On getting lucky and finding this work meaningful #4
Description
Last Wednesday, while I’m taking my last gulp of beer before going home, xxx asked me a random question and I blurted out some random response. Here’s the long form.
Is mapping something you wanted to do at the start of your career?
NO, mapping or any other career path was not in the picture back then. Right after college (unlike my friends who have the privilege to take a break and not worry), I had to look for a job right away.
And, I got LUCKY. I joined a non-profit working with upland farmers (poorest of the poor in the Philippine society) on environmental conservation. Pay? Not great. Work environment? Dangerous. Challenges? Endless. Definitely not the best and prestigious, but the experience was MEANINGFUL. It gave me a sense of purpose on how I want to be working on for the rest of my career. Working for social equity and justice. Maps came in much much later.
The first public map we created for a local community tourism project. No Living Trees Were Harmed in the Making of This Sign. (Photo: https://pat3k.wordpress.com/my-community/)
Throughout this first job experience, location and place was a common talking point. Whether it’s:
- farmers trying to secure rights to the land they’ve been tilling for generations;
- a fisherfolk community protecting their fishing grounds against big-time fishing operators;
- indigenous peoples struggle to nurture their culture amidst the pressures from multinational mining companies to exploit their ancestral lands;
the struggle across these marginalized sectors is almost always tied to a place or resource.
^^^ made me realize that place and the understanding of place is a platform that enables conversation between those in the margins and those in power to negotiate and work together. I need to learn it to make a meaningful contribution!
That’s what I tried and continues to do. I taught myself open GIS tech (thank you to Internet) and contribute to open data (thank you OpenStreetMap community). As I got (and still am) into the weeds of all these tech and open data, my hope is that the things I do and share connects back to the communities I have worked before. Even now that I’m working in Mapbox, that aspiration that the open data we create and use for our business is the same data that marginalized sectors can access and use is what excites me to cycle to base everyday and work with my team.
Why share this story? To my immediate teammates, I know there are times that we
feel disconnected and can’t find the purpose of what we do to society at large. That’s understandable, looking at an 11” or 27” screen filled with JOSM/Chrome/Slack most of the day affects you. 😃
But in your own way (and at this early stage of your career), please do find ways to connect and find meaning in what we do everyday. What’s meaningful is up to you to define.
Our company have all the ingredients to help you. From making sure you are taken care of as you fail, to recognizing and celebrating our diversity, to putting 💵 to what we value outside of work, to being explicit that we don’t sell stuff to people doing shitty stuff.
Hack your career but make it meaningful!
Meta
I wrote this piece for my former colleagues at Mapbox BLR (June 2017), putting it here for posterity