Work, career and what I stand for

A small-town boy with a suitcase and big dreams

I was born in a very small village in Punjab, Pakistan, the kind of place where everyone knows your name, your father’s name and probably what you had for breakfast. Community, love and care weren’t lessons anyone taught us. They were simply how life worked, and somewhere along the way they got written into my DNA.

I studied engineering and started my career on the factory floor and in sales. That’s where I learned the lesson I still work by: people do their best work when someone takes them seriously.

In 2014 I packed my life into one suitcase and landed in Vienna for my master’s. The plan was to study. Vienna had other plans. More than a decade later I’m still here, still a small-town boy with big dreams, just with better coffee.

Since then I’ve helped ship software for online shops, finance and aviation safety. Today I’m a Product Owner, building a platform that keeps connected devices talking to each other. It’s harder than it sounds and more fun than it should be.

Off the clock I’m a father of two, a reader of far too many books and a chess player who is always sure the next move is the brilliant one. That side of me lives in Life off the Clock.