Career is a journey - with Ayan

Double down on your streghts, identify and mitigate your weaknesses, and reach out to your network

The goal of ‘Career is a journey’ series is to showcase 2 ideas

1. The range of roles available in the job market is very very large

2. Career is a journey with twists and turns

Today, we are going to take a look at Ayan’s(LinkedIn) career journey.

Key takeaways

• Career is a journey. Ayan’s career had him switching from an engineering role to a product manager role.

• When switching roles,

  • get help from your network

  • craft your story on how you can add value to the company in the new role

  • be open to a relatively junior role

• A good product manager

  • is comfortable with uncertainty

  • influences without authority

  • communicates the vision to all the involved parties

You can watch the discussion below.

What is your current role?

• Role: Product Manager

• Industry: Software, Data Management as a Service

• Geography: Austin, Texas, US

How many times have you changed your role, industry, or geography over the course of your career?

• Role: 2

  1. Engineering Manager

  2. Product Manager

• Industry: 2

  1. Semiconductors

  2. Software as a Service(SaaS)

• Geography: 1

  1. US

What career advice would you give your younger self?

Double down on your strengths. Actively seek feedback from your peers and managers, to identify weaknesses. Work on your weakness so that it does not become a liability for your career progression.

Tell us an interesting or challenging or stranger-than-fiction story from your career.

In one of his earlier roles, Ayan missed a semicolon(;) in his code, which ended up costing the company $400,000 in bad semiconductor chips. Ayan double-checks his work now!