✨ Weeeee it's my post-gap-year Life Update ✨
the climate job search, rough transitions, and learning to love new york city
Hello friends!! It has been a little over three months since I moved to New York. I’ve found it difficult to stick to my writing habit, dragging the Colombia post on for months. I’m still working on my Ecuador recap, but I thought I would share a life update in the meantime. I want to move toward making smaller, more frequent updates, instead of telling myself each post needs to be a perfectly executed, multi-thousand word behemoth.
Climate Job Search
The first two months in New York were a blur. I jumped right into the climate job search, scheduling coffee chats and applying to 50+ roles.
First, some context about why I went from Slack to searching for climate roles:
I had come to my last company, Slack, after leaving big tech, going from companies actively harming society to a company creating a really cool communication tool to help teams accomplish great things. After some initial quick growth, I felt myself plateauing. I was getting stuck with repetitive work, and I was struggling to find people who believed in me as a software engineer. At the same time, the Salesforce acquisition triggered a mass exodus of the amazing people that brought me to Slack in the first place. During the pandemic, I started to see the negative aspects of Slack as well. Slack enables mass surveillance of employees, creates the expectation to be constantly online, and has dealt a huge blow to our attention spans. What really struck me was the massive executive resistance to features intended to help employees take back some control of their fractured attention, or to allow employees to block their stalkers.
I realized that I needed to have a directly positive social impact in order to love my work. So, I quit Slack, decided to work on climate change solutions, and left for a gap year.
When I started my job search, I was only seeking cross-functional roles, i.e. product/project management, chief of staff, and data science. My creativity comes alive when I’m executing large, complex projects in a diverse team, so I wanted a role where I could get more of that experience.
I felt worried at first. I was struggling to get responses. I wanted to explore a non-software role, but the market didn’t have many of these entry level positions available.
I was putting pressure on myself to lock down a climate job early, partly because I felt like that if I was able to return to the real world seamlessly after a gap year, then it would convince other people to take extended time off from work as well, and partly because I wanted to show that the transition into climate work isn’t as daunting as it appears.
However, things improved dramatically after I decided to apply for a founding software engineer role. Talking to my friend Sasankh, who is the CEO of a climate company called Terradot, showed me that coding at a tiny startup can be much more challenging and stimulating than at a big company. At a startup, I would get to learn more about product and strategy, while still growing exponentially as a software engineer.
Once I opened up my search, I got to meet with many more companies. Direct applications were very unsuccessful. I had the most success by sharing a detailed job search post on LinkedIn, reaching out to people who posted job openings in the Work on Climate Slack community, and scheduling coffee chats with alumni from Terra.do, Stanford, and the KP Fellows program.
There were some disappointments, like hearing about companies that claimed to care about reducing food waste but internally cared much more about the profit, or companies that were using up the ample climate grant money on greenwashing projects. I came into the climate job search with the naive expectation that everyone in the industry had pure intentions, but I quickly learned to exercise careful discretion.
With practice, I could get a sense of which companies were merely jumping on the bandwagon, and which companies had authentic founders who deeply cared. My coffee chats also sparked exciting connections and led me to new resources.
Although I started my job search hoping to work on a technical solution in the food and agriculture space, talking to people in the field led me to believe that tech isn’t the way to heal our land. Rather, we need to build deep community and use simple and accessible regenerative solutions. This didn’t mean that I had to give up this passion entirely. Instead, I could contribute my time and service to this space outside of working hours, via food justice activism and urban farm volunteering.
The energy space started to draw me in a lot more as my search went on. It’s a space that does have a huge need for innovative technical solutions. How do we pick where we build renewable energy projects? How do we coordinate electrical demand to reduce strain to the grid? How do we integrate with the rapidly growing network of chargers, telematics systems, and electric vehicles? How must fleets transform their operations once they go electric?
After an intense multi-week prcoess, I was thrilled to an offer from Flipturn, a fleet-first charging management software. Its founders, Katie and Sashko, are experienced and humble, transparent and kind. They committed to dedicate their time to grow me as an engineer. I’m amazed at how much I’ve grown in my technical abilities and knowledge of the space after just three months. I feel challenged and excited every day. I got to attend my first green transport conference and wrote my first company blog post!! I’m excited to build my network in the EV space, especially to meet more policymakers, activists, and nonprofits.
Moving Through a Rough Transition
Outside of work, though, in my first two months back home, I went through a rough emotional patch.
I felt grief for my year of travel. By rushing into the job search, I hadn’t taken the time to close out the previous chapter in my life.
I felt social insecurity in a new city. I kept running into people from my past in jarring ways. I wasn’t sure how my friendships had changed after being away for over a year, and I was avoiding the fact that maybe I needed to let go of some friendships entirely. I was overwhelmed by all the amazing people that I needed to catch up with or meet for the first time. It felt like I was trapped in a whirlpool of endless obligations that was preventing me from actually starting my life in the city.
I was regularly waking up exhausted and in pain. On the subway, I felt blurry, half-invisible, overwhelmed by the constant contact with strangers.
I wasn’t finding joy in running in NYC’s hot, humid summer, ending my runs feeling weak and soaked in sweat. Internally, I was beating myself up for not being able to operate at the pace I wanted to.
During that time, my close friends gave me grace. They kept me training for the NYC marathon and pushing through days of rock-bottom self-esteem.
A two-week trip to San Francisco to reunite with many dear friends restored my energy and zest for life. The trip’s theme became about seeing things in a new light. I stayed in a few friends’ apartments, experiencing the city from their neighborhood and through their eyes. Sela showed me the spectacular dahlia bloom and the miracle that is a warm Costco rotisserie chicken. I ran my first trail race with Liam, and I met Yasmine’s baby boy for the first time.
During my treasured time alone, I experienced the San Francisco Zen Center and HAUM yoga for the first time. I took refuge in running down my familiar neighborhood streets and bumping into old neighbors, in taking a solo night walk through Alamo Square Park as the sprinklers sprayed.
Seeing NYC In a New Light
When I returned from this healing San Francisco trip, I saw my new home in a new light. I internalized that my time here is temporary, and that I want to fill it with joy and wonderful new experiences. I made a NYC bucket list, and I tried to see each day with more creativity and possibility (returning to gratitude journaling has been helping with this as well).
Some really cool things have already come out of this updated perspective:
Many fun conversations with strangers!!
Driving with Nick for two hours to see the Big Duck in Flanders, New York. We showed off the painting that I had made of the duck on our kitchen chair, which led to a riveting conversation with the shopkeeper about his vast array of parrot websites, and we took home many duck souvenirs.
Organizing a tender weekend with friends in Beacon, NY for my birthday. We saw the rare Sardinian donkeys of Magazzino Italian Art, a home built into a quarry, and the Hudson Valley from above. We spotted a pond full of massive bullfrog tadpoles at the Stonecrop Gardens! Insane!! Nick and I cooked for everyone Eggplant parmesan and butternut squash pie was definitely ambitious, but we made it happen with help from friends.
BROADWAY SHOWS
Beautiful runs at Domino Park, the Brooklyn Piers, and Prospect Park!
Wikipedia comedy nights, bar trivia
NYC climate week tours of Oko Farms, the East Village community gardens, and Oko farms (going to write more about these soon)
Learning how to use an industrial sewing machine to make my own oven mitt!
Slowly reuniting with old friends
The LABYRINTH that is THE BASEMENT
Experiencing Yom Kippur at The House of Yes with The Temple of the Stranger, with buddies from the Alexis Morin’s Soul Work Retreat (also hoping to write more about this soon!)
I’m still working on my energy. I’m working on finding balance, community, and time for myself in a city full of distractions, but that’s the challenge I signed up for when I decided to move here.
Before I go, I’ll leave y’all with one of the most exciting updates!!!
Nick and I got two kittens!! My brother Jacob brought home a beautiful cat Eva from his hiking trip in Jordan, and she turned out to be pregnant. He raised the two kittens Penelope and Alexander until 12 weeks, and then we picked them up a few weeks ago. The first night that we brought them home, something shifted in our hearts, making us feel tender and responsible for these two young lives. We have received many small scratches, and my arm muscles are still getting used to the struggle of scooping out old litter, but these little ones bring us so much joy.