Dancing with the databases: How a hobby helped my engineering career

The tech industry is conventionally considered a community of specialists, people who are passionate about one particular interest in which they excel.

However, there are people like me – individuals who tend not to go as deep with knowledge about one thing or area, but they are good enough in a wide range of skills and interests.

If you saw yourself in the previous statement, you might be a multi-passionate generalist who sometimes feels less valuable compared to specialist colleagues.

While specialist knowledge may seem most valuable in IT companies, individuals with diverse skills offer unique perspectives. Their broad knowledge base allows for a different overview of situations. Recognizing this as an asset rather than a flaw opens up many possibilities for both employees and companies, especially in a dynamic industry like IT. Curiosity, adaptability, and creativity are essential traits in a constantly changing world.

University degrees and job postings typically prioritize specialization in engineering. It’s rare to see job ads seeking candidates with diverse skills such as coding, entrepreneurial experience, and work in unrelated fields like art, entertainment, or sports.

Unfortunately, only if you are lucky like I have been with my current employer, will you find an experienced manager on the other side of a job interview who will recognize your unique skill set and interests.

And how did that happen?

After finishing my computer engineering degree, I started working in IT as a software engineer. Parallely, I have been building my own business in the dance and fitness industry as a side job, doing everything and anything as is always the case in small businesses.

During the selection process for Infobip 4 years ago, I obviously emphasized my computer engineering degree and previous experience in IT. However, when I casually mentioned the entrepreneurial and management experience from Salsando, my Latin dance fitness company, it sparked interest in soon to become my manager.

He trusted I could combine all of my skills and apply them to the Database Administrator role I applied for. And years later, I’m still here. 

As my manager expected, my two jobs constantly impact each other.

It might seem like an impossible combination, but they have more in common than you would expect. I don’t abandon my engineering hat in the evenings when I manage my dance business, and vice versa.

Presentation skills are usually something we are not really born with. It takes many voice-trembling, palm-sweating, finger-shaking sessions to become confident in front of any audience.

However, as someone who is used to performing dance choreographies at competitions each weekend, holding dance workshops for 50+ people, and doing marketing for my own business, it is not hard for me to take a stand and present even the topics I am not so confident about.

If I could pinpoint one skill that impacted my work the most, it is reading the audience and being able to adapt a way of explaining to whoever is listening. It helps with explaining a problem to fellow engineers, mentoring, calls with stakeholders, presentations, etc.

Also, once I have experienced the challenges of entrepreneurship myself, I’ve been able to better understand certain business decisions. Even though the business areas are different and the scale in the IT industry is obviously way bigger, some problems are common.

Making strategic business and financial decisions that impact clients, but at the same time employees as well, is something I have been through multiple times in my company, so I can understand a broader perspective whenever changes in Infobip are being made, even if I’m not in a management position on any level. Good cooperation with management is almost as important as with engineering colleagues, and a deeper understanding of their roles can help your career immensely.

In the opposite direction, having a job in a large industry improved my small business as well.

In a big company, it is essential to have processes and structure in place, which is usually not the case when building something from scratch. It is normal to start small and build as you go. My experience of multiple job interviews, onboarding, sprint planning, administration, etc. in various IT companies that have already been well structured, guided me to implement some of those processes right from the start in my dance company. 

Beside that, one of the most important things I have learned working in bigger teams in the fast-paced environment of an IT company is good feedback.

When you are surrounded by colleagues of different seniorities, backgrounds, and communication styles, approaching deadlines and incidents, direct communication is key. HR departments and engineering managers make sure that the flow of information is good and that feedback is constructive, kind, and delivered promptly. I gained valuable insight into that very soon in my career, and that’s why all the dance coaches I work with follow the same approach.

In Salsando we have also implemented a structured onboarding with mentoring and regular check-ins to support the progress of the new dance coaches, even after they start working with their own groups.

There are also opportunities for them to speak up about the quality of the program we are teaching, group formation, marketing, etc. We do our best to keep open communication with our dance group members as well so they can help us shape our product and coaching style according to market needs.

But being a generalist comes with certain downsides.

Imposter syndrome hits hard for a non-specialist type of person. Most people probably experience imposter syndrome on some level sometimes in their career, but when you constantly have a feeling of being inferior to more specialized colleagues, it can have a greater impact on your career. The “fake it till you make it” approach never worked for me because I always felt like I was only faking, but never making it, when in reality I was just learning and improving in less measurable ways.

In university, watching peers excel in specific fields made me question my chosen profession. That was really confusing because I was actually enjoying coding and feeling of accomplishment when I made something work, as engineering was something I was inclined to do from a young age.

Ironically, I felt exactly the same around my dancing colleagues. Many of them committed themselves to dance as their only career and spent many more hours in practice than my half-engineering self. 

A difficult route to overcome this feeling is to get recognition through work and boost self-esteem by counting accomplishments. I see it as difficult because it is hard to accomplish anything when you think of yourself as less than others. It’s tough to acknowledge your achievements and accept praise when you don’t feel it’s enough. Relying on colleagues’ opinions can be risky, especially in a toxic workplace where it might backfire.

What helped me the most was accepting the nature of my motivation and focus. When I realized that there is not only one right way to function and that people tend to fall into specialist vs. generalist categories, I started to appreciate things I’ve already done more but also gained new self-esteem to keep working the way I do. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m getting there. 

Another pitfall for a generalist individual can be a lack of focus. It is fun and engaging to enroll in many activities, take on plenty of different tasks, and work in many unrelated areas. You get so used to that adrenaline rush of starting something new that you easily lose focus and patience to see things through the other end. While I still sometimes struggle with overcommitting, I got a hang of that over time.

I realized how extremely important it is to be realistic with your schedule and energy levels and calculate what might happen along the way. People often approach timelines and obstacles optimistically, but I’ve found it beneficial to pause and reflect on past experiences. By considering my habits and focus realistically, I can plan more effectively. Accepting that I can’t tackle everything simultaneously was challenging but essential for productivity.

People are a sum of their skills and each one of us has a different perspective on work. One could even argue that no one is exclusively a specialist in only one thing, all of our life experiences shape our views and contributions in unique ways.

Looking back on my education days, when I was always having dance classes in the evenings and weekends while attending high school and university, I never felt as successful as my peers in both areas. Only now am I able to see how those experiences formed me as a person differently and how those characteristics can be valued in the real world.

A generalist individual must find an environment that values such perspective and needs various skills. Nowadays there are companies that recognize different styles of learning and working. Us software engineers are no longer looked at as code monkeys, but as complex individuals who can contribute in many ways.

Embrace your multi-talented self and you will be surprised how work life can change!