It’s my second Calmversary! It feels like it’s been a very long time, while simultaneously feeling like the blink of an eye. Calm is a very different company than the one I joined, and I am a very different person than who I was then.
At my one-year mark, I revisited the reasons I chose to join Calm. I continued to find working in the mental health space rewarding, I was growing as an engineering leader and I really enjoyed the people I worked with.
As I reflect on year 2, I notice that my measure of success in these categories has changed. This last year was a wonderful year for me personally, and it’s helped me clarify what’s actually important to me.
Mental health. 🔴 Calm continues to be an integral part of millions of lives around the world and I am so lucky to be working at a company whose mission aligns with my values. But that’s where it stops. While I work on proliferating the Calm experience to millions of people, my work does not directly enhance the product experience. I am no longer satisfied by the optics of saying I work in the mental health space.
Career growth. 🟢 I have learned a lot professionally. I’m pretty good at enabling business outcomes through engineering. I know how to motivate teams and build pragmatically for the future. The big picture is a lot clearer from user acquisition to strategic partnerships to client platforms and distributed systems. I make decisions more confidently with better results. Many of the people I’ve coached have realized more of their potential, and this brings me great joy.
People, money, work-life balance. 🟡 I continue to find some of my coworkers to be the most enjoyable people in my life, and to enjoy my professional interactions (okay, 95% of them). I’ve only had work interrupt my running plans a small handful of times. However, I am far less fulfilled by money. And I realize that work-life balance is not actually important to me because I am so career-driven that I want to care so deeply about what I work on that I’m constantly thinking about it.
While the reasons I joined Calm still hold true, the ways in which I measure myself against them have changed. As I look to year three, I’m challenging myself to find ways for my day-to-day work to directly improve people’s lives, and crazy enough to say, I want to lose sleep over it.