I work in AI at Microsoft without a college degree. Here’s how I went from being the front man of a deathcore band to working in Big Tech.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Matt Jones, 35, who was the front man of the band Martyr Defiled. He now works for Microsoft and is based in Lincoln, UK. His employment has been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I played shows around the world with my band Martyr Defiled, headlining in Europe and touring Australia and America.

We had a record deal, loyal fans, and were a relatively big success. Nothing can come close to that feeling of being onstage.

But life as the front man of a deathcore band was really hard work. I was destitute, and after one of our tours, I became homeless.

These days, my life looks very different. I’m a father, and I work at Microsoft as the global cloud and AI lead for UBS, a huge Microsoft client. I think about how I ended up here all the time.

My unconventional and nonlinear path has given me a perspective that’s unique and valuable in the corporate world. And at Microsoft, I do get a little percentage of the rush I used to get onstage.

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Being into computers wasn’t cool in the early 2000s

I grew up in Nottingham, UK, as a socially maladjusted kid who was big into computer games and building gaming PCs. Back in the early 2000s, that wasn’t cool — we were seen as bedroom-dwelling weirdos.

As a teenager, I started going to local gigs and saw bands like Sum 41 and Blink-182. Through the internet, I came across a niche subgenre of music from the US called “deathcore,” which is a merger of death metal and hardcore punk. I joined a band at school and found out I could do the screaming vocals.

When I was about 16, I decided to put on my own deathcore gig, planning everything from hiring a local venue to paying for sound and security. It went really well, and laid the path for everything that followed.

I dropped out of school and became a promoter’s assistant at the venue. I got paid very little, but I went from being a socially awkward kid to running shows with up-and-coming bands, living in the apartment above the venue, and getting into every club in town. That’s how I met some of my bandmates.

Although I’ve always been quite smart, I’m not a great classroom learner. I told my mom I was taking a gap year before returning to high school. I never did go to university; I just stuck with the band.

You don’t earn much in a deathcore band, but you do it for the love of the game

We got our first record deal in 2009, when I was 18, and released our first album in 2010. In 2014, we put out “No Hope, No Morality,” our most successful record. That was our moment, and 2014 to 2017 were our best years.

You don’t earn much in metal bands, even if you’re playing to thousands of people a night. But you do it for the love of the game — driving in the back of a van for 17 hours to play a show in Budapest to 60 people — not the money.

Life in the band was crazy but difficult. Once, on tour in Europe, a promoter gave us four massive tins of baked beans to share between six of us for our rider, which we planned to eat before that show and survive on until the following day. We heated them up on a gas stove at a service station. My little brother, our drummer on that tour, ate half of the last can by the following afternoon, so I just had to starve for a day until we got to our next venue.

When I got home, my mom and stepdad had split up, and she’d moved into a new apartment. There was nowhere for me to stay. With no regular income, I couldn’t rent anywhere, so I had to couchsurf around London for about a year.

When the band split up, I leaned on my computer skills

After we spent a long time deliberating what our next album should sound like, but weren’t really committed to it, we knew the band was coming to an end. I was 28 at the time.

I always knew I could succeed in something else when I wanted to give up the band. I asked my friend’s fabulously wealthy dad, who had a tricolore of Ferraris in the garage, what he did. He told me he worked in IT.

I’d always been good with computers, and he helped me get my first job at an educational technology company, where I worked while living in my girlfriend’s parents’ spare bedroom. I wanted to prove to myself that I could achieve what I had with the band in the corporate world — building a network, selling, managing, handling logistics and operations, and securing deals.

My friend’s dad later hired me for his SAP services firm, which is among the most technical, niche, and difficult-to-learn specialisms in IT. Through the job, I met a lot of people at Microsoft, and what they were doing looked like a lot of fun.

It took me a while to get into Microsoft. I went through three or four separate interview processes before I was eventually hired in July 2021. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, or maybe I’ve never noticed that I’ve been screened out because I don’t have a degree, but I’ve never struggled in my career because I didn’t go to university. No one’s ever asked me if I went. But joining Big Tech has been a real education for me.

I joined as an Azure specialist, mainly covering retail, before moving on to much bigger accounts. I had to learn all these fantastical corporate terms — circling back, reverting, and so on.

In July, the company restructured and condensed three Azure specialisms into one, and I became the global cloud and AI lead for UBS. I now spend most of my time talking about agentic frameworks, generative AI, LLMs, and A2A, working alongside about 200 gifted, exceptional individuals.

Be yourself: my advice to others with unconventional career paths

Sometimes, I get told off about my lack of corporate etiquette, which makes me laugh. Thanks to the band, though, I know how to present myself to suit the situation. It’s a sort of performance: I know when I can show a bit more of the “Marytr Defiled front man” and when not to, for example, when I’m meeting a CFO for the first time.

When you can show a little bit more of your personality, you become more memorable, unique, and, ultimately, more interesting. For others with non-standard career progressions into the corporate world, you can be extra valuable if you turn your unique perspective from a headwind into a tailwind — heavily indexing the skills that make you special can help you make a difference.

Although there’s no experience like playing for a crowd, in some ways, my job isn’t so different. Every opportunity with a customer is like being onstage. You’re setting the stage, performing, and public speaking. You also get a buzz from doing a deal.

I don’t get as big an adrenaline rush, and I am much less sweaty in my job at Microsoft, but I do get that little bit of that joy I used to get onstage.

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