I am now an editor at Techmeme.

Some online friends connected with me on social networks like Twitter and Facebook already know this, but I was waiting for an official announcement before I wrote about it here. You can also read TechCrunch’s coverage here.

If you’re not in the tech field, you’ve probably not heard of Techmeme. It is a news aggregation site that works for technology news where Google News fails. It is a combination of automated aggregation and human editing.

Techmeme is highly regarded in the tech world, and my boss Gabe Rivera was listed as one of the Top 25 Influential People on the Web by Business Week last year.

The Journey

I took a break from the cubicle farms of the IT industry last year. After spending some time with my baby daughter & family, I switched gears to working online. As most of my blogger friends know, I started writing for MakeUseOf.com as a contributor, and am now a staff writer. I still needed additional work to completely replace my full-time day job routine and have finally reached that goal with this opportunity.

The Change

In some ways, the change from the IT world to the online Media world is like my shift from Mumbai to Pune. A suburban local train getting delayed in Mumbai because of an accident meant being late for office rather than concern for the possible loss of human life. A team member getting sick meant the project getting delayed rather than concern about my team member. A world where I was a slave to schedules dictated by others, constraints imposed by others, filled with competition like in a rat-race. A world saturated with ambition, stress, pressures, politics, performance-based incentives, frustrations, commuting long-distance in traffic, and sometimes, disillusionment.

Pune is serene, laid-back, and relaxed. In my real and online life, I can focus on value, enjoy my freedom, use my judgment. I choose my own topics. I can express myself the way I like. I can use my editorial judgment to decide what to publish or exclude. Clean air makes you think clearly, and the comfort of working from home relaxes you.

The Job

Because Techmeme is so highly regarded, it is always under the scanner and keenly watched; at times, even criticized.

Being a human editor is thus a great responsibility, and one that I hope to carry well. My diverse experience in IT helps to fathom the spectrum of news that Techmeme deals with every day. I have always been reading and following online tech news since the early days of the Internet even before Google came into existence. Over the years, my appetite for information and ability to consume it refined to the extent that I was already researching and curating information for my CxO bosses in my IT job. Now, this hobby of mine is my work.

Can it get any better than this?