The Butterfly Effect: How Tiny Choices Create Big Ripples

I was laid off from my first software engineering job after college. Unfortunately, this threw me for a loop and exacerbated my imposter syndrome. In the months following the layoff I diligently studied for interviews and applied to countless engineering roles, but had little to show for it.

Most companies rejected me outright and the few that did choose to interview me never seemed to want to move forward. This continued until I was contacted by a recruiter who got my information through my good friend and mentor, E.

After speaking with the recruiter he thought I’d be a good fit for a startup that was hiring in SoHo which was hilarious since the company I was just laid off from was also a startup in SoHo. After confirming it wasn’t my former employer, I scheduled an interview. Fast forward a few weeks and luckily, things went well and I received an offer shortly after.

Nearly six months after being laid off I walked into my first day of work at my new company. I was terrified. I couldn’t help but feel that I didn’t belong and was worried that like my last job, this one would also be short-lived due to my abilities. While my rational brain knew this wasn’t true, I couldn’t help but feel it.

My first day consisted of different onboarding meetings to get to know the team and to start understanding the product we were all building. I vividly remember silently listening in on a meeting with the engineering team just before it was time for lunch. My mind began wondering and I became anxious. Had I made the right decision to join this company? Was I cut out to be a software engineer? Why would they hire someone like me? Questions like these and many others swirled through my head until the end of the meeting. Leaving the conference room, I felt defeated and my anxiety had only increased.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my day was about to change for the better. It was time for lunch and my new co-worker, Cory offered to take me to Sunrise Mart, a local Japanese spot on Broome Street. It only took a few minutes of speaking with Cory for my feelings of anxiety and uncertainty to subside. After an entire lunch with him, it was hard to believe I felt the way I did an hour ago.

It’s really hard to express through words how much that lunch with Cory helped me. I’m not entirely sure why I felt the things I did before lunch, but after lunch, it was abundantly clear to me that I had joined the right company with the right people.

Sometimes you don’t realize how big of an impact the small things that you choose to do for others can have. Cory had no idea how much that lunch meant to me until nearly two years later when I told him on my last day at the company. Just before leaving the office for good, I walked up and did my best to express just how meaningful that simple lunch was and how it had truly helped me during a hard time. I hugged Cory before leaving and told him it was my goal to be just as welcoming and kind to others as he was to me, at companies I join in the future.

Simple, small, everyday decisions can have an outsized impact on others. Helping others often also helps you. You’d be surprised how willing teammates are to cover an oncall shift, help debug an issue, support your promotion, and more just by you being kind in simple and small ways. At the very least, I’m sure they’ll get lunch with you — and sometimes lunch makes all the difference.

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