My name is Eugene (originally Evgenii [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj]). I'm 32 years old, and live in London, UK with my wife. I make a living by working as a product designer though before that I used to be a product manager and a startup founder. My background is Computer Science, though presently I am more interested in allowing myself to be more creative, more experimental and less stiff.

Getting into product design

Transition from product management into product design is an interesting one because it was one of the first conscious career decisions, given I’ve been working for ~5 years by then. I’ve taught myself the basics, also help of the many people who were very generous with their time in mentoring, advising, and supporting in many ways.

Three key things that made me do that:

1. I wasn't very happy as a product manager, I’ve realised that it is important for me to be able to see the actual work I’ve done and be able to say that I’ve done it. Could sound egoistic but I doesn’t mean it in a bad way.
2. Having moved countries, I've realised how vulnerable I am due to not having many hard skills.
3. In 2022, when LLMs were in their early days, I was quite spooked by the prophecies of AI taking over white collar jobs. Hence my thinking of how I could make myself more resilient. My best guess was that I couldn't protect myself 100% but if I develop an expertise in some hard-skills focused field, I'll be capable of utilising those models better than an average person and therefore will survive the coming wave.

Eventually, the idea of transitioning into product design came to my mind. So far I am quite happy with the new life.

Some principles

Things I’m trying to incorporate in my life: being able to do stuff by myself, being independent some sort of. It manifests itself in me fixing our bikes and being able to cook something decent. Things I want to try in the future: mending my clothes, making furniture, growing herbs. Developing hardware devices would be amazing, but realistically I don’t have time for that. I can’t exactly put my finger on where this desire for independence comes from, I’m also conscious that I make myself sound like a grandad. But it feels natural, time spent doing these activities usually results in joy, so I choose to continue doing them without asking too many questions.

I try to support independent businesses whenever possible (independent coffee shop rather than a global coffee chain). This is subject to the quality and the price, I wouldn’t shop at an independent store just for the sake of it. If something relies using private equity money, I would rather avoid it. These are not hard principles I follow 100% of the time but try my best to do. I also avoid shopping on Amazon as much as possible.

Another thing I try to follow is buying clothes that will last me a long time. It also includes caring and maintaining what I already own. For example, one pair of boots is with me for about 8 years, or another fleece jacket serves me for about 16 years. What I learnt the hard way is that the price doesn’t always correlate with quality. But usually quality stuff costs money so I spend a lot of time researching what's available and save for buying something decent.