Work tidbits -
Living on the edge!
Over a year back, I received my patent in the Knowledge Annotation space after 5 years of wait - it triggered me to join this new team.
The space was/still is AI Accelerators, within Cloud Compute.
My team specifically was the ‘last mile’, productionize and land the AI accelerators for the top cloud customers.
The work would have been fine in the last 2+ decades of my career - but these times were different. Everyone and everything was in the AI/ML race.
Before we(or others) could plan a new stack - something better was out there - sometimes open sourced!
Before anyone could make the perf/$ cheaper - There was an update on new numbers available. There were negotiations on software lifecycles, in favor of velocity.
Customers were eager more than any other time. They were feeling the same stress - best LLM, best Stable diffusion, best MLPerf, best ML stack, best chips, best networking, best price!
We did very well overall and that part will continue - despite living on the edge.
Recently things shifted and I have gotten time to breathe(joined a sister team), also write my thoughts/tidbits -
1.) A friend, a mentor once said - Go far, not fast! Life is not a race and you have a long way to go! I do.
2.) Build resilience. You will see a lot of ups and downs. You don’t always have time to feel sorry for the down, or cheer for the ups! Keep your emotions in the middle spectrum.
3.) Find the true allies, and keep them close. They will tell you when you are wrong, or not - but most importantly they will stick with you, for long. I just ran into my peer from 9 years ago, 2 companies back in the hallway today!
4.) Recognize that some folks are indeed for the fast, maybe also far.. but mostly fast. Let them be! Take 2 steps back. Build resilience.
5.) Invest in your team - My reports, people are/were the team's biggest strength, and the primary reason to keep us going. We certainly don’t end here.
The jobs will always be demanding, and that is by design. But the 'how' is on you..
My Amazon manager (now a VP@Microsoft) wrote me a handwritten note that said - Shivani, slow down and take the time to smell the flowers - I have been practicing something like this lately..
I am taking my learnings and my tribe along - and certainly aiming to go far.
Please take care of yourself, no matter what stage!
##resilience #livingontheedge #farnotfast #machinelearning #google #cloud