Mental meanderings on engineering a career and life after work

The coolest person in any social event is usually the person who knows how to break the rules. Two reasons:

1. Almost everyone is going to follow the rules, because breaking them is risky! It usually leads to an embarrassing, awkward situation. The kind that you’re still beating yourself up about while you’re trying to fall asleep 6 years later.

2. If done right, it will be a highlight of the event. Two examples off the top of my head, wearing a ridiculously large hat to a wedding and telling a joke at a funeral.

Here’s a low stakes example that got me thinking about this. I went to a “networking event” last weekend, and let’s just call out the idea that there is a designated time and place for networking as actually absurd. We know intuitively that’s not true because the people who are the best at networking don’t wait for the networking event to happen. They are always doing it. They know how to explain who they are and what they do in a way that is charming, interesting, and appropriate for whatever room they are in.

The event was supposed to be a fun creative waffle making party, but the host knew that there would be a lot of new people so he said let’s break the ice by going around the room and introducing yourself and saying what you normally eat for breakfast. You could just tell this was a room full of engineers because every single person started giving the most accurate, concise, and boring answers possible. Guys, this is not a test! Nobody actually cares what you ate for breakfast! Tell them you eat an absurd number of raw eggs, Russian caviar (that’s also an absurd number of raw eggs), talk about your favorite hole in the wall brunch place, literally anything that is going to be different and memorable. Of course, I’m a type A engineer as well so I didn’t have anything quirky loaded up. I just saw the progression of one word answers barreling towards me like a freight train of boredom.

“Coffee”

“Coffee”

“Eggs”

“Nothing”

“Coffee”

This ice was not breaking. I wish I had come up with the perfect answer that was just silly enough to open up the vibe without insulting the host, but the train got there too fast and I said something like, “well I used to do intermittent fasting before it was cool, but now I do overnight oats.” Thank god someone took the chance to speak out of turn and give me a little joke about being a breakfast hipster and then like a spell was lifted, everyone realized we don’t have to answer the question exactly. Conversation started flowing more organically. I don’t think anyone will remember me as the breakfast hipster from the waffle party, but I feel good about this baby step and realizing in that moment, I have about 10 seconds of everyone’s undivided attention and that is a horrible thing to waste!