How to succeed (spectacularly) in your first tech job

Early tech jobs can often be buried in code and details. The right ones will help you understand the real purpose of your work, and how it truly impacts customers and clients.

Picture this. You’ve finished college and secured a well-paying job in the world of technology.

You are driven by hope and the dream of impacting real change in society – big or small – with your technical and engineering capabilities. Indeed, with those skills you are an architect of the times we live in.

You arrive at work. At many companies, you may suddenly find yourself thrust into an environment typing mindless code, seemingly unreasonable client asks, and stuck in front of a screen all day. Writing code for the real world, but with little to no idea of what this world looks like. Not knowing what the company you are developing programs for looks like. Not knowing who the customers of your brand look like. Where are you headed, you may ask yourself?

Unfortunately, we’ve found that that is a surefire way of wasting talent and a path that many young people unknowingly walk into.

At Epsilon, we know the best way to cure this problem is by preventing it. If you are someone early on in your career, I encourage you to look at the list of criteria for your (first few) jobs. Do they look like they’ll help you in the long run? Are they empowering you to just find a job, or build a long-term career? Will they help you grow into a leader?

Ask the right questions right at the start. What are the problems your work will solve? What are your client’s pain points? What needs are they trying to fulfil? Where does your skill add value to this experience?

Allow me to illustrate with a simple experience that you would no doubt have come across.

Think of a fashion brand that you most often buy from. Your expectations from this brand would have changed many times even over the past year as you were exposed to new styles and trends. Did your brand keep track of what you were really looking for? Did they offer stand-out experiences? Did they stay a step ahead in anticipating your needs?

This is what my teams and I obsess over day in and day out. As we build loyalty platforms that help brands create experiences to win and keep loyal customers, we are always on the lookout for customer insights that we can translate into code to delight people like you and I. Marketing is changing at a rapid pace, and work that combines the power of technology, data and creative is more in demand than ever.

When customers get something valuable in exchange for having shared their data, we know we have done our job well. Now imagine this happening a thousand times a day, making millions of customers across the world happy. That is how successful brands get built.

And that’s where young technologists, like yourself, see the purpose of their work come alive. My advice to you is go on and find that dream job where you will do great work that you can also relate to.

Hopefully, that could be at Epsilon, where we understand that defining a clear purpose and letting our young technologists to get closer client strategy is what makes for great work (and long-term career growth). The sky, as its rightly said, is the limit.

The sentiment from this article originally appeared in The Times of India.

If you are on the lookout for exciting career opportunities, check out our open positions. We’d love to have you.