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Partner Technical Specialist

Milan is passionate about combining humanities and technology, and urges students to develop a capability to utilize their education in novel scenarios.

Portrait photo, man, short hair, suit, white background

Milan Mrdenovic

Photo: Private

– Describe the most important tasks you have in your job today

– I serve as a point of contact and advisor for our ecosystem business partners and large corporate clients as a mixture of technical domain expert and sales professional. My duties are centered on assisting our ecosystem business partners and their clients in the pursuit of utilizing IBM's advanced technological offerings to achieve their vision and attain the desired value propositions. By understanding their needs and the challenges they face I help with the creation of technological use-cases that alleviate those issues. An important part of this is the creation and presentation of demos of these technologies; as well as assisting the business partners and sales teams through coaching, advisory and technological insights to carry these deals to fruition.

– What do you like most about your job?

– The sheer variety of opportunities, people, technologies, and projects one can work on. As well as the fantastic colleagues, and I’m not saying that to just be nice haha. The possibility to reinvent one-self, constantly learn and interact with truly cutting-edge technologies is something I never expected to really get out of a job. That fact is of fundamental importance for someone like me who has ADHD, never-ending change is a part my very nature. I also adore interacting with people, so a role that is a mix of a sales professional and a technologist is just right for me. 

– How is the education from The Faculty of Humanities relevant in this job?

– It provides a different perspective which can augment other more technical skills. In my case it allows me to view a company’s strategy and technological decision from a perspective that is often overlooked while discussing financial statements or technical specifications. 

This is particularly important now that the perception of technology and society as integrally connected is going mainstream. Therefore, entire sub-sectors of the IT industry are predicated on interdisciplinary talent that has both technical skills and for example deep understanding of sociology, philosophy, and ethics, such as in the case of Trustworthy or Explainable AI. 

An important element to remember is that humanities are not a monolith, thereby it is also heavily dependent on where your specific discipline provides perspective. A History major may assist companies that use historical data to correct their machine learning models for bias, reducing the chance of our systems further entrenching historic inequalities. While a Linguistics major can assist developers of Natural Language Processing to solve issues surrounding AI’s context awareness in text. These are just a few simple examples related to only one large sector of tech.

– What is your best tip for new students who are thinking about job opportunities after graduation?

– Regardless of what your background is, augment your skills with technical knowledge and business acumen. You can potentially pick one or the other, but optimally both. Jobs requiring at least a base or moderate understanding of new technologies or IT are the largest share of all job growth. As discouraging as it may be for some, in today’s world we all need to be more than was expected before, even for jobs that seem “regular” or “safe” the bar is rising. 

Often students who contact me feel discouraged and unwanted because of their educational profile or interests, and I understand that fully. But the greatest value from your education is latent within your capability to utilize it at scale and in novel scenarios. You are an individual, you are unique, you just need to stop acting like you are not. 

Never let your background discourage you, find a novel use case for it or technological sector where it is relevant and that you find fascinating. And then augment your theoretical knowledge with practical skills for it. I have no doubt that you will find your way then, and maybe you’ll remember these words a few years into your career and laugh to yourself about how hard it all seemed back then…
 

Milan Mrdenovic

Dicipline:
Screen Cultures

Grade:
Master's

Graduation HF:
2022

Position:
Partner Technical Specialist 

Employer:
IBM (ibm.com)

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Published Nov. 22, 2022 5:34 PM - Last modified Jan. 11, 2023 1:24 PM