akugel | Dec. 30, 2024, 3:33 p.m.
2024 was a year of transition. My team at work was split in two, with half going to tech sales, and the other half (including me) going into global consulting. This was a bit of a sudden change, and resulted in most of the beginning part of 2024 being dedicated to understanding our new roles. It was unclear what our mandate was at first, what the charter of our team was, our how best we could make an impact.
After some soul searching, we decided to split the team up into dedicated pillars or focus areas. After a bit of lobbying, I was selected to spearhead our emerging AI strategy, centered on RHEL and Openshift AI, due to my previous experience with AI and data engineering at Healthpilot. This was a pretty significant pivot to what I was doing earlier. I frequently felt lost as I was drinking directly from the fire hydrant of new information and a rapidly evolving field. I needed to keep reminding myself that this was new for basically everyone else in the field as well. Despite how confidant or self assured people sound in meetings, they were likely doing something completely different a few years prior.
My confidence eventually began to grow as I was able to get a few wins under my belt. I was one of the first people to pass the new AI based exam. I led a successful exploratory engagement with a customer centered around AI (this customer was still likely a ways away from making significant investments targeted in generative AI, but the overall engagement was still broadly a success). I became one of the leading contributors in an internal project that serves as a platform for building AI Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) based tools for customers. I'm going to be delivering two talks and a demo for an internal conference in February.
The important thing to remember is this is stuff is new and evolving for everyone else too. Everyone, including senior management, is in uncharted territory. They're basically making it up as they go. They may have referential experience to draw from in the past, like the cloud or mobile phone revolution, but will AI follow a similar track? No one can say for certain. I think the lesson of the "Move Fast and Break Things" mantra isn't to LITERALLY break things. Its that its far more effective to try things and learn from what doesn't work than it is to meticulous plan a perfect strategy. Be quick on your feet, and don't get married to ideas. Quickly ditch what isn't working, and be prepared to bet that farm on what looks promising.
I'm Anthony Kugel, a cloud engineer and freelance web developer. I made this site with the help of djangocentral.com.
LinkedIn