Returning felt good. I was excited and ready to do a good job. I was late on Day 2...and Day 3...and was welcomed on Day 2 to my old inbox. All of my old email and Slack messages were saved. I asked for new credentials because I knew I would be blocked somehow. There are so many different systems at my job and I knew they would confuse my old access with my new. They did and I was not able to participate in Deploy Day, which was an orientation lab that enabled everyone to deploy for the first time at my company. This set me back on another assignment and did not give me the chance to participate with my on-boarding class. Most of my class were interns and not too happy that all of the presenters shouted me out because I knew them. This went on all week as technical roles get a week’s worth of onboarding. They wanted to feel special and recognized and did not think the little black girl would be the vet! Because of this, many of them did not want to work with me. That’s fine though.
Because I was behind a day, I spent the weekend catching up. Although my manager knew that I did not have access, I knew he was still going to expect me to know the topics covered. On the Monday of the new week, he asked, “You did Deploy Day right?” I am glad I had put the time in on the weekend because, like I said, I knew he was going to expect that I had done it despite being a day behind everyone else.
Having my old access though did ensure that I did not have to resign up for a lot of things which I am grateful for. I was told I was going to be working with Fraud and Risk Operations because of my background in Ops but I wanted to work in something completely different. I wanted to work in mapping, machine learning, or open platform to prep me for a career in autonomous vehicle software. I vocalized that and even got support from people on the team who said they would be glad to mentor me.
I learned from my last time at my company to speak up if there is something I do not want to do. I did and he supported me exploring other teams, but continues to give me tickets in Fraud and Risk Operations. I will take it in stride though, continue to be appreciative, use what I know about that world to help me get ahead, prove myself and opt for another team if those other teams still interest me when it is time to do my internship. In our 1:1, my manager told me, “Just because I do not have tickets for work that you are not interested does not mean that you shouldn’t keep asking for it,” which was absolutely encouraging. He wants to give me what I want and make sure I am happy. I am in the best role possible for me and I am so grateful of that.
I am much more confident this time around and know some mistakes not to make. I will continue to be open, kind to myself and keep working hard. This time around, because I am paid hourly, I will learn how to better manage my time, be a woman of my word, not stay late and GET S*IT DONE!
