I’d go on to join several forums and launch my own which gained credible notoriety (from young kids worldwide) back in the day. I felt like Batman at school, where only a few friends knew what I did after school. I’d even used my Visual Basic skills to modify a game hacking program that led my gaming forum to skyrocket in popularity.

In my Junior year of university, I interned in Human Resources at a non-profit called Handicapped Children’s Association (now renamed to Helping Celebrate Abilities) located in Johnson City, New York — just to get some American work experience and be taken seriously. In the past, I’d desperately applied to several campus jobs only to be hopelessly rejected; semester after semester.

At my research assistant job in Syracuse, New York, we’d do a lot of work in Excel so I used some VBA to automate my tasks. It made me ponder about life and how something I’d learned so long ago was still helping me in various ways. I’d interviewed for a role in my job hunting days where I had to specifically demonstrate I could automate report generation using VBA. Regardless, I knew it was time to advance my skills so I enrolled in courses on Coursera.org on topics such as Python Programming (by the University of Michigan) and Algorithmic Thinking (by Rice University). I’d even go on to read books such as Learn Python the Hard Way. At my work, they’d host workshops on data science quite regularly so I even got to see SQL + R programming in action and data science in practice for market research.

Failing to get a long-term visa, I eventually had to move back to Bangladesh. I had briefly joined a traffic analytics tech start-up which was in desperate need of funding. Realizing the bleak future, I parted ways with the start-up and started a boutique digital agency with my close acquaintances. The organisation sustained for two years. We hired several employees but we were always at break-even and the competition just kept on increasing where we had to keep working on narrow to non-existent margins, unrealistic client expectations and a tough labor market where salaries did not match talent and skills. However, it was a great learning experience because we delivered incredible value to our clients and grew our skills.

In need of fresh direction in my life, I started looking for a job. Among other technology companies, Pathao was one of the most innovative; locally. I applied for the Product Designer position because it fit my past experiences. They assigned a take-home project, which I handed over in a week. I got called in for an interview and a few weeks later, I was working at one of south-east asia’s biggest tech start-ups.