I wonder how much more financially secure I’d be if I’d spent the last two years pursuing one professional direction. Instead, I’ve considered at least ten, including moving away from the thing I enjoyed most.
Looking for a direction
In 2024, I quit my job as a full-time software engineer. I wanted more autonomy and to do something that felt more meaningful to me. I decided that I wanted to be a coach for men. I grew up without a father, and there were lessons I learned later in life that a good masculine role model could have helped me with. So, I wanted to fill that role for other men.
For reasons I won’t get into here, that didn’t work out.
Since then, I’ve considered several careers in tech, where my strongest skills are, as well as copywriting and email marketing. I have a wide range of interests, and I’ve benefited from learning about them. But choosing what to build a career around has been difficult.
Moving away from product building
I wanted to help founders turn their ideas into the first usable version of a product, so I offered MVP development. I loved thinking through how an app should work and building it. In a meeting with a founder friend and his two developers, I enjoyed helping them simplify the steps people had to take to start using their app.
Finding clients for that offer was difficult. I did land projects, but I still had a lot to learn about finding and winning clients consistently. When I was told that new founders didn’t have the budgets to make MVP development a good business, I decided to pursue clients with more money to spend. I changed focus before I’d learned enough about client acquisition to judge the market for myself.
I turned toward internal apps and workflow automation for established businesses. Those topics interested me too, and I thought that if I could connect what I built directly to a business’s revenue or costs, finding clients wouldn’t be a problem. I studied how businesses manage sales and marketing operations, completed certifications, and built a system to help me find prospective clients.
Eventually, I began questioning that move. I still wanted to be the guy founders came to when they needed their first product built. Surely there had to be a way to make the MVP service work. I think finding clients was going to be hard whichever direction I chose, and I might as well have been doing what I enjoyed most.
What changing direction cost me
The repeated changes cost me compounding experience. I learned a lot about finding clients, but changing focus left me less time to put that knowledge into practice.
Looking back over those years, I did make progress. I built products for clients and became more confident in my abilities. I gained a little financial breathing room, too. Those experiences were important, but I still wonder how much further along I’d be if I’d been more consistent.
Some of those changes came from shiny object syndrome. Maybe I was also afraid of making the wrong choice. I’ve struggled with perfectionism before, and I wonder how much it influenced these decisions.
An identity that fits
Building digital products is what I’ve been most passionate about through these changes, especially products that use AI. It’s also what I’m best at. I’ve settled on calling myself an AI product engineer because I feel like that title best represents me.
Even after choosing it, I briefly thought I might need to change again. While building an app, I realized how much more I enjoyed designing the interface and user experience than building the systems behind them. Building those systems was interesting, but mostly a means to an end. I love knowing that something I’ve made makes another person’s work or life easier.
I wondered whether I should specialize as a frontend engineer and build whole products on my own time. Just because I could build the whole thing, did that mean I should make it my profession?
“Oh boy,” I thought. “Here we go again. Another change of identity.”
But after a conversation with ChatGPT, I realized I didn’t have to change anything. Having a favorite part of the process doesn’t stop me from being an AI product engineer. I want to be known for the thought and care I put into building products, and there’s room within that for my preferences.
What I’m doing now
Now that I’ve settled on the kind of work I want to do, my immediate priority is a decent contract working on an established product. I want the income to give me more financial breathing room before I build a freelance business developing products for founders.
Alongside the applications, I’m building two products of my own: Casamo, which helps people evaluate furnished rentals for trips lasting weeks or months, and BA Eventos, which helps people find events in Buenos Aires. I’m also publishing more about what I’m building and learning.
I feel confident I’ll find a contract. To me, it’s a question of when rather than if. I still wish I had more financial security, but I’m not spending my days wondering what I should become. I know what I want to do.