We are nearing December, which means things will slow down, allowing me to reflect and take another look at what interests me in my career. As for reflecting on this year, that deserves its own post to take more time to understand whether I can look at certain things differently.
While I will reflect on another time, I do look back at my professional career in this post. I do find it challenging to reflect positively on my job because it feels as if I am not reaching where I want to go fast enough. At the same time, I don't feel fully confident that I will ever get what I am aiming for, and I may need to adjust my expectations. Yet at the same time, I have what it takes in me to keep steering this path.
Internal changes and aspirations
After some internal changes at the company I work for, it would be good to also focus on gaining more high-level skills and broadening my skill set. I am going to follow a PSPO I training in December. For years, I have been trying to understand what I want to achieve in my career, and a role within leadership or coaching would be best suited for me. While I aspire to be in a leadership or coaching role, learning more about the product owner role will be an asset in the future, and I might even finish some other project management courses I was following.
I believe that learning more in those areas will make me a better asset to any company I work for. Apart from becoming a better asset, I also enjoy coaching coworkers and enabling them and the company to realize impact. While typing this, it feels like I am trying to sell it to myself, but that isn't the case. I really believe that if you can help people and companies achieve impact for themselves and their customers, you should.
In the past few years, I've had the pleasure of talking to a director of engineering at a large company, and the coaching I got was just on a whole other level. Those conversations felt really easy. The questions I got after saying something I hadn't thought about really opened my eyes and showed me the impact a good manager can have. That impact is something I want to give to someone who needs it, and to do that, I need to advance my career on multiple fronts. As y'all can read, my communication might not be the best, my self-confidence took a hit a few years ago, and I need to stop feeling stuck and shift my gear into drive instead of park.
Performance review
Last week, I had my performance review with my manager, and I shared that, looking back on this year, I missed more career guidance, which prompted a good conversation. I openly shared that, from time to time, I don't feel like an adult with everything going on in my life, which makes me feel incapable of the things I used to enjoy. My manager understood what I said and explained that, while I might have that feeling, I should look at my own results and re-evaluate my opinion, which was the best thing I could hear.
While our conversation was much longer, the key takeaways are simple: He wants to discuss what I learned from my PSPO 1 course, which gives us more insight into whether that's something I would also enjoy. I should keep sharing what I learn online, as he believes it will help coworkers and prompt more and better information sharing.
Goals 2026
As 2025 comes to a close, I want to set some goals I can check off when I put in the work. I'm not going to overwhelm myself with 12 goals, as I know that will only trigger a lot of stress, which isn't something I need with everything that is happening personally and professionally.
If you feel my goals are too ambiguous, send me a message on X (@wottavm).
- I am going to have more coffee chats to improve my social skills.
- I am going to create a conference talk.
- I am going to create a blog series for one or more of my personal projects.
And most importantly:
- I am going to be happy with the progress I made in 2026, even though I will fail at certain things.