At any given point of time when I ask my friends ‘what are your skills’, they are not able to articulate them clearly. They try to describe their current role and things that they do, but I am pretty sure they are much more skilled than they think or articulate.

The challenge lies in not seeing our skills and capabilities in terms of years and experience.

Here is an example:

Currently my role is Product Manager at a startup. I help convert requirements into technical tasks, define and run sprints, oversee testing and deployments etc etc.

But over the years, I have done the following:

• Worked as a software engineer (which taught me the challenges of being a developer)
• Ran a Dev agency of 35 people (which taught me bootstrapping a business, finances, project management, stakeholder management etc etc)
• Started a company in a new country (migrated to a country, went through the culture adjustments etc)
• Closed a company (handled financial issues, laid off half the team and then ultimately closed the company)

If you add these experiences to my current role, I think the value I might be bringing to my role will be much bigger than the tasks I do on a day-to-day basis.

And the way I conduct my role is influenced by the compounding of my knowledge over the years.

• While speaking with developers, I can understand their challenges and am able to empathise with them