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To understand how successful career changers tap into chance and happendipity (happenstance/serendipity), I continue my interview series with Amit Turkenitz who has changed careers six times navigating IT, tech and data as well as creative careers like photography, entrepreneurship and product creation.
Here are the key takeouts from the interview about his career change. Read the interview below.
Amit Turkenitz’ career journey offers several key takeaways about luck, happendipity and having the right mindset to make career changes:
Key Takeouts:
- The Value of Naivety in Career Changes: “I learned that it really helps to be naive. Maybe it’s not the best news for people seeking to change their career, but I think that in pivoting to a new career you need to reinvent yourself, as a professional, and sometimes even as a person… So it really helps to be naive, to just jump on something and assume it’s going to be fine.”
- The Role of Luck in Career Opportunities: “With any job you take, you’re lucky to find someone to employ you, or to give you your first opportunity. Of course, a lot of luck is needed in generating your first employment opportunities, or first set of customers.”
- The Role of Connections: “Without connecting to the right people, a lot of those opportunities would not present themselves. In some cases I followed opportunities, rather than created the opportunities that I knew I wanted to create.”
- The Importance of Knowing What You Don’t Want: “I did not know what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted not to do, and that’s not a lot to go on when you’re trying to be appealing as a potential employee.”
- Recognising Pivotal Moments: “My biggest luck is that I was picked for this program when I was 17 years old to train me as a software developer. Before that I had no idea what a computer was and how to switch it on.”
These takeaways highlight that Amit’s career has been shaped by a willingness to embrace chance encounters and opportunities, even when he was unsure of the path ahead. Read the full interview below.
Q: What is your career story?
A: At about age 18 I had the opportunity to be trained as a software developer. I’ve done that for about eight years, and since I had this hands-on experience, I didn’t have to go and study it. I was free to study something else.
As a creative person, I went on and studied filmmaking in university as a bachelor’s degree. And that opened up an appetite for creative avenues, and I started my own photography studio. I’ve done that in parallel to working as a software developer for a while, and then I crossed over completely to doing photography as my main avenue of income.
Then I became a small time entrepreneur, dabbling with creation of products, production, marketing – all functions of a small business. That was a fun adventure, and I’ve done that in parallel to photography for a couple of years.
At that point I wanted to get back into tech, because it’s a really good income with really good conditions – like not being a physical labour, not working with direct customer demands, using my brain a lot and potentially enjoying air conditioning while at it. So I wanted to get back to tech, but not necessarily as a software developer. I studied user experience, and that opened up some roles for me as a UX consultant, and then I jumped into being a product manager in a software organisation.
A few years down the track I pivoted once more to what I’m doing today, which is being a data engineer, because that’s an aspect of product management that I was really drawn into – the impact analysis and the wrangling of data, and here I am today.
Q: What does a data engineer do exactly?
A: A data engineer is like a plumber of data – creating pipelines and solutions for organisations to be able to utilise data that comes from various systems by mobilising it into other systems where it can be leveraged for different functions such as business insights, or predictive analytics for businesses, where it allows not only to report on what went down, but also to predict what’s about to happen and then use it for the benefit of the business or the organisation. Another area is machine learning and data science, for which data needs to be mobilised and prepared in different ways and be placed in systems where it can be processed.
Q: If you think about from the beginning of your career to where you are now. Why did you make those changes?
A: I think each of those changes came from a different place – I’ll try to briefly go through them. When I just started my journey as a software developer, I was surrounded by people who were doing it for a while and were very passionate about it. I was never a computer nerd, or a very technical person. For me it was just an opportunity that I came across and decided to embrace. I developed the idea that while I’m doing well at it, and might even become great at it over time, I’m not as passionate for this field as some of the professionals that surround me, who have a whole different drive and motivation. So I knew from early on that while I’ll probably keep doing it for the foreseeable future, this is not likely where my future lies.
I always dabbled in creative kinds of endeavours, so when I was ready to start my university degree I went to study filmmaking as a creative avenue, which is something I was more passionate about. That was my first motivation for pivoting. I think it was a great thing to do, because it motivated me to turn it into an income generating avenue and I then became a photographer. It took a leap of faith and some thinking about how I can translate creative qualifications into a business. That ended up being my first pivot.
The next big one was jumping into entrepreneurship and into product creation. This is something that I did with my now wife and then girlfriend, Jo. At the time, she was an Australian immigrant in Israel. Language was a barrier, and it just ended up that I created a product to help her become stimulated about learning the language. It didn’t start with the intention of pivoting, but as we rolled with it, it took on a life of its own and was well received in our surroundings. So it became bigger than what we intended and grew into a business, and it touched all aspects of the business – designing, manufacturing, marketing, etc. So that’s the second pivot that just creeped in on us.
The third one, and one of the most significant ones, was going back into tech. By then, my photography business was picking up and it was well received by customers, but it was a very hard labour, and very physically and mentally taxing. The revenue was tied to my work. So if I wasn’t available for work, I wasn’t earning money. I was conscious of the fact that it’s limited in scalability. The amount of income that I could earn was very limited.
I knew that I could always get back into tech, but I didn’t want to do just development anymore, as it wasn’t my passion. Having started two businesses and considering my character and my confidence with people that grew over the years, I decided that I wanted to get back into tech but in more of a driving role. So not necessarily a business owner or an entrepreneur, but something that is a bit more of a leadership role in those areas. I realised that UX designers are pretty much sitting in the driver’s seat when it comes to what direction the software business is developing. So that appealed to me. I also learned that a product manager and a UX designer are two complementing functions within a software organisation. So I thought – why not try both? And I pivoted to those areas.
The very last pivot was away from product management and into data engineering. And the motivation was very simple – I did not like being a product manager – It wasn’t the role for me. I learned it the hard way. It required personal traits that I did not naturally possess, and I was not really keen to develop. It came at a time when I moved to a different country and there were culture barriers and language barriers to an extent and which all led to a personal identity crisis. And I realised that being a leader in a software organisation is maybe not the thing for me. I was fairly lucky to find an opportunity to jump into a different role as a data engineer, which I’m still having today.
Q: What role has happendipity played in your career?
A: Well, it definitely played a role. First of all, with any job you take, you’re lucky to find someone to employ you, or to give you your first opportunity. Of course, a lot of luck is needed in generating your first employment opportunities, or first set of customers.
When I moved to Australia I was lucky to have a personal connection in a company where I ended up having my first product manager role. I wouldn’t say it was a successful role. It was horrible for me, and in hindsight it was the beginning of the end of me being a product manager. But I was lucky to have that opportunity and be able to let it run its course.
When I needed to pivot, this is where I landed in the role that I’m still in today, almost seven years later. I did not know what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted not to do, and that’s not a lot to go on when you’re trying to be appealing to a potential employer. You’re not even sure what you’re looking for. I had a lot of luck being introduced to a CEO of a company who sat and listened to me rambling about what I don’t want to do and what I might want to do, what I’m good at, what I’m not good at. He was thinking on his feet – well, I have a set of problems that sound like you may be in a good position to solve, so why don’t I just offer you a job and we’ll start rolling with it.
I would say this is pure luck to be able to have such a conversation and such an opportunity. Obviously, that evolved in many different ways that I could not predict when I took the job. All of them are positive and great, but yeah – that’s very much luck.
Q: Are you someone who embraces or rejects chance? Do you make your own luck?
A: I think the answer to both is yes. I hate changes, like anyone else. Change is intimidating, and I’m not a changing person in my core, but just looking at this conversation so far, there was a lot of change in my career. Some of it came from a place of want, and some from a place of need – the need to not be doing something that is bad for me, or the want to do something that explores other parts of my personality. But at the end of the day, I went and created the momentum for change. None of those changes just happened. I didn’t just drift. So at the end of the day, yeah, I embrace change, and I generate change, and I take ownership of the change that needs to happen to an extent.
Q: Can you think of a chance event that changed your career?
A: I mentioned the CEO who took me on based on my rambling. That was a pretty big one. Look, there were quite a few, come to think of it. The other one is that first Australian employer who took me on without anything much to go on other than a personal connection. Also the pivot to user experience – I was lucky to find an industry leader who I had a personal connection with, who helped me with injecting myself into this industry.
The biggest luck of them all, maybe, is that I was picked for this program when I was 17 years old to build me as a software developer without any prior experience.
Q: Do you think that a lot of the chance events that have happened in your life have been about connecting with the right people?
A: Yes. I think I can flip the answer a little bit – I think without connecting to the right people, a lot of those opportunities would not present themselves, and in some cases, I kind of followed opportunities, rather than create the opportunities that I knew I wanted to create. So I think I’m a bit of a mixed bag in this department.
In some cases I decided on a goal, and I started figuring out my way to it, and that would be making the right connections or pulling the right favours or tapping into the right networks. In other cases, it was being attuned to what’s around and being willing to pursue leads – even random ones – just to see where it takes me.
Q: What have you learned about the process of changing careers?
A: I learned that it really helps to be naive. Maybe it’s not the best news for people seeking to change their career, but I think that in pivoting to a new career you need to reinvent yourself, as a professional, and sometimes even as a person… Sometimes there’s a huge culture change between your new career and your previous career. Culture changes are massive, because suddenly you’re in corporate environment while before you were customer facing. You really need to reinvent yourself in many cases. And that is not simple, that process of reinventing yourself is full on. So it really helps to be naive, to just jump on something and assume it’s going to be fine. And then, when the hardship hits the fan it might surprise you, but you’re already in it, so you’re not thinking before the process starts – “Should I? It’s going to be hard”, and then you might not go for it. So it really helps to have this naivety, to just jump on something and assume it’s going to be fine.
Q: Do you think that gets harder as you get older, to be able to be naïve?
A: I guess it is harder because you’ve seen stuff and you already know how hard it may be. But I also believe that people who have the ability to be naive about something – it’s more of a personality trait. So if you are slightly naive you’re likely to keep being slightly naive. It’s like a psychological mechanism that helps you step into situations without the set of fears or concerns. So even if you are less and less naive over the years. If you do have that core in you, it’s probably there to stay.
Q: What advice would you give to someone else that’s faced with a chance event that could change their career?
A: Wow, it really depends on who the person is and what’s their current situation, as well as whether the change is well anticipated versus a forced change. I would probably say things can go really, really well. I think things can surprise you and evolve in amazing ways.
If you have self-confidence, you will navigate whatever happens into where you want to be. Maybe the journey is going to be rough and bumpy, but at the end, trust yourself that you will arrive where you need to be. It’s human psychology. If you have the trust that you will navigate yourself to a safe shore, don’t be afraid of taking chance opportunities and pursue them.
Check out my previous interviews on happendipity with:
- Agathé Kerr, an IT consultant turned pastry chef
- Sonia Singh, science communicator to Tree Change Dolls creator to speech pathologist
Images: Jo Savill