Non Linear



I wanted to take a moment to reflect a little on my career, because I have now reached roughly 10 years and 8 months since I completed my first decade of professional experience and signed my first professional contract.

Of course, I had worked before that, but it was either freelance work or occasional missions. My first proper CDI contract was on 01/01/2016, with a salary of 4,000 DH.

After high school, I studied for two years and graduated with a diploma in Multimedia Development in 2015. I spent the rest of that year doing internships, trying different things and exploring the market before officially signing my first contract.

If I had to summarize this entire decade of my career in one word, that word would be:

"Non linear"

Most people, after high school, follow a fairly predictable path. They go to university for 3 years, then pursue a master's degree, then look for a job. From there, their career continues in roughly the same direction, gradually progressing through different positions.

Others choose a slightly more unusual path, perhaps freelancing, and continue growing within that path over time.

That is what I would call linear growth. You move along a relatively straight line, with each step building on the previous one.

For me, that was never really the path.

I graduated with a diploma in Multimedia Development, but at that point I still did not know whether I wanted to continue in multimedia or development. They were two very different directions, one more technical and the other more artistic.

I felt I needed to experience the market first, explore both sides, figure out what I actually enjoyed, and only then continue my academic journey in whichever direction felt right.

That is exactly what I did after graduating.

I spent the rest of 2015 exploring the market. My first job was as a web developer. I was working with HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript. I lasted about 3 months before I started realizing that development was probably not for me.

So I tried the other side of multimedia.

I took another job in the same general field, but this time it was more artistic. I started working as a WordPress developer, building websites without actually coding them from scratch.

It did not take long before I realized that this was not my field either.

Maybe I needed to follow the thing that had been attracting me from the beginning: DESIGN.

So I built a portfolio using some of the freelance projects I had already worked on, and that is how I landed my first job as a graphic designer at an international admissions agency.

That was the first time I felt alive again.

I was finally doing something I genuinely enjoyed: design and multimedia.

But after about 6 months, the excitement of starting something new began to fade. The days started looking the same. I was no longer learning anything new, and the routine started becoming frustrating.

One of the biggest things I had going for me at the time was learning. Once that stopped, the job started feeling empty.

I kept asking for salary increases, while also taking on many responsibilities beyond design. Then one day, my CEO showed me the letter for a €3 million deal that I had mentioned in a previous post.

That moment was a shock.

I spent the rest of 2016 thinking about what I should do next.

Luckily, even though I was frustrated with my job, I never stopped learning. Around that time, I started getting into digital marketing, which was still relatively young. Platforms like Facebook, Snapchat and Google were launching their own courses and educational programs, so I took advantage of them and kept learning.

By the end of 2016, it had become clear that I needed to change jobs. The challenge this time was finding an agency where I could work across marketing, production and creativity.

So, at the beginning of 2017, I joined a digital agency in Rabat.

I worked there with my friends Amine and Mehdi, and those 6 months were honestly great.

The vibe was amazing. Every day brought something new. Every day there was a new project, a new challenge and something to learn.

Things were going really well.

The CEO trusted me more and more and eventually gave me the title of Art Director.

That was actually the first time I realized that this could be my job title.

I had already been doing many of the responsibilities of an Art Director, but I had never really thought of myself as someone who could hold that position.

For a while, everything was going in the right direction.

Then management problems started appearing within the agency. Some of those problems began directly affecting me, and eventually the environment became toxic and simply unsustainable.

I did not even complete the year.

I left.

And, unfortunately, that became a recurring pattern for the next few years.

Find a job. Grow. Get better. Learn more. Management problems appear. The environment becomes toxic. Leave.

That cycle continued from 2017 to 2019.

Thankfully, throughout all of this, I never stopped learning and educating myself, as I talked about in some of my previous posts about how I kept developing new skills.

Eventually, I started realizing that maybe traditional employment simply was not the right path for me.

The problem was that I had very little control over the environment and culture I was working in. No matter how much I tried to improve things from within, there is a limit to what one person can change.

It requires collective effort, and especially commitment from leadership. A CEO has a huge role to play in putting systems in place that prevent a work environment from becoming toxic and make it sustainable for everyone.

So I spent the rest of the decade as a freelancer, while also chasing the dream of becoming an entrepreneur.

And now, here we are in 2026.

When I look at my career compared to other people I studied with or people who were around me at different stages of my life, I realize just how many different chapters I have gone through.

From the outside, it can look like I was constantly jumping from one thing to another.

And to be honest, for a long time, I was affected by that narrative, especially whenever I started comparing myself to other people.

But eventually, I realized something.

Not everyone is built to have a stable path with continuous growth in one direction.

If I had stayed on a straight path of progression, I honestly do not think I would have been mentally stable. I am simply not someone who enjoys routine very much.

I enjoy movement. I enjoy action. I enjoy trying things, exploring and figuring things out.

And I found that in freelancing.

The tradeoff, of course, is that freelancing does not give you the same privilege of stability.

And that is what I have learned over time.

In the end, everything comes down to tradeoffs.

You cannot have everything at the same time.

You have to choose.

Or, at least, you have to find a balance between the two.

It took me a long time to make peace with the fact that it is okay to have an unusual career path. It is okay for my career to be non linear.

Because without this path, I probably would not have become the person I am today.

I would not have built the trust I have within the community around me, where people trust my experience and learn from what I share.

I would not have the clients who trust me with their projects, despite the fact that I do not have the strongest academic credentials on paper.

And that brings me to one of the few things I genuinely consider a downside of this journey.

I never completed my academic education.

Unfortunately, we are still living in an environment in Morocco where papers and diplomas carry a lot of weight. You can have the skills, certificates and experience to back yourself up, but a diploma still matters a lot.

So I do have plans, inshallah, to continue my education in the future.

And who knows, maybe I will even pursue a PhD.

Now, in 2026, alhamdulillah, I have enough experience and knowledge to understand both sides of the equation, the linear path and the non linear one.

I guess the next decade will be about correcting some of my past mistakes and trying to find the balance between stability and ambition.

Because right now, that is probably the most important thing for me.

As you grow older, you keep learning things about life.

You might spend years jumping from one extreme to another, trying to figure out what works for you.

But eventually, you realize that the real wisdom is in finding balance.

Neither extreme is necessarily right or wrong.

The middle ground is often where you find the answer that actually works for you.

And I guess that is the direction I want to take, inshallah, for whatever comes next, if Allah grants me the life to see it.

Alhamdulillah for all the blessings.

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