It’s always hard for me to explain what I do. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always struggled to explain.
It used to be easy. I am a programmer, a web developer, a software engineer, I used to say. I develop websites and web based platforms. As a full stack web developer, I used to develop and implement things that clients asked for. I was so proud and mesmerized by the things that have come out of my work, that I used to do it days and nights. Full time while still studying and freelancing while full time working. I enjoyed the challenges, the questions I had answered and the platforms you leave behind to maintain. My print to the web.
As I grew in my career, I still said programmer, but I would also say: I fix problems that people face on the web. I am given a project, which means a problem, a challange, and my job is to define it and fix it. Implement it, deploy it and then maintain it.
As I grew even further in my career, I got to meet more people solving web related problems, but in different ways. We were similar, yet different, in terms of the solution they come up with. I got to learn that the problems that my client had were not as limited as I thought and that I wasn’t doing all the heavy lifting I thought I was doing. I know, so foolishly of me to think that. It happens when you stay in a box and you don’t see anything outside of the box.
Anyways, I was finally seeing a bigger picture, a more complex problem, that we were all given. Sometimes, the problem is not even known yet. Sometimes, there is just a pain, a need, a wish. Taking it in, understand it and define it is just the small, initial part of the problem solving. I was no longer the problem solver for my clients, but just a part of the puzzle. The entire process, is a much bigger task to be undertaken and it’s a team effort. A team formed by different people, with different skills and backgrounds. A team where each member contributes with pieces of the puzzle.
Understanding the complexity of the problem to solve, made me more and more curious and intrigued. I got challenged to understand and to get myself involved more. I got curious and got myself involved in other people’s jobs and scope. Not in an abusive way( I think ). I pieced things together, piece by piece, and connected them with what I knew. The discovery process was amazing to me and I got completely hooked into it. I’ve learned about market research, strategy, business development, data, branding, marketing and advertising, product and project management, etc.
While I find it imperative to know and understand a little piece of everything and the relationship between the different disciplines, I decided to focus more on product and project management. This keeps me grounded. This keeps me able to constantly follow up with most disciplines, while being in the center of it all and allowing me to interact with people. Projects require skills from different departments and all those skills require people. People make a team, people make a culture, people will deliver the end product, regardless of the product scope. People’s expertise, passion, thirst for perfection is what delivers anything you have in mind and I want to be a part of that.