Broadening Your Understanding: How Working in Tech Gives You a Broader Perspective of Reality

I have always been a curious person with a thirst for making sense of the world, but I observed this increase when I started working in tech and product companies.

The major shift comes from the fact that you need to develop a mentality where your job is to think and solve problems. To make that, you need to have Computational Thinking as one of your primary skills. This way, you train your mind to break down problems, recognize patterns, create abstraction models and develop algorithms.

In an ever-changing world, whether you work hands-on with the software or not, computational thinking is an evergreen skill that you can apply to many problem solving or sense-making situations.

Exposure to the forces that are moving society

Computational thinking is not the only way in which you broaden your understanding. For example, suppose you are lucky enough to work in a product company, and you give yourself the present to explore the business perspective. In that case, you will also be exposed to fundamental concepts to understand society nowadays. Supply and demand rules, algorithms, how the big tech companies operate, and their role in shaping consuming habits, the list goes on and on.

Those are not, of course, the only things you need to know. That would be advocating for a technocentric and very limited view. What seems undeniable is that tech evolution and market rules, which you can easily combine if you work in any startup, play a significant role in our economy and society.

Suppose you are in a position to broaden your understanding of those market and economic concepts, plus you are, at least, technology-literate. In that case, you know more about the forces that move the world in the XXI century. Suppose, on top of that; you can break down problems and identify underlying patterns. In that case, you have a combination of skills you can potentially export to any field in which you would like to collaborate.

The point is, working in a tech environment is a playground for developing both.

This post was published first in my blog, where you can find lots of other articles and a growing collection of posts in Spanish.