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Uncomfortable lessons
What I learned from challenging myself at work and home
I have always been a strong advocate of learning and self-improvement. It’s all nice and pleasant in the comfort zone, but learning occurs elsewhere. We must face our fears and step outside our comfort zone to learn and grow. I’m practicing that a lot in my life.
Work as a comfort zone
If you look at my LinkedIn profile, you can tell I’m experienced in changing jobs. The first time I deliberately changed jobs to challenge myself was at Compuware. First, I was a developer for five years and then moved into a management position. After another five years, I started recognizing specific organizational patterns, and recurring activities became a dull routine. And so I started looking around for a new challenge.
After a few months, I found my next job at a telecommunications company. Before, I was used to shipping a new software product every 6–12 months, but here, we were deploying to production every month. The business was constantly pushing for more, and incidents in production could cost the company serious money. Instead of a stable workforce of permanent staff, my department was partially staffed with contractors from various suppliers. The dynamics and culture were so different between these two companies.
