It was a regular 1:1 with my manager.

My manager asked me (maybe not with these exact words but bear with me):

I have something to check with you. We have an upcoming All Hands event and I need to appoint a PoC to organize from our team. Do you want to be that person?

At first, I wasn’t sure what exactly I would need to do. After asking my manager though, I thought to myself:

Well, it surely can’t be that bad. I’ll get the chance to interact with the business team, something I don’t usually get the chance to do and potentially earn some trust in the meantime so why not.

Well, after getting it done it was definitely more effort than I initially expected but it was certainly a valuable experience.

At the end of the day, my job, shared with another business team member, was to help organize the entire event, including all the logistics (plus a party after the All Hands part). I also needed to ensure all the leaders in the team prepared their part of the All Hands presentation and I also did the facilitation role during the actual event.

It felt like going back to school, where I had to nudge people to ensure our class presentation would be done in time.

Not something I’d like to do every week but I guess at the end of the day, this is how you really gain trust from your leadership.

As a Software Engineer, it is easy to think:

Well, this is not code so I shouldn’t do it.

But I think that’s not the right way to frame it.

At first, these things seem like just a chore but if you view it from another angle, it can be a great opportunity.

This usually happens when there’s something that no one actually wants to do but that has to be done. In these cases, even if you do an “okay” job, which is totally fine, you’ll still get praised by everyone because you just did something they were running away from.

But if you put in that little extra effort and create something that actually surprises people, then you reap all the extra benefits.

In this case, that’s what me and my business team partner did. We really tried to make the best event we could with the resources we had and in the end it was great seeing everyone having a good time.

In summary, this was a lesson to me that opportunities are everywhere, you just need to grab them and make the best out of them.