I'm reinventing myself.
So finally, I took a stand that I want to settle down in a proper career role.
I decided that want to become a Digital Product Designer. Before delving into why i’ve choses to get into the decision. I would like to walk you through my background.
Background
I don’t know how people learn about their interest and passions early on in their life. I find it pretty fascinating and I’m happy for them because they are doing a job/work that they love. In my case, I have always struggled to decide on one single career path that would allow me to make a living. I’ve this cravings for being on top of what’s trending in the world at any given point of time. Currently my obsession is around Blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies and product design.
After my bachelors, I gave so many excuses to my parents that, I would write CAT and work hard to get into IIM’s but that plan didn’t work. I had this gut feeling that, I don’t fit into the current system. I come from a middle class family and I feel I'm privileged when compared with rest of the people India because, my parents gave me lot of freedom to choose a career path but I never stuck to a solid aim. Looking back now I feel, I've been struggling with focus issues. After 6 years I can make so many interpretations on how things could have played out otherwise had I done things differently. But here I'm.
I moved to Sweden to study masters, I struggled a lot in the beginning because, i’m now back in academics after two years. I took some time for me to adapt and get used to the way things work in Sweden. I had a blast while studying in Uppsala, It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and the oldest university in the Nordic countries. I met people from diverse background. My English fluency was getting better day by and my life changed in a lot of ways. For the first time in my life, I started questioning about things in life. I started to make a habit of asking questions like
Why i’m I depending on my parents to make my ends meet?
Why should I work for low wages at a student fraternity? to make my ends meet?
Why is sweden so expensive to live?
What can I do to make sure that in the long run I become wealthy and have a better life?
While was was going through this experience, I ended up attending a tech startup event which was held in a castle. For the first time in my life, I met entrepreneurs building tech solutions. I was so fascinated that they are solving a problem that exists in the market. By solving problems with technology they are actually building businesses and making a decent living I desperately want to get into the game.
I knew that I wouldn’t fit in a 9-5 job or a typical management trainee program in an Industrial company. So, I started exploring the startup ecosystem. I started to volunteers for events and I started building my network in Sweden. I met some amazing people along the way, long story short, I ended up with a 1 month unpaid internship at a tech startup which ended up being an 5 months Internship.
From my experience working in a tech startup, I can tell that,
There are no boundaries in roles and responsibility, it all comes down to what suggestions one can bring to the table to grow the company.
One have to be willing to put the effort to understand the problem, think harder about the implications, be creative, and then come up with suggestions and get a buy in from the key decision makers. It’s not an easy task, along the way one might commit lots of mistakes, and it takes a while to build the experience on how to present suggestions to the team.
While I was settling down working in a fast paced work environment, I had a lot of opportunities to learn about marketing, how to make presentations, how to do market research and the best part that I cherish the most is cheering my team when things are not going the way as we expected.
I tried to tell my friends about the fun i’m having at work but they don’t understand and they say that i’m wasting my time. I’m paid very less compared to my friends day job but I'm happy at my work place.
Don’t we all need a work place that makes us happy?
I didn’t apply for jobs while working for the startup because,
I was not willing to put an effort to write a proper resume
I thought that most people won’t understand me and my character
I had a biased opinion that, i’ll find it difficult to fit into their work culture
I was craving for a fast paced work environment like working in a startup.
Basically, I didn’t took a chance to get out of my comfort zone. My friends didn’t understand me because I was always reinventing myself, I would always have a different agenda about my career path. I was lying to myself that everything is fine.
The world is in the middle of a pandemic, so was I but I didn’t knew, until I met my life coach. I had very interesting sessions with my life coach. I dug deep into my insecurities, my fears, my experiences, my learnings and it was just one the best things that ever happened to me in my life. In the coaching process, I learned a lot about myself, I become self aware and started to realise how my monkey mind was tricking me into doing things. I’m grateful that I had an opportunity to meet a life coach because she taught me how to coach myself.
I got back to India after 3 and half years in Sweden. I still have a job, working remotely for the startup from India. Now, i’ve a support system around me (I basically don’t have to cook for myself anymore 😜). I’ve more time to think about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
When I was in Sweden, I was working on my pet project called synapse - an app that allows people compensate for their carbon emissions. I had so much fun working on wire framing and building a high fidelity prototype. I felt like a badass when I completed the mockup and started to pitch to my friends.
I met some amazing people while I was exploring the actual business opportunity for my startup idea. I quickly realised, I don’t have energy to work on the product but I enjoyed the process of building the product.
I remember the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I felt, when I was doing my own research about solving a problem with the use of tech tools. So, at this point I was thinking, I want to become a product designer. Simple as that!
I’ll be sharing my Product designer journey in my next posts. so stay tuned!
If you have come this far, Thank you so much for investing your valuable time to read my background.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts in the comment section below
Stay safe 🤗
- Amarnath Nagula