In a society where mothers receive dirty looks for breastfeeding in public, the topic of expressing milk seems like a bigger offense. I have decided it is time to talk about pumping at work. I put together a list of the 11 things about pumping at work that I wish people had told me before I returned to the office after the birth of my first child.
There has been a lot of talks lately about equal pay for equal work. One opinion that I heard was that working mothers are not entirely dedicated to the workplace and therefore deserve to make less. Hearing the opinion of working mothers deserving less really struck a cord with me.
For six months, I worked a part-time job while starting my own business. During that time, I realized that working part-time was not everything I imagined.
Right before the last day at my job, I was offered an opportunity to stay on part-time with the company. It was the perfect situation. They wanted my help on select projects and I was able to name some of the terms. Accepting the offer allowed me to slowly exit the company I loved and still make some money while I started my own business. It seemed like there was no downside.
Boy, I was wrong.
In the fall of 2016, I decided that I wanted to attend my first industry related conference. While I was still a beginner in the software development field, I figured it would be an opportunity to network and learn from top performers. I imagined coming away with pure excitement about software development. For me, this was not the case. While the conference was great and I learned a lot from talented speakers, I walked away feeling different than I expected.
Read on to learn about my top takeaways from attending my first industry conference.
I am a planner. If I was serious about starting my own business, I had to plan out the details of leaving my job. I knew that as soon as I started to tell people, there would be questions. In my mind, the worst answer I could give would be “I don’t know” or “I haven’t thought about that”. The details could make or break my decision to leave my job and I made sure I had them figured them out before I started socializing my idea.
In the spring of 2016, I decided to leave a job that I loved and start my own business. It was a hard decision as I was experiencing great success and on a career path that I was proud of. While I knew my ultimate career goal was to start my own business, for years I was content with the success I was experiencing. I could see myself making it to a C level position which was exactly what I thought I wanted. Then one day I started to question everything.
