Coming out of college having studied History and Experimental Media, I didn't have the luxary of a clearly defined career path. So, like a lot of other young designers, I worked a variety of art and media jobs to gain some direction. What I learned was the type of companies I wanted to work for, and the type of work I didn't enjoy or wasn't great at.
Some of the stuff I did included (but was not limited to)
- Working as a lifeguard and managaging summer beaches in Seattle
- Working for KJR FM classic rock as a promotions and event team member
- Taking product photos of things like shoes at a studio that developed a early AR technology
- Video game tester
- Remixing and editing music for a muzak company
- Web designer building daily promotional mails at a shady home automation company
- Creating content for a hippy art collective that I still don't really know what was for or how they planned to make money
- TONS of freelance work around graphic and visual design
A lot of my thinking around what product design is and how it fits within the ecosystem of a company (at it's core - the bridge between business goals and users acomplishing those goals) was shaped by working for some companies that A) missed the mark and failed and B) approached business and design in a amoral or indifferent attitde when it came to how they treated their users.