I made it!

I made it ✌🏼

After three years of deliberate practice and trusting the compound interest of consistent effort, the next chapter has arrived: I am joining IQVIA as a Software Engineer in Data & AI.

I owe immense gratitude to Roche, particularly to the teammates who made daily work a masterclass in collaboration, technical excellence, and camaraderie. To all of you: thank you for showing me what a truly high-performing team feels like from the inside.

Three years ago, after selling my company, I decided to step into health tech and rebuild my career. Thank you, Nuclio Digital School, for making it possible to catch this wave in the first place.

I share this not merely to mark a personal milestone, but to offer a case study for anyone contemplating a reinvention. Career pivots are often treated as leaps of faith, but in reality, they are the result of clear systems, mental models, and small, repeatable decisions.

Here are the core principles that guided this transition:

1. Network to exchange insight, not to extract favors

When you network solely to land a job, people immediately sense the transactional friction. But when you treat conversations as a shared exchange of ideas, eager to contribute what you know and absorb what you don’t, opportunities emerge naturally. A job offer is rarely the direct target of networking; it is the byproduct of intellectual generosity.

2. “Working smart” is simply hard work done upfront

We often treat smart work and hard work as opposing forces. They aren’t. Working smart is the deliberate, rigorous labor you invest today that buys you asymmetric leverage and time tomorrow. Aim to operate six months ahead of your immediate demands: read deeply, attend industry forums, listen to the specialists, and relentlessly follow curiosity within your domain.

3. Anchor engineering in financial and business reality

True engineering impact comes from mastering three levers: cost optimization (understanding the balance sheet behind your technical choices), business value (tying technical execution directly to business outcomes), and resourcefulness (achieving maximum leverage with minimal waste).

4. Eliminate cognitive drag

I stay off consumer social media, keeping only LinkedIn. Cutting digital noise reclaims the bandwidth required for deep work.

5. Subdue the ego to accelerate growth

Even with prior entrepreneurial experience under my belt, corporate enterprise was uncharted territory for me. The single most defining decision of my early 30s was checking my ego at the door: I took an internship at Roche. Stepping into an entry-level seat after running a company was deeply humbling, but it proved to be an elite training ground.

One extra, the one I am focusing on right now: Honor the handover

How you leave a role is just as important as how you start it. Close out what you can, document what’s left, and take the time to genuinely enjoy those last few weeks at the office with your team.

Thank you for reading 🫶🏼