My entire life I wanted to do medicine. I always thought I wanted to be a doctor and I was interested in anatomy. This was fuelled by curiosity more than passion and that’s probably why I didn’t stick at it. Most of the programs I was applying to were pre-med. but then at some point I started to think about engineering. My sister was going into engineering, my dad is an engineer so I thought why not go for that?
I had always enjoyed math and the sciences. Another thing I found appealing was that it’s a 4-year program instead of having to do grad school as was the case with medicine. I applied to pre-med as well as in engineering programs in grade 12 to keep my options open. I eventually chose to pursue engineering due to my strong inclination for math and sciences.
Initially, I hated it and had no idea what was going on but as time went by, I took a few interesting courses and started to enjoy them. It was very analytical and involved a lot of problem-solving. This facilitated my first internship at IBM and the second was at Blackberry. One thing led to another and I started my first job at Microsoft, and then Wealthfront and Deliveroo. I don’t do coding on a day-to-day basis, I work more on the management level. My role right now is problem-solving the situations that our company runs into, given the constraints and circumstances.
I’m inspired by different people and different situations. A moment that stands out from my personal experience, was when we were doing rides with our delivery drivers across Leeds. We wanted to better understand what their day-to-day experience looked like as a rider. It’s something we do as a company so that we can appreciate not only the customers’ view but also the delivery riders’ perspective because we’re building the technology that helps them do their job. We serve everyone, from the riders to the restaurants to the customers. So, on this occasion, we were up in Leeds because its dynamics are quite different to London.
We were on the journey and it was pouring rain. The restaurant was in a mall and the rider had to park in the dark, then navigate his way through the shopping complex to pick up the food. Then he had to make his way to the customer in terrible weather and on streets that were not well lit up to facilitate his navigation.
MUSWIB: In this entire experience, what stood out to me was the rider’s perspective. He was so positive and happy. He could have thought, “why do I have to do this in this terrible weather” or “it’s annoying to find the restaurant in a shopping mall to pick up the order” or “the customer should come outside at a location that is easier to reach” but he didn’t - he just went on and got the job done. Life happens.
There will always be inconveniences and circumstances that we must bear with. That’s what sabr is. I always like to believe that you can either complain and make life miserable for yourself and for those around you or try to make it work with what you have on a stormy night with a positive attitude and wait patiently for the sunshine!
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