My Tryst With My Different Jobs

If you looked at my profile, you would find several anomalies, one of the starkest is the domains I have chosen to work in.

I began my career in marketing. I imagined myself to be a character in Mad Men – coming up with genius ideas and changing how companies/products are perceived. I worked at agencies and then at a few established places, only to arrive at the final conclusion that I was not able to make the impact I wanted to. What was more disappointing was, I didn’t see any path to it even in the next few years. I was just turning knobs and optimizing FB ads, and was not able to try anything creative.

Being a marketer showed me light to what I’d do next. While being a marketer, I couldn’t get the designers I was working with, to produce the output I wanted. So, I started making little tweaks here and there. I eventually picked up Photoshop/Illustrator and became quite good at it. When marketing didn’t live up to my expectations, I made the easy transition to being a designer. This was one of the fun ones. Had creative control, had the say in the matter, the job was exactly what it was advertised. Then, two realisations hit:

1. I was not as visually creative as I thought – it becomes very evident when you design everyday and are struggling to come up with new ideas.
2. I felt like I had more innate ability than just this – don’t get me wrong, designers are amazing and it is one of those skills I really wish I would be amazing at. But what happened was, it started to feel like only one side of me was thinking. I had been a marketer, I was studying CS. I had a good grasp of how things work, and wanted to participate in all of those activities. Being a designer felt a bit like I had very limited clearance but I wanted more.

I actually loved being a designer for however long I was – I was fortunate enough to get some big projects, work with big clients etc. I was making quite good money for my level of experience. But it irked me that I could be more than this.

When I made a transition now, I did a PM internship. It was a really great one and I really had a lot of fun. Actually launched products and got users. Did a little bit of everything I knew. I had a good run. But at the same time, AI was increasingly getting good and I knew I shouldn’t be on the sidelines and try to get into the arena. I switched to work in AI applications. And learnt so many foundational things – Infra engineering, middleware, orchestration, managing microservices, scaling etc.

As I look back on the decisions I have made and the roles I have chosen to pursue, a few things stand out:

• I have always tried to make better products – be it through design, engineering or marketing. The effort has always been to make an impact and create undeniable value.

• These roles are less different than one would assume – what I mean is, often in the walls of responsibility bifurcation, we forget we are working towards the same thing. We are all trying to make the same product work. And things start to align when you think that way. You write code that is good for the users, design how your users would like it, and market about what your users care about. And I deeply care about users and the products I am a part of.

Hence, while my profile seems like an unusual Lego set of oddly fitting pieces, when I zoom out, what I see is me trying to make a stellar product that users love, from every different angle I possibly can.