Written by Matías Zapiola
I admire Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford. Most of all, the story is about connecting the dots. Sometimes, we are too busy focusing on where we are right now, that we forget where we have been. And by forgetting where we have been, we forget things we learned, things we liked, or skills we developed. But reflecting upon it, we discover that they all have converged to where you are right now. At least, that happened to me and I would like to share my story.
When I was young, I was not very good at school. I did not like homework or studying, I could never pay attention to something and stay tuned. But I loved reading about mysteries and how things worked. I was quite good at fixing things. Although it took breaking some other things to learn. I became quite good at understanding computers, technology, and their logic too. It was as if I could crack their code and then they would be an open book to me. Of course, my family thought I should be an engineer.
I did the career test and brought back the same result, no surprises there. After three years of maths, chemistry, and physics, not without quite an effort. I discovered Economics. In economics nothing is certain, it is a delicate equilibrium and is always a puzzle. I was not awful in engineering, but this thing was calling to me, so I made the risky bet of turning into an economist.
Best bet I’ve ever made. Studying economics is studying people through numbers, agreements, incentives, and risks. Coming from engineering, I didn’t have trouble with maths. I understood what the formulas meant and what the numbers said, it was a whole new language. There, I understood the logic of human behavior, at least at a population level. It was fascinating.
During college I worked at a software factory, dealing with the issues of a typical SME in Argentina. Prohibitive taxes and illogical laws made work always difficult or impossible. But pretty soon I learned you have to work with what you’ve got, not with what you think you should have. There I learned that effort brings results and how important is to build things from scratch. Something I would realize much later.
Then I had a few years of experience in big pharma, I understood how corporations worked. How it was to always have an agenda and how productivity would sink in places you thought it should thrive. I understood the necessity of the process and how the process killed the content. I understood what was to be under the wing of a C-Level and how to think big and far. But, in the end, I understood that what creates value is the freedom to make mistakes. As I was working there, I took a six-month course on Data Science, interesting stuff but a little out of my reach. But I understood that data was not the future as everybody said, it was the present. All the things already, created and tested were brilliant, and they seem to be at the tip of your fingers.
I tried to apply this new knowledge to my work and create ideas. Some encouraged me, some dismissed me. One day my boss told me I was smart and proactive, but I diverged in my thoughts, and I should “be corrected”. That was it, all it took was that single sentence to understand I was in the incorrect place. Life balance and corporate culture also weighed in favor of my resignation. But the fact that thinking outside the box was wrong felt like a bucket of iced water.
So I resigned. And I went to work freelance for a bit, not having much success there. But I realized Data was the way, so I kept on going. I went to many interviews until someone took a chance on me. It wasn’t an easy path, but it was worth it.
Now, a little bit over two years past that day I’m happy to have made the jump. I work at an incredible place where everyone is encouraged to do their best work and think as they please. Puzzles are all around and clients need their business problems to be solved. Even if you come from a numeric and constrained background, creativity is all around.
