'So Hasan, What's Next?'

I didn't know I would end up in the software industry.

When I was in high school, the topic that interested me the most was philosophy. The class I would consistently score the highest grades for was English. Given my (apparent) inclination at the time, I thought law school would be a good fit for my higher education goals. Earlier, my natural inclination was visual arts. My family and friends often noticed that my notebooks (and every other piece of paper I got my hands on) were filled with random sketches of dinosaurs, fighter jets and video game characters, rather than actual class notes. I still remember selling my drawings to other kids at school for $20! That continued for a while in my teenage years. Obsessed with online communities for beginner-level graphic design, I would spend my weekends and evenings learning how to use raster (Photoshop) and vector (Illustrator) graphics editing software to digitize my pencil and paper sketches, and to design logos and websites. Even now, I would have to say my favourite tech toy is not actually my PlayStation 4 (great as it is), but my iPad Pro w/ Apple Pencil. For some reason, sketching up (and then deleting) random illustrations is still one of my favourite ways to fill idle time or relax.

I did have a bit of an "entrepreneurial" streak as early as the seventh grade however, when I noticed I could make a profit selling coke cans for $1 to my fellow classmates.

My procurement process revolved around finding a 12-pack of coke cans in the garage, filling up my backpack and then stuffing them in my locker at school. Every day, when the school bell rang to signal the end of recess, I was ready to make some money by supplying to the infinite demand of sugar-craved seventh graders, apparently not bothered at all by the taste of room-temperature coke. At home, my sisters and parents would wonder where all the coke cans go. For a while, I was truly thrilled by the $12 I made each time I flipped the whole 12-pack, but eventually it came to an end when I learned that this "free" supply is not a sustainable business model. I would have to buy my own 12-packs. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that 12-packs only cost ~$4 at the grocery store, so my $8 profit was still something to be grinning about, and I could still continue my operation. Eventually, I lost interest in the whole thing, and moved on to something else.

I have always had a hard time deciding what to focus on.

Since childhood, my interests have varied widely and changed frequently. They still do. In my final year of high school, I had the luck of ending up in the class of a math teacher who was able to make twelve years of math education simply click all at once. It completely motivated me to do all of my homework, and I, having never been a high achiever in mathematics, ended up falling in love with the subject. By the end of the year, I scored second highest in the class, much to the bewilderment of some of my competitive classmates who were used to always being at the top of the class, year after year and competing with the same faces. I was bewildered too. That experience sparked an intellectual curiosity that resulted in making the decision to study Computer Science for my post-secondary education. It also instilled a deep appreciation for the power of great educators. Ever since, I have strived to improve my abilities to educate others, inspired by the many talented educators who have taught me. I owe every success I have had in my career to the teachers, professors and mentors I have had the luck of learning from.

For the last twelve years, I have been immersed in the world of software development.

It's one of the best fields for someone with a personality like mine. The limitless applications of computer science are unfathomably vague and open-ended, with room to intellectually explore almost any topic for a lifetime. Even when I studied CS in university, I could not commit myself to one of the "specialization streams" that the program was designed for. I instead created my own un-stream, enrolling in classes for whatever courses or professor caught my interest at the time. There was no stream that would allow me to learn the fundamentals of cryptography, databases, networking theory, computer graphics, robotics, and software engineering, all in one nicely designed curriculum. All of those things are relatively "narrow specialties", which require a lot of pre-requisite knowledge to advance to the next level. But I wanted to know a little bit about all of those things, so I went against the advice of academic advisors and did it anyways. Throughout my career I have time and time again been amazed at how all of those seemingly "narrow specialties" turned out to have common themes, intuitions and problem-solving approaches. Sometimes a little bit of knowledge from another field, can completely change the way you approach solving problems for the one you're actively engaged in. Its immensely satisfying to see the bigger picture in that way. It's a field where a love of learning is a requirement for longevity, and in my case, one of my favourite ways to learn, is to actually teach what I know. Perhaps that is why I ended up gravitating to the consulting world and working for a firm that puts a sharp focus on building and delivering high-quality subject-matter training as part of its consulting specialties.

For the last seven years, I have been in the business of "professional services", specifically, consulting.

More specifically, tech consulting. Building web and mobile applications for a number of really well-known companies. Some of the projects I have worked on have huge, global deployments, that tens of thousands of people rely on, to do business-critical tasks every day. Some of the other projects, while less widely used, were no less critical to our client's operations. Again, with some amazing luck, I have had the opportunity to able to grow professionally year after year, working on a variety of challenging and unique projects for various clients. Under the guidance of extremely wise and experienced mentors, I valued having the opportunity (early-on) to work for a firm that places a high value on retaining senior, experienced staff, and making sure that junior staff had opportunities to learn from them. The experience of always being able to learn from other experienced staff, has been something like having access to a rare, potent anabolic steroid for my tech industry career. I joined the firm at the level of a complete newbie, and over the course of seven years, I had advanced to the level of actually becoming one of the three people managing the firm. I have had a direct hand in seeing the firm triple its revenues, hire incredible staff, land amazing new projects for great clients, go through the process of being acquired, lead live in-person training engagements, and represented the firm at prestigious tech industry conferences. It has been an incredible professional journey, and I am extremely grateful to have had the experiences I have had while working for them. I will carry the lessons, skills and wisdom learned working there, for the rest of my life, on whatever I choose to work on.

However, I have recently made the tough decision to leave that firm, admittedly at a strange time to be leaving a stable, well-paying and interesting job.

The reason is that after seven years of continuously working hard and pushing myself to higher and higher levels, I have reached a certain point in my career. I have come to the realization that my career isn't actually how I imagined it would be at this point. While there are aspects of management that I enjoy, and other aspects (not as enjoyable) that have been great personal and professional growth areas for me, I still have a strong itch to get back into the hands-on creative process of designing, building and deploying my own ideas in the real world. I still have an itch for taking business risks and am lucky that I am in a position to be able to carve a new path for myself doing exactly that. In my role as a manager, I learned that there are many responsibilities to the people who you serve, but more importantly, to the people who you are managing. That fact sometimes makes it difficult or inappropriate to take the kind of risks that come with following through on your ideas. The (currently) foremost ideas that I have really wanted to pursue revolve around opportunities to launch niche software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses, and launching my own online training courses, where I am eager to experiment with new teaching techniques, for the (currently) exponentially growing field of remote online training. I am currently working on a few of those ideas now, and with due time, I will be sharing more about them through posts on this site and on my social media accounts. As a big believer of "learning in public" and "learning through teaching", I am also launching this blog to share my career wisdom, tips about business, and insights about designing and developing software. For many years, I have shared ideas with my coworkers through lunch and learns, random hallway chats or coffee room breaks. But in the current "remote-only" world, this site will be my new long-term home, to share with anyone who's willing to listen.

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