Guides / The journey
How I learned this
The guides are general on purpose. This page is where they came from: four years, chapter by chapter, with the lessons each one left behind. My homepage shows what I did. This is what it taught me.
Chapter 1 • 2022 to 2023
The start
I got into design through YouTube. I made videos about Rubik's cubes and Minecraft, needed thumbnails, and making them pulled me into graphic design. By the time I started my CS degree I was already making things, so I joined ACM as a graphic designer in my first year. The niche was there before I had a name for it.
My first salaried design work paid PKR 15,000 a month, which works out to roughly PKR 173 an hour. It was a basic graphic design role and it was worth more than it paid, because every step after it was built on the one before.
Direction comes from doing, not deciding. Start smaller than you think you need to.
From this chapter: Finding Direction, Earning Early, Standing Out
Chapter 2 • 2024
Going international
In my second year I landed a remote UX role at easytect, a software company in Germany, and worked for them from Islamabad while attending classes. I reworked core flows of their product with a team I never shared a room with.
That job rewired my sense of what was reachable. Nobody asked where I lived. They asked what I could do and whether I communicated clearly.
Your location is not your limitation.
From this chapter: Building Proof, Getting in the Room, Going Global
Chapter 3 • 2025
The compounding year
Then one year brought six roles. Lead UI/UX Engineer at NorenzTech, where I designed in Figma and shipped the front-end in code. My own studio, sxtudios. Creative and marketing work at Shadiyana and Career Konnect. Parhlai, where I grew from consultant to Head of Marketing. And Vyro, designing across ImagineArt and Chatly.
From the outside that year looks like luck. It was not. It was the ACM posters, the 15K job, and the German remote work quietly compounding into a network and a portfolio that opened doors on their own.
Year three looks like luck. It is years one and two compounding.
From this chapter: Transitioning Smart, Using AI, Cracking Interviews
Chapter 4 • 2026
The current chapter
Today I work at Heyoz across product design, growth, and engineering, after shipping consumer AI products at Vyro used at serious scale. sxtudios and Parhlai continue alongside.
This site, and the guides on it, exist because the same questions kept arriving in my DMs. One of them came from a friend, Hammad Khurshid, asking on behalf of a friend stuck in agency work and wanting product depth. That conversation became the transition guide. The rest of the guides happened the same way: a real question, answered properly once, written down for everyone.
Start earlier than you think you should.
From this chapter:
The mistakes I wish I hadn't made
1. Not talking to enough people early on
I waited until I felt ready to reach out, and lost time I could have spent learning from people a step ahead of me.
What to do instead: Message two or three seniors or professionals every week. Ask one specific, thoughtful question.
2. Not using AI to speed up my workflows sooner
Whatever your niche, the AI-assisted version of it outperforms the manual version. I adopted the tools later than I should have.
What to do instead: Use AI for first drafts, variations, and repetitive tasks. Keep the thinking for yourself.
3. Trying to decide direction before doing anything
I thought direction had to be chosen before starting. It is backwards. Every real signal I ever got came from making something.
What to do instead: Start with what you are drawn to, even without knowing why. Direction emerges from action.
The frameworks these years produced live in the guides. For anything more specific, ask.