Ioana Tripa

If there’s anything I learned during my parental leave, it’s that two things can be true at the same time.

I’m excited to go back to work, but I’m also wary at the same time.

There’s one really good thing Romania does for families, and that is the two-year parental leave. As luck would have it, I was the one to benefit from the full amount of time.

While I eventually got to a point where I loved the whole experience, the first few weeks were brutal. The next few months were hard. I think we were nearing the half-year mark when I actually felt comfortable. Getting used to a new reality and a new identity, while essentially in survival mode, was something I don’t think I could have really prepared for.

Impostor syndrome and all the loaded feelings that come with it moved from my professional identity to my newfound role as a mother.

Then, as I was settling and becoming more comfortable in this new role, as I was getting more rested and feeling a bit more like myself, another unsettling, unexpected thing happened. I was having the distinct feeling of losing my memory and my attention, sometimes even losing my mind, really. There were days when I worried my brain would never work the same as before. It’s a scary and humbling feeling.

And the truth is, my brain, any mother’s brain, will definitely not work the same as before. I learned my brain wasn’t damaged; it was simply different.

Studies show there’s a full-blown rewiring (check out Matrescence, by Lucy Jones), reorganizing and fine-tuning the neural pathways, similar to that happening in adolescence, that makes our brain more efficient and streamlined in caring for a baby. But not just a baby. Thanks to the neuroplasticity of the maternal brain, spanning years postpartum, this more efficient brain can also be an asset in other areas of our lives. Work, for example.

Going back to work at this point, after so many months of bonding with my child and making sure he’s comfortable in daycare, putting down the stepping stones to a successful return to professional life, should have been a breeze.

But what happens when not only your own internal world changes postpartum? What happens when the rest of the world shifts?

I come back to one of the biggest changes the industry has seen.

By the time I went on maternity leave, LLMs were good at generating text (answering questions, summarizing, etc.), writing some simple code, “remembering” parts of a session, and you could allow them to use tools, as long as you provided the plugins. Hallucinations were common, and you couldn’t really trust the information. The hype was going way beyond the actual application of the technology.

And the hype was, it turns out, for good reasons. By the time I was ready to look for my next role and rejoin the workforce, LLMs had become a day-to-day occurrence in the life of anyone working in tech. Managing large codebases, doing its best to self-correct, having access to a bunch of tools, and even trying to mitigate the dreaded hallucinations.

Coming into it with my self-confidence already pretty bruised up by my brush with impostor syndrome as a mother and my old impostor syndrome as a professional rearing its head again, I have to admit, I fell for the hype this time. I got quite overwhelmed, and I felt like I had so much to catch up on; and so little time; and where do I even start; and how on Earth will I get it all done in time to apply to jobs and go back to my usual amazing self?

Stop. Breathe. It’s going to be okay.

(A little trick I’ve been using more and more while dealing with a very strong-willed toddler.)

The truth is LLMs, with all their newfound might, are still tools. Powerful, useful tools, but still tools. And I know how to use tools to get where I want to. I just needed to learn about these particular tools, so I did. I started following online courses, and I started building a side project using the tools and applying what I learned. And what do you know, the whole thing wasn’t as scary anymore.

So two things can be true at the same time. The world might have changed, and so did I. But maybe that’s not something to be afraid of.

I became more efficient because time seems more precious now. (And more scarce, thanks, kid!)

I became braver because I’ve had to be.

And when I looked back at what I enjoyed and what got me into this field in the first place, it’s all still there. The joy of building, the magic of making value out of nothing, and the challenges to solve. Everything is still there. We just have extra tools to make the magic happen.

So I’m more excited than ever to go back to work and start this new chapter, with new tools on my belt and a new understanding of who I am.