During my third year at IIT Bombay (Summer of 2019), I landed a dream internship: a 10-week R&D role at Sony headquarters in Tokyo. The allure was undeniable—the chance to work for the company that created the PlayStation, in the heart of a country that pioneered some of the best electronic products of all time. But beyond the excitement of anime and bullet trains, the experience planted the seeds for my eventual pivot from pure engineering to product management.
The Challenge: A Blank Slate
On my first day, I was assigned a project that was both thrilling and terrifying. My humble manager, a 47 year old former national level Baseball player and an avid Pokemon Go fan, trying to speak as much correct English as possible said - “We hire you to start and complete this project for us. We don’t know much about it…..” Such expectations and belief from just a 3rd year undergrad, less than half the mean age of all the people sitting in the room, left me both terribly anxious and extremely eager to take up this challenge. They tasked me with applying signal processing and machine learning to measure vital characteristics of the most complex machine—the human body. Neither the goal nor the path was clear. They weren't just giving me a task; they were giving me a problem to own.
This level of ownership was a turning point. It shifted my focus from HOW to build something to WHY we were building it in the first place.
The Process: From Research to Results
The first two weeks were a deep dive into research papers. I had to understand the existing landscape before I could build anything new. This initial phase of discovery and synthesis felt different from my usual coursework. It wasn't about solving a pre-defined problem set; it was about defining the problem itself.
Once I had a foundational understanding, the rest of my internship was spent coding, testing, and iterating in MATLAB. I had to replicate the findings of a research paper and then improve upon them. This cycle of building, measuring, and learning was my first real taste of the iterative process that lies at the heart of product development. Presenting my progress weekly to the team taught me how to communicate complex technical concepts to a broader audience, ensuring everyone understood the "why" behind my work, not just the "how."
The Takeaway: Finding My "Why"
Successfully completing the internship, earning the team's trust, and securing a full-time offer was incredibly satisfying. But the biggest takeaway wasn't the final code I wrote; it was the realization that I was most energized by the initial, ambiguous phase of the project—the research, the problem definition, and the strategic planning. That summer at Sony clarified my career path. I realized I didn't just want to build the product; I wanted to be the person who decides what product to build and why. It was the first step on my journey to product management.