From Civil Engineering to Product: The Unexpected Path

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# From Civil Engineering to Product: The Unexpected Path

When I graduated from IIT Guwahati with a Civil Engineering degree, product management wasn't on my radar. The path from structural analysis to user engagement metrics wasn't obvious. But looking back, the skills transferred more than I expected.

Problem-Solving Foundations

Civil engineering is fundamentally about constraints. You have materials with specific properties, loads that must be supported, budgets that can't be exceeded. Every design is an optimization problem.

Product management is the same game with different variables. You have user needs, technical constraints, business goals, and limited resources. The analytical framework translates directly.

The APM Fellowship

My transition happened through NextLeap's APM Fellowship. Two months of intensive learning, but more importantly, exposure to how product thinking actually works.

The fellowship taught me:

How to structure product hypotheses

How to run experiments systematically

How to communicate decisions with data These weren't skills I learned in engineering school, but they built on the quantitative foundation I already had.

Learning on the Job

Theory only takes you so far. The real education happened at MX Player, shipping features to 100 million users and watching what actually happened.

Some lessons came from wins:

Personalization features that increased engagement

Platform optimizations that improved retention More lessons came from failures:

Features that tested well but didn't scale

Assumptions that looked right until they weren't

The IIT Advantage

The IIT brand opened doors, but the real advantage was the peer group. Surrounded by ambitious, intelligent people who challenged your thinking — that environment shaped how I approach problems.

In product management, I've found the same dynamic. The best product people I've worked with push back, ask hard questions, and don't accept easy answers.

The Unexpected Path

If you'd told me during my third year at IIT that I'd be building streaming products for millions of users, I wouldn't have believed it. But that's the thing about careers — they rarely follow the expected trajectory.

Civil engineering taught me to build structures that don't fall down. Product management taught me to build experiences that people come back to. Different materials, same satisfaction.

Building Across Platforms: One Product, Many Surfaces

Sai skipped presentations and built real AI products.

Sai Vamsi G was part of the September 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 13 other talented participants.