We were lucky to catch up with Ajay Menon recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ajay, thank you so much for joining us today and appreciate you talking about a sensitive topic. It’s unfortunately relevant to so many in the community as layoffs have been on the rise recently, and so we’d appreciate hearing your story and how you overcame being let go?
I have come to believe that there are multiple occasions where you are bound to hit rock bottom in your life, brought on by unforeseeable events that make or break you. One such time in my life was during the start of the pandemic in 2020. I was living alone in Florida and working for a large-scale startup which I had joined in 2019, my first full-time role that I accepted since graduating. Things were looking up, I had just started paying back my student loans while being fully independent for the first time in my life! Man, that felt great!
Then the pandemic hit, and our startup, like many other companies at that time, decided to do a mass layoff to keep itself afloat. April 2020, MagicLeap inc. decided to layoff almost 50% of it’s workforce, that was almost 5000 strong! I still remember the awkward 10 minute long zoom call where our CEO went off camera, started crying, and broke the news to the whole company. In the next 20 minutes I got logged out of all the company systems, lost access to all my current work, and I was sitting home alone trying to process what just happened. Terrible experience, especially for an immigrant on a temporary work visa living in the United States!
It took me 2 days to get over the initial shock, inform my family & friends, and really analyze the situation that I was in. As per my visa guidelines, I had 60 days to find a new job and a company that’s willing to sponsor a work visa for me. Else, I had no other option but to move out of the country. I really had no time to waste, so I decided to lean on my skills as a designer to get out of this situation. I remember one of the first things that I did was make a daily schedule for myself, one that was intended to keep me sane during this period. I had put in daily slots for strategizing & planning, updating my portfolio, applying to jobs, social media reach-out, exercise, talking to friends & family, meditating, sending out emails, etc.
I drew an action plan for myself breaking down the time I had left into phases and weeks and days. I reached out and connected with folks I knew or admired, I became hyper-active on Linkedin to market myself and help out others who were in the same boat as me. I received tons of support and was grateful & quite overwhelmed by how people came together to help me out. Soon enough, things started moving, I began interviewing at various companies. I became hyper-focused and obsessed in finding the right role for myself and I was not ready to compromise on certain aspects like the type of role, industry, technology, and job satisfaction. Luckily, I knew exactly what I wanted from my previous experiences and this helped me to focus on the right things and get my priorities in order. It all paid off when I finally received offers from multiple companies and was humbled to get to choose an exciting role for myself.
I learned some things about focus, hardwork, dedication, and myself in those 60 days that I’ll never forget.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a designer by profession and an artist at heart. I love sketching and I have a real passion for visualizing things, ideas, and concepts. I’m always drawn to challenges touching on technology, transportation, logistics, aerospace, and solving complex user experience problems in real life.
I currently work at Autodesk as a senior product designer and based in Toronto, Canada. Autodesk is an established global company which makes 3D CAD softwares for ‘design & build’ use-cases and caters to multiple different industries from architecture & construction to film & media entertainment. My team is focused on shaping the future of emerging technologies like AR & VR, and build new unique workflows for various product offerings inside the company’s portfolio. We are currently building an immersive workspace for professionals in the architecture & construction industry, which allows them to conduct virtual walkthroughs and design reviews of their 3D models using AR/VR technologies.
As a designer, I am always drawn to solving huge complex user experience problems, where there is a lot to discover, new ambiguous design spaces with minimum repetition, and requires high caliber execution. This is exactly what captivates me about emerging tech like AR & VR. In some ways, they are still very nascent and there is a vast ocean remaining to be discovered when it comes to this industry. And I fundamentally believe that design can improve people’s lives, transform companies and change culture.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Some of the most basic qualities & skills that I can think of that created immense impact in my journey are curiosity, learning to communicate effectively, and asking for help when needed. And I’m still very much trying to improve on all 3 of them.
Curiosity is usually an inborn quality that all of us are born with. But I believe it needs to be nurtured as we grow up, else we run into the danger of becoming stagnant in life. The only advice I have is to ask as many questions as possible, whenever you can, in every possible situation. There is no stupid question, but only the danger of not learning anything new. Seek to learn something new every day, it doesn’t matter how you do it. Just be curious.
Learning to communicate effectively goes a long way in every aspect of your life. Often times, words have limitations, languages have barriers, people misunderstand more often than you think, or they overthink more often than they need to. In such times, lean into your strengths and use them for an advantage. If you are good with words, write a story. If you can draw, make a sketch and provide some visual to accompany your words. If you are good at photography, document things. A picture speaks thousand words. Go the extra step to make it clear and bring everyone on the same page. Pretty soon, this turns into a life skill that you are appreciated for, without even you realizing!
And lastly, there will always come times when you are stuck, when you don’t know what to do or how to move forward. Learn to let go of your ego & pride, and ask for help from others. You will most likely save time, money, and effort by being humble, and also learn something new!
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
I think the most impactful thing that my parents did for me is giving me the flexibility and opportunity to discover what I wanted to do in life and being patient with me as I did it. Believe it or not, this is a rare thing from where I come from!
I was born in the city of Mumbai in India, where I grew up with monsoons, festivals, and a huge sea of people who never sleep. I grew up reading tons of comics and encyclopedias, geeking over new TV shows and movies, and learning to play the piano at a very young age. Growing up in Mumbai is definitely a big part of who I am, and has helped me develop curiosity, understand religious tolerance, question and accept diverse points of view or difference in opinions, and naturally motivated me to keep experimenting in life. But when it comes to career choices, there is this running joke in India that – ‘you first become an engineer, doctor, or a lawyer, before discovering what you really want to do in life’. That’s exactly what happened to me, I started off as an electronics engineer in 2014. At that time, ‘Design’ as a profession was something alien to everyone around me and following any career related to art was generally looked down upon in the society.
As I was struggling to complete my studies, I realized that my passion lied elsewhere. As a kid, I was good at making creative artworks, sketching, painting, and during my engineering days, I used to be involved in organizing cultural festivals and designing magazines for my college. I realized that those were the things I really enjoyed doing and found myself excited about. So after my bachelors, I wanted to explore my creative side, to rediscover myself, and possibly transition my career into a more satisfying one. I remember feeling utterly lost and having to do a ton of soul-searching to find what I exactly wanted to do in my life. It took me an year after graduating to finally come up with a decision and direction for myself. Looking back, this was a major turning point in my journey and I’m grateful that my parents were completely supportive of my decisions back then.
I spent months sitting at home and researching various ins & outs of design curriculums in India and abroad, creating paintings & artworks, and putting together a shabby, yet admissible portfolio of creative work that I could use to get into a design college. Not having a proper design background, my hopes of getting into a good college was quite low. But despite being in the dark about my career opportunities, my parents believed in me and went out of their way to back me up and support me financially. Eventually, my search brought me to California in 2015. I was looking for the perfect blend between my technical problem-solving skills and my passion for art, and I found the answer in a master’s program at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. ‘Transportation Systems and Design’ was a new specialization which was accepting students with diverse backgrounds and skillsets and I ended up amassing a blend of knowledge ranging from industrial design know-how to user research and interaction design skills. After graduating, I worked freelance and contract jobs for multiple mobility startups in and around LA, and overtime, I decided to specialize in experience design for products and emerging technologies.
I believe that there is no such thing as a smooth road, especially when it comes to discovering yourself, your passion, and purpose. I’m very grateful to be surrounded by folks who understand this and gave me the opportunity to succeed in life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ajmenon.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aj_menon_official/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajay-menon-5983a640/
