Anuja Gaitonde, Associate Product Manager
Anuja is the Associate Product Manager (APM) for Google鈥檚 Duplex on the Web team at Google Assistant in Zurich. Her team鈥檚 main goal is to build software that makes tasks such as booking movie tickets and checking into flights easier and more user-friendly.
Anuja joined google in August 2020, just after she graduated from Imperial College, London with a joint Master鈥檚 in Electrical and Electronic Engineering with Management. During her undergrad, she tried to gain as much experience as possible and completed multiple summer internships and projects within the Software Engineering, UX Design, and Finance fields. After hearing about her friend鈥檚 experience as an APM for Google, she realized that this role incorporated all the individual aspects of her previous projects that she loved the most. She gravitated towards the fact that Product Management required the innovativeness of Software Engineering, the creativity of UX Design, and the strategic thinking of Finance. So, she applied for the role at Google and a few months later, she got the job.
Her day-to-day work is constantly changing, her role requires her to collaborate with multiple different teams within Google which she claims has been a great opportunity to meet other talented engineers, designers, and product managers. One aspect that she claims is unique to working for Google as a Product Manager is the amount of scope and autonomy that she got from the start as well as the terrifying, yet incredibly gratifying, knowledge that the work she does will impact millions of users across the world.
If she could go back in time and give herself career advice, she would tell herself to try and find the opportunity in every experience, to keep getting her hands dirty and try new things because 鈥渢here is always something to learn and you鈥檒l always end up on the right path eventually鈥.
If you would like to keep up with Anuja, follow her on on Instagram!