Tengis may be Australia’s most legitimate digital nomad. The McKinsey Digital specialist grew up in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He spent summers riding horses with his uncle as a child, guiding tourists and shepherding up to 250 sheep, horses, and cows. His past gave him good perspective on delivering for clients today as a full stack software engineer in Sydney, Australia.
Specifically, his upbringing taught him to be comfortable with wide, blank expanses where a destination is known but no paths exist. It’s learning to rely on the skills and knowledge he has gathered to fend of challenges that come his way - whether they be technical glitches or, literally, wolves.
Tengis’ curiosity with the digital world was sparked by a software engineering class at university. His experience with computers until that point was limited to video games, but the ability to code and create things for himself got him excited. Financial hardship meant that he couldn’t complete the degree, but he saw that as an opportunity to go out on his own and get real-world, hands-on experience as a freelance developer. Each small contract was his personal learning module.
He came to Australia in 2014 when his wife got the opportunity to spend the final year in her accounting studies in Sydney. The couple made the tough decision to leave their then one-year-old daughter under the care of Tengis’ mother-in-law in Mongolia while they scouted the opportunities and potential in Australia.
With no English beyond simple commands of ‘yes’ and ‘no’, job prospects were limited for Tengis. He tried construction work, but quit on his third day; a kitchen hand and house cleaning job didn’t even last that long. His experience and love of coding kept rising to the surface, and he knew he had to be true to himself. Such was his motivation and drive that in addition to applying for every role he could find online, Tengis walked through Sydney’s CBD in winter 2014, resume in hand, to knock on the doors of potential employers.
As the $5,000 he and his wife brought to Australia slowly evaporated, Tengis’ break came with a start-up seeking to build an online auction platform. He made the 35km journey from his home in Pyrmont to Bella Vista in the Northwest and undertook his first proper interview. Since his English was still not business-proficient, the two hour interview was conducted via back-and-forth diagrams with pen and paper. His self-made success from Mongolia got him the job, and after months absorbing lunchroom conversations, he was able to converse with colleagues on a professional and personal level.
The auction site he built for the start-up was the minimum viable product he needed to showcase his capabilities to employers in Australia. In 2016, he walked through the doors of digital consulting firm Hypothesis, before joining McKinsey in March 2021 as part of the company’s acquisition.
Today, solving technical challenges for clients that range from agile transformation to building tech stacks, Tengis says he still draws on his childhood experiences when problems or obstacles get tough.
“Spending all that time riding across the country, I got very comfortable with exploring. It makes you divide big problems into chunks, remove the variables and tackle it piece-by-piece. And it taught me to be comfortable with backtracking if I go down the wrong route,” he says.
“I also think that life taught me resilience. As a nomad, you may be protecting yourself from the wind and the rain, while staying up all night trying to keep the wolves from the horses. You hear their howls and have to be prepared for an attack, day or night.”
More about Tengis
A resident of Australia, Tengis and his wife are happy to have been able to bring their daughter over from Mongolia. A few years later they welcomed their second little girl. He now returns to the outdoors to camp, hike, and picnic with his family, whenever he needs to step away from the screen.