What I Actually Do for Work

“What do you do for a living?”

Every time, I feel the same small friction upon answering: picking a job title feels wrong. My work doesn’t fit one box, so this is an attempt to write it down for those wondering, but mostly for myself.

The short version

The closest honest description is:

I design, build, run, and scale digital systems end to end, using the internet, automations, AI, a mix of product/growth thinking, and sometimes connecting the people needed to keep those systems working.

I’m not a developer,  a marketer, or an AI specialist.

I live in the overlap: where product, technology, automation, and people all have to work together in the real world (and generate revenue).

A few different worlds at once

Over the past years, I’ve spent time in various places:

• Web – websites, SEO, small products, internal tools, infrastructure, the stuff that actually runs online day to day.
• AI – language models, image models, workflows, agents, and using them as infrastructure, rather than just fun toys.
• Crypto/web3 – contracts, tokens, tools, bots, protocols, and whatnot, plus the messy reality of getting people to care.
• Growth/marketing – funnels, campaigns, measurement, content, community, and the boring, important part: “Is this working?”
• People & process – hiring, working with smart people, setting up basic structure so things don’t collapse under chaos.
  

I resonate with the saying:
“Jack of all trades, master of none”

That’s very true. I don’t go all in on a narrow specialisation. 
Anyone vertical in something will perform better than me doing their craft.
I get good enough at each layer to connect them.

That’s where I’m useful, and where I want to be.

Three intense years

I spent three years in a crypto startup. Startup time is weird. In a large company, the same period might have meant one job title and a clear scope. In a startup, I did many jobs at once: product, dev, ops, marketing, support, experiments, automations, small tools, weird one-off projects.

It didn’t turn me into a world-class specialist in any single domain.

Instead, the experience synergised exceptionally with my curious/nerdy approach and taught me how the whole machine works as a system.
from idea →  build →  launch → to “why did this number suddenly drop this week?”.

I still use that crypto experience a lot - mostly as:

• context (understanding how a business should be run) 
• an investing lens (where to put money, or to lose money in creative ways)
• a bullshit detector (spotting patterns in scams, grifts, or overpromises and miscellaneous vaporwave)

I don’t wake up wanting to “build crypto” all day anymore.
It’s in my toolkit, it’s not my identity.

What I actually do

I build

Hands-on work looks like:

• spinning up sites, landings, funnels
• wiring forms, email, payments, tracking
• deploying small tools, scripts, and internal utilities
• integrating APIs, bots, and AI workflows

The goal isn’t perfect code. It’s shipping something that works and can be improved without starting over every time.

I connect

A lot of my work is connecting existing pieces:

• website ↔ CRM
• form ↔ email sequence ↔ follow-up
• AI model ↔ real use case
• problems ↔ automations ↔ simple rules of “what happens next”
  

I know enough of each part to make them talk without turning everything into a fragile mess.

I investigate and reverse-engineer

I also spend time figuring out how and why systems and things behave the way they do:

• broken / working funnels
• weird tracking
• unexpected product behaviour

Sometimes I’ll let a scam attempt play out just enough (safely) to see:

• who’s behind it, if possible 
• what data are they trying to grab
• what the technical trick looks like
  

This applies for everything in life. I like to understand why things work the way they do.
Tools change: DevTools, AI assistants, logs, docs etc, but the pattern stays the same: observe → poke → understand → iterate

I work with people, not just tools

I don’t only build systems. I also care about who runs them.

That includes:

• finding and working with smart people
• deciding what to keep and what to delegate
• putting just enough structure so work isn’t constant chaos
  

It’s not corporate org design. It’s more like: “let’s make this environment sane enough so people can do good work.”

The role behind all this

If I had to put a label on it, I’d pick something like:

Digital Systems Generalist

It’s just shorthand, but it feels a bit strong.

The real role looks more like this:

• take an idea or a problem (preferably a problem)
• understand constraints (people, tech, time, budget, energy)
• decide what’s worth building, what can be reused, and what should be ignored
• build the first version, or guide its build
• wire in AI, automation, and measurement where it actually helps
• involve the right people, and give them a structure that doesn’t suck
• keep an eye on whether the whole thing is doing what it was supposed to do
• profit, iterate, improve, scale
  

Sometimes I’m the one who builds.
Sometimes I’m the one who designs the system and coordinates others.
Most of the time, it’s a mix.

So, what do I say when someone asks?

From now on, I’ll say something on the lines of:

I design, build, run, and scale digital systems end to end, using the internet, automations, AI, a mix of product/growth thinking, and connecting the people needed to keep those systems working.

It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest I can get.

And if someone ever wants to know more, now I can point them to this note.