way I do this is to take some time to learn and more importantly, re-learn different things. Currently, I am studying for the AWS Cloud Solution Architect, Mandarin, Python, JavaScript, and weightlifting. Some of these things are work related and some are not. However, learning different things serves as a reminder that there will be others more knowledgeable than you. Therefore, I try to take one hour on the weekdays and two to three on the weekends to learn.