Career Skills & Transitions with Tanmay Jain, Founder at Qwokka

Tell us a little bit about your career so far. What's been your journey?

Tanmay Jain: So I've had a couple of interesting switches in my journey so far. Started off in Deloitte in tax. Didn't really stick with that too long. Wasn't my cup of tea. And so I moved on and became a program manager at Atlassian working on execution projects and then into product where I was part of the team at Amazon.

I've overseen some products like Wishlist, Amazon Family. And then my last sort of formal gig was as a Product Manager (PM) at Canva where I worked on mobile and video. And then the most recent gig is as a founder working my own thing.

What ingredients helped you in those early years and through those first career transitions?

Tanmay Jain: I think the big thing that made those transitions possible and even successful is

you have to be very open to what's coming and it's a mix of holding on to what are the skill sets that you bring that you're really great at but then what are the some of the habits, behaviours, skillsets you need to grow

and build into as well. I think coming from Deloitte into Atlassian, for example, I was very organised. I was a great communicator. But then the formal communication style wasn't great for a more chilled out tech company. And so going, okay, like I'm going to bring my ability to communicate well, vocally, my ability to communicate well in a written manner, but then kind of moderate that for the environment that it's in.

So I think this mix of being open, but then also holding onto what your skill sets are and knowing what you're really good at.

Was there a particular attitude that you took that helped in those early years to make those transitions?

Tanmay Jain: Yeah. I remember the biggest switch is probably tax to moving into Atlassian. And I remember the first thing I did was I sat down with a developer and I said, I don't know how to code and I'm probably going to try and learn how to code, but can you just explain to me how a piece of code goes from something on your laptop, to something that's in the product and explain to me like I'm an idiot. Like explain to me like a five year old. And so he got a big whiteboard and he walked me through that process and I probably had conversations like that with nearly every function Inside Atlassian because

you have to come with a bit of humility and to go I'm gonna try and understand this from the first principles and a ground truth perspective so then you can really skill up quickly

and you can also have a great framework to navigate this new role that you're in.

Harry Hamilton: Nice. And so for each of those transitions, right, they're all quite different flavours and I'm sure you've had to pick up and maybe drop skills along the way as well.

How have you developed your own professional toolkit?

Tanmay Jain: I think the big thing is in each of the places you have to identify what are the ingredients for success inside that role. And what are the tools that help me there? And then what are the tools that I really, really have to sharpen?

So a good example is, you know, Amazon is very data driven and very document driven. And it's very written docs. You have to write a long sort of set of things. Canva, on the other hand, is very visual. So they want a graph, they want a presentation. They don't want too much text. They want to have a clear narrative. And so one thing that I really tried to do is look at what's the commonality between these two things. In the end, they're just trying to find different ways to communicate and have a clean narrative around a piece of information.

And so really trying to understand that ground truth around, Hey, like, this is how you present, or this is how you create a compelling narrative to convince your stakeholder, your audience, whoever you're trying to speak to. And then again, moderating for the environment, the atmosphere.

I think that's something I've really, really worked on. It's trying to understand what's the deepest skill set. It's not, I make great presentations or I write great docs. It's I know how to communicate a narrative and come up with a narrative to convince the audience that I'm trying to speak to in that moment.

Harry Hamilton: Got it. And so when you're trying to learn a new skill like that, very specifically,

what's your approach to learning?

Tanmay Jain: The first thing is pick out the people in the organisation who are really great at that skill. Or look for the best in class content on the internet.

So, if there's someone in the company who's really great at communicating upwards or negotiating, go and speak to them and see if you can shadow them on things.

I think that's always been a really, really quick way to hack it. Like you understand how they operate in the atmosphere, you understand how they think about it because often there's a little meta level, a step above what you kind of see day to day.

Go and find best in class content and just immerse yourself. Nowadays there's so much. Podcasts, sub stacks, newsletters. Just go soak in as much you can.

What you find is you go through these four layers of competency: You don't know what you don't know, you know what you don't know, and then you don't know what you do know... I'm sure there's a third stage, but yeah, roughly you can kind of find your fastest path to at least knowing what you don't know because then you feel like, okay, I know the gaps. I know how to go and seek out that information. And once you know that, then it's very easy to get to the next level

Harry Hamilton: You mentioned podcasts and sub stacks and there's so much out there.

Is there a resource that you find yourself recommending

to people constantly or that you've come back to throughout your career?

Tanmay Jain: I find I'm a bit of a squirrel so I get information and I just put it in my own notion. I don't think it's like a one go to resource. I go to finding that person in the company who's really good at that thing especially because they understand how it works in that context, in that environment. You'll also be surprised how often when you go and reach out to them and they're very comfortable to do a half an hour coffee.

If you're very clear about the ask, like, Hey Harry, I've seen that you are really great at running seminars and sessions. I'd really love to learn a bit of your theory. You've gone and complimented them. You've recognized what they've good at. Chances are they've actually gone and tried to cultivate that skill. And so they're very happy to share that with you.

Harry Hamilton: This is so true. I found the quickest way to learn what someone struggled for three to five years to learn is to just sit down with them for 30 minutes.

All right. Maybe one last quick piece of advice to leave us with: if you're going to give yourself advice or someone just starting out in their career,

what's the best piece of career advice you think you could share?

Tanmay Jain: Take your time. I think part of it is when you're trying to make these career transitions, you feel a great sense of anxiety around like, okay, I have a goal I want to be at and what I want to do. You know, like for me, it was like, I want to become a product manager and have a tech team and work on innovative products.

When I really look at the arc of my journey, it might look like that happened almost immediately with Atlassian, but I was actually a program manager. I think the first time I was able to fully see out that vision of what I wanted to do was two years later at Canva. And so, you know, take your time, understand that you might not get there immediately.

You might have to take a few rolls in the middle to get the right sort of skill set. But, you know,

be patient and be kind to yourself in that journey as well

. Just because you go from being a corporate lawyer, like me, to being a PM in Canva and you don't make that happen immediately, it doesn't mean you're a failure.

Harry Hamilton: I think that's awesome advice and a great note to leave us on. Thank you so much, man. Really appreciate it.

Tanmay Jain: Thanks so much, Harry.

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This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.