Hamza Tanveer

Since I hated school, I’ve never stuck with one. My repeated school transfers left me without a wide social circle. My passion for academics lasted through one class until we had a contest and the teachers unveiled the first prize: a brightly colored box.

Eyeing that prize, I got 1st position but to my dismay, I was given a cup instead of the colored box for first place. Despite being ranked first, I have a photo of me crying after receiving the cup onstage. Because of that, I lost interest in school.

I did all I could to avoid studying, including rewriting my diary and switching my grades from bad to good. But one day, as I was correcting a bad grade, my older brother caught me, and that was the last of it. My brother enrolled me in ICS after I graduated from school on the assumption that I was not cut out for academia. Studying ICS was challenging as well because of Maths, and that’s the part I really disliked, but I cleared my board exams with average marks.

Without a clear plan, I pondered joining the army after college, but it didn’t work out, so I got admission for a Computer Science degree. I focused more on extracurricular activities than on my studies until the 6th semester. My pivotal moment was when I started my final year project after a teacher predicted I wouldn’t go so far. I worked on a real life problem with the help of Machine Learning and my group was the only one focusing on it. I decided to work under a professor who was notorious for critical comments on his students’ project ideas, but to my surprise, mine was accepted by him. The greatest moment was when our project got 1st position in the whole batch, and more importantly, the other professors praised me in front of him as well.

I had no clear professional ambitions after graduation. Most places I emailed my resume required a master’s degree in Machine Learning. At the time, I also had to cope with fraud; I landed a job in a company, but with COVID, everything went online. My supervisor at that office told me we can’t train you right now, but we’ll call you back once things settle down. For two months, I waited for him to call me in for the permanent position, but he never did. Instead, he handed me menial tasks, which I did since I thought I was part of the company. I didn’t realize it until I discovered my supervisor was taking my money. When I asked, he claimed we hired someone else for my job.

This fraud made me depressed, so I start working on different startups, but soon I wanted to return to my initial academic focus. I joined another organization as an Associate Software Engineer, where I learned ROR and other software engineering principles. After working with them for a while, I decided to switch. During my search for a new place, I found Emerald Labs. For me, it’s vital to find a firm that shares my ideas and principles, so working here has been a delight so far.