Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

• AI Mistakes: Focused Resilience and a Specialization Bet with Daniel Lemire (4/4)

  If you had something to share, what would you say, and how would you say it? Daniel Lemire asked himself the same question in the process of creating AI Mistakes. As it turns out, AI Mistakes isn’t just a platform for learning in public. It’s something Daniel must be doing. Want to know why? After completing the vision board and gaining more perspective on the layoff event that would change his direction, Daniel knew where to begin. But it took time to translate what he had written on the post-it note about his needs in a role to a role at a specific company. Through intentional mindset shifts, feedback from others, and additional help from a mentor, Daniel chose to make a bet on generative AI. Join us for episode 326 and the exciting conclusion of Daniel’s story. We’ll discuss how the specialized pre-sales role at ServiceNow really is a culmination of Daniel’s experience to this point and how he’s filling some of the sales and marketing gaps from back when he was an independent consultant. Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He’s also the creator of AI Mistakes. If you missed parts 1-3 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323, Episode 324, and Episode 325. Topics – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes, Gaining AI Expertise, Mindset Shifts and Greater Clarity, A Role in Pre-Sales, Transition to Working for a Technology Vendor 3:14 – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes * John wants to hear more about the genesis of AI Mistakes. * The timeline starts when Daniel found out that he was in the group of people being laid off. * “So, here I am…I think I’ve got things figured out. I’ve done really well. I think I’m going to get a really great appraisal for having taken care of business and done a good job, but actually, I got nothing…. Even now I still don’t know what anybody actually thought of my performance that year that I figured things out.” – Daniel Lemire, on not getting a performance review * Though Daniel’s role had been eliminated, he and others were asked to stay on at the company until sometime during the following year (required to get a severance). * Daniel recounts having to comfort his team about his departure. They had not learned to regulate themselves as Daniel had. * “You’re going to be fine. You know what you’re doing. We’re putting you into a position to be successful going forward. You don’t need me to be successful. You just need to know that you can do this, and you’re good at what you do…. It just means that my next thing isn’t here, and that’s ok. I would not have been capable of having that conversation even a year prior because I hadn’t done the work that I needed to do to understand.” – Daniel Lemire, on comforting his team when delivering the news of his role being eliminated * Daniel says this moment was a big confidence builder, and he feels he handled it very well with his team. * Many of Daniel’s colleagues who were also part of the layoff did not handle it well. They were very angry. He reminds us these kinds of events are very difficult to go through. * Having a severance package certainly helped provide Daniel time. Daniel mentioned his brother went through this kind of situation and did not receive a severance. * Years early,

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• Overwhelmed by Ambiguity: DevOps, Innovation, and the Search for Clarity with Daniel Lemire (3/4)

  What happens when there is too much change at once after making a job change? Daniel Lemire had learned the principles of DevOps and combined it with his experience as an infrastructure architect to advocate for the adoption of new technologies and processes within a large enterprise. But when Daniel changed roles to focus on innovation and became a senior manager at the same time, there were many challenges for which he was unprepared. In fact, at times it was overwhelming. In the 3rd installment of Daniel Lemire’s story in episode 325, you’ll hear Daniel’s reasons for focusing on innovation in the first place, why he continued to persevere through challenges, the stress and impact of layoff events, and the unexpected way he found clarity amidst the ambiguity. Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He’s also the creator of AI Mistakes. If you missed parts 1 or 2 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323 and Episode 324 Topics – A Personal DevOps Value Story, Planting Seeds of Innovation, The Challenges of Impactful Innovation, Progressing from Overwhelm to Clarity 3:33 – A Personal DevOps Value Story * Daniel needed a reset and to determine how he could contribute to the organization where he worked. That’s about the time he discovered DevOps. * After a recommendation from a colleague within the security organization, Daniel read The Phoenix Project, and it has changed his career trajectory for the better. He read the book not long after its release. * Reading the book also changed the way Daniel thinks so he is able to help companies create value. * “…When I read it, I didn’t understand what was so great about it. I just knew there was something there that I needed…. I read it and I got really excited about it. But I didn’t really know what to do with it.” – Daniel Lemire * Not long after reading The Phoenix Project, Daniel recommended the book to a colleague who worked on the security and compliance team. There was a character in the book named John who starts off being very stressed but for whom things improve greatly during the course of the story. * “After he finished the book, he came back to me and he’s like, ‘let’s do something with this….’ I still didn’t know what to do with it.” – Daniel Lemire * Daniel’s colleague recommended they start by meeting and having a conversation. * After their initial meeting, Daniel and his colleague started meeting on a weekly basis. They started talking about The Three Ways and how these could be applied to make things better. Daniel and his colleague gave a presentation to a large portion of the IT Operations team to share thoughts on the way people do work and how to improve it. * “It really helped them think through some of their organizational challenges and the things that needed to be done because that was also a difficult time across our technology organization because of the big changes that were being made. But the lightbulb didn’t really all the way come on for me until The DevOps Handbook came out and I got the concrete ‘these are the things that matter to a technology organization.

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• Find the Missing Context: Perspectives and Observations from Enterprise Experience with Daniel Lemire (2/4)

  When you’re missing a specific experience in your career, how do you get it? Daniel Lemire was missing experience in a large enterprise to pair with the things he learned from pursuing a graduate degree. Join us this week in episode 324 to hear the story of what happened when Daniel got that experience that provided the missing context to apply what he learned. Throughout this discussion, you’ll notice Daniel’s continued openness to new opportunities lead him from a contractor position in a large enterprise all the way to technical lead. There’s also a parallel process of Daniel’s development of expertise and credibility alongside his observations of the enterprise organization as a whole that encourage us not to limit our focus only to the technical work we’re doing. Near the end of our discussion, Daniel shares his perspective on an organizational decision to begin outsourcing and the way it impacted his work. What would you do in that situation? Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323. Topics – Missing the Context of Experience, Unexpected Opportunities, Confidence and Feedback, Enterprise Experience Meets Educational Background, Gaining Organizational Perspective, The Cascade of Objectives, Technical Leadership and a Change in Strategy 3:03 – Missing the Context of Experience * Daniel said after completing his master’s degree at UNT he did not have the context of experience to pair with his education. * As part of the master’s program, Daniel got an education in marketing, management, and technology. * In class, they might have a discussion about how CIOs make decisions or have a guest speaker to provide additional context from the business world. * “I knew what the right questions were, but I didn’t understand why those were the right questions. And it was a real challenge for me because I couldn’t place what I was learning…. I was learning the right things. They really were the right things, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The curriculum I took in getting the master’s degree was exactly what I needed to be successful in a large enterprise. But because I had only ever done the independent consulting, I had only ever worked with very small companies, companies that had less than 100 employees…. So much of what I was learning about management discipline and program development and project management was for these really big organizations, and I didn’t have the context to understand why all of those things were necessary….” – Daniel Lemire, thinking back on his master’s degree program * Daniel makes a reference to the 150-person relationship limit known as Dunbar’s Number and says this requires very different business management techniques. * Upon finishing the graduate degree, Daniel had learned 3 very critical things: * Daniel discovered through conversations with classmates and through completing specific projects that he had an aptitude for the subject matter. He also realized the program had been the right place for him. * Daniel knew he had a lot to learn but that he was missing enterprise experience. It was something he really needed to get the full value from what he had learned pursuing the graduate degree. * “The third piece of it that I didn’t understand until much later was that journey of taking turns between being overprepared for something and getting into something that you’re overwhelmed by. That’s yet another dichotomy because in some ways by getting the graduate degree I was overprepared for an enterpri...

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• Build a Career MVP: The Importance of Feedback and Iteration with Daniel Lemire (1/4)

  If your career was a product, what would the current release notes say? Just as product managers launch a minimum viable product (MVP) and enhance it based on customer feedback, Daniel Lemire unknowingly began building his career this way starting in high school. This week in episode 323 you’ll hear about Daniel’s early aspirations to be a pilot in the Air Force and the phone call that forced him to change directions. It was a reliance on his faith, his aptitude for computers, and an openness to feedback from friends and teachers that prompted Daniel to study management information systems in college. Follow along as we explore the timeline over which Daniel decided to become an independent consultant, gained technical expertise and experience through building systems to deliver value, and ultimately decided to pursue an advanced degree. With each decision along the way, Daniel chose to take a step forward very much like a product release adds features and enhancements. If you thought of where you are now as a MVP, where could you go from here? Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Topics – Meet Daniel Lemire, An Early Deviation from the Plan, Self-Awareness and the Gift of Explanations, A Tinkering Instinct and the Cycle of Confidence, Consulting and a Return to the Familiar, The System Builder, Thoughts on Product Management, Getting an Advanced Degree 2:31 – Meet Daniel Lemire * Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He gets to speak with senior leaders about the use of artificial intelligence in their organization specific to the ServiceNow platform. It’s a pretty popular topic of conversation these days. * Daniel enjoys driving influence and helping organizations create value, and throughout the course of his career, Daniel has learned to calibrate the use of technology against the creation of value. 3:39 – An Early Deviation from the Plan * How did Daniel get into technology in the first place? * Daniel’s middle school had a computer lab, and he and several others were part of a computer club. In addition to this, Daniel was fortunate to have a computer at home in the early 1990s and play games on it and discuss computers with friends. * Going into high school, Daniel wanted to be a pilot. He wanted to attend the Air Force Academy and eventually become an officer. Daniel was working to do everything he could to hit that goal. * Daniel tells the story of a phone call from an Air Force recruiter during his sophomore year of high school. During the course of that phone call, Daniel learned he was disqualified from serving in the Air Force because of his asthma. * “So immediately I found myself in this position of…if it’s not the Air Force, what are my plans? …Am I just going to go find a school to become a pilot and continue down that path with a different means, or am I going to do something completely different? …Honestly, I kind of threw up my hands, and I said a prayer. I said, ‘God, this is what I wanted to do, and this is not how I thought this was going to go. What should I do?’ And, over the next few weeks, the computer thing became increasingly an area of focus.” – Daniel Lemire * Conversations with friends and some teachers helped Daniel realize he had some talent when it came to computers. They encouraged him to spend time in that area. * From then on, Daniel would find ways to do different things with a computer because it was something he enjoyed. * “Any time you can take something you enjoy and turn that into value is really great.” – Daniel Lemire * As a senior in high school, Daniel took a computer maintenance course and learned all about computer hardware. * Taking this class provided things to Daniel t...

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• Ally and Warrior: The Loneliness of Women in Tech with Kellyn Gorman (3/3)

  Why do you think women leave careers in technology? Sometimes they are bullied, but sometimes it’s the loneliness. This week in episode 322, Kellyn Gorman shares the story of what moved her to start Women in Tech programs in the technical community, the lessons she learned from the Microsoft community, and what it was like returning to the Oracle community after an absence. You’ll hear about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and some of the benefits and drawbacks they can create based on the experience of Kellyn and her husband. Even advocates and community warriors need support from others and time to recharge. Kellyn shares how she is able to achieve both to continue supporting the community she loves. Listen closely to learn how can you foster a more inclusive community for women in tech. Original Recording Date: 02-21-2025 Kellyn Gorman is a database professional who has worked in the technology space for 25 years better known as DBAKevlar. If you missed parts 1 and 2 of our discussion with Kellyn, check out Episode 320 and Episode 321. Topics – A Lonely Place in Tech, Returning to the Oracle Community, Encouraging the Contributions of Women in Tech, The Backlash of DEI, Being the Messenger and Getting Support 3:31 – A Lonely Place in Tech * Did Kellyn’s initial struggles with public speaking and the challenges recalling her presentation topics have something to do with a lack of women attendees at the events, or was it just due to the large social setting in general? * “Being a woman in tech, especially a data infra specialist like I am…I’m not on the analytics side. I’m very large database. It’s a very lonely place.” – Kellyn Gorman * In 2011, someone Kellyn hired a woman she had previously worked with to come work with her again. * “I didn’t realize. We communicated differently between each other, and we had a great interaction. It was so nice to have someone else there that I could go to lunch with, that I didn’t have to worry about…. It sounds sad. I don’t want that. I want to feel the same way about guys that I work with. I love the guys. But it was different…. She was pretty much bullied out of the job, and I was angry…. This is the last woman that leaves. I had looked into the history and of the 8 women I worked with in my career, at that point 5 of them had left tech. I scheduled lunches with them, sat down and talked with them, and found out they had all left for all the same reasons when you got down to it. They had all left because of the sheer loneliness, the isolation, the lack of collaboration…and sometimes bullying. And it was just really sad. And I didn’t realize that I was often bullied, that I was often isolated and everything else. And I said, ‘we’ve got to fix this.’ So, I started doing Women in Tech programs within the Oracle community.” – Kellyn Gorman * Kellyn started the Women in Tech organizations for Kscope (an Oracle Developer and Technology conference) in Europe many years ago. * By the time Kellyn left, the women attending RMOUG went up to 22% from the former 7% because of these programs, and there were more women getting into the Oracle ACE program. * Kellyn would bring in different sponsors to promote women in tech. She would also get allies and other Oracle ACEs to personally promote specific women in the community and people of color. * “I took this stuff on head on. They’d come back and go, ‘she’s not technical.’ The women I’m talking about is now the lead speaker fo...

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