coming back to life

If you had told me two years ago that, two years from then, I would be in Bangalore, doing primarily video-editing as a job, for my friend's financial advisory company, I'd probably laugh it off as completely insane. I have found myself in similar situations over the past decade or so, where my life at one point in time, would probably have been unrecognisable to me 2-4 years prior. For a big chunk of my life, I was barely in touch with what I really wanted to do, but I'm happy to say that that has gradually been getting further and further away from the truth.

career

After spending five years learning the ins and outs of how atoms behave, what electrons do, and their implications thereof, I slowly came to a painful realisation towards the end: While I genuinely enjoyed certain aspects of it, I didn't really want to keep doing research for the rest of my career. I knew this beyond a shadow of doubt during my postdoc position for which I did DFT (Density Functional Theory) for a primarily experimental research group. Of course this pursuit itself taught me a lot of lessons that have come to be invaluable to me, as a person, and this is true for the topic too.

But I successfully pivoted towards data analytics and I did enjoy it a lot, and thought, for a second, that I had found my path. Working for Deloitte (for M&T Bank as a client) was a lot of fun. It brought the problem-solving aspect that I enjoyed during my research and combined that with a fast-paced, high-stakes environment with a supportive manager, and in this environment, I daresay I thrived.

All seemed well, until I decided to come back to Bangalore, and continue along the same career path. Things didn't work out as I expected, and the next thing I knew, I had been job hunting for about a year and a half. I had been learning video editing (using only ffmpeg at the time, mind you) as a hobby. Cut to a couple of months later, and I was now primarily a video editor at Wizr Wealth, a company that I am proud to say my friend had started a few years ago. Some of the perks include:

  • I get to use whatever software I want for the work that I do. I get to use python, emacs, and linux itself, and it really does feel like home in a lot of ways (looking at you, Dr. R)
  • I get to use my camera on a regular basis, and I have gotten to learn lots of things about studios, lighting, etc.
  • I am not bound by rigid hierarchies and meaningless (to me) rules which is typical, but of course, not always true, in larger organisations (in my experience at least)
  • I get to code, but I don't really have to