I’ll always remember the moment when I decided that I wanted to jump to the tech industry.
It was 2015, and Twitter had invited us, as clients, to their new Singapore office on Cecil Street. It was filled with colourful lamps and beanbags and Peranakan tiles. It might have looked conventional by today’s standards, but back then, I was blown away by such a beautiful space. It’s dumb to base a career decision on something as superficial as an office, but from that moment on, I knew that I had to find my way into the tech industry.
The problem? I had zero experience in tech. At that time, I’d been working for an airline for 5 years, focusing on admin tasks like writing minutes and organising events. I had no idea what an API or a conversion rate was, nor did I speak in the pseudo-American accent that all my tech vendors seemed to have. Compared to all the cool kids in tech, my own experience seemed hopelessly quaint (writing minutes?!) and mundane (picking out check-in carpet materials?).
Do Research As A Baseline, But Don’t Overdo It
Like most areas, my first instinct was to do research: I’d Google around randomly, read books like The Lean Startup, and even took some Coursera courses. However, everything I read seemed way too theoretical, and weren’t helpful in helping me understand the fancy terms that my tech vendors were throwing around, like programmatic, and trading desks, and second-price auction.
In the past few years, I’ve spoken to several friends who’ve also wanted to do mid-career switches. Like me, they convinced themselves that their work experience was irrelevant, and figured they needed to overhaul their skills. Many of them dropped $200K on an expensive MBA program, or spent 6 months doing a coding