I have recently joined in on the ChatGPT craze. For those that do not know, ChatGPT is a Conversation AI, in which you can ask it things and it will generate responses. Now I have used similar AIs in the past and generally found them lacking as the content it would write would feel outdated or that it always followed a fixed format. These past experiences led to my hesitation with trying out the new ChatGPT.

One of the hardest lessons I ever learned was to be comfortable with the thought of being uncomfortable. But getting out of my comfort and and being uncomfortable has been what has moved me forward the most. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. In a lot of ways, this is a strange thing to say. How is one comfortable with being uncomfortable? When we are in an uncomfortable situation, many of us get anxiety and enter the fight or flight mode.

I have been building, leading, and managing remote teams since the covid-19 pandemic started. As someone that came from a computer software engineering background, remote work seemed prefect as all my team did was type on keyboards all day and show up for a couple of meetings and these meetings had already been occurring over video conferencing software as the teams and some bystanders were split among offices. I have come to love remote work for all the benefits it provides, it has also come with some draw backs.

My Grandfather has been a lot of things in his life, a teacher, a business man, a family man, an explorer, and more. But, when I think of my Grandfather, I always remember him as a story teller. Stories are interesting thing, we all generally remember stories and when we imagine our ancestors, many of us think about people sitting around a camp fire telling stories. We can see how stories have moved from generation to generations, changing slightly with culture and time, but help to bring lessons forward with us.

Recently I had an old scene replay in my head. I was in community college and one of the best English teachers I had pulled me aside while returning a paper I wrote to ask if I had used voice-to-text to write the paper. They went on to explain that the paper sounded like how someone would speak. At the time, voice-to-text was still a rather new technology and I had not used it for that paper.

It is an overcast December morning as I write this, but for you it is probably a few months later. At this point, my future (current?) self is likely well into whatever the next stage of my life is. But, that uncertainty is what makes today strange, as I have finished the bulk of my masters program this week. Sure, two classes are left which I have to take mid next year.

I was talking with a peer recently and they mentioned something that made me laugh internally, they mentioned how people in this other group were all the same and how anyone that would step out of line in the other group would be kicked out. On the other hand, the group they were part of was very diverse and that diversity is what causes problems with their group reaching their goals.

Do you ever find yourself reflecting on a situation that just occurred and you are thinking to yourself “I wish I had said xyz” or “I wish I had done xyz” and next time a similar situation arises, you will be ready to handle it? This is a common feeling but it misses the core problem, how did you get into the situation in the first place? It is good to look back at a situation and reflect on what could have been done differently, but it is also important to reflect to see if you could change about yourself to have prevented that situtation from even occurring.

Frequently I find that companies are falling into the trap of comparing candidates against each other when interviewing to fill an open role. I tend to find that this hints at a core problem with one of the most important functions for any company: the ability to find the correct talent for the team. Why is comparing candidates a problem? You may be thinking “I want the best candidate that I can get”, but it is exactly this thinking that is hiding the underlying problem.

I get to work with some of the smartest engineers on some of the most interesting projects. However, every time I join a new team and ask for an overview or ask for something to be explained I am handed documents adding up to 10s to 100s of pages and sometimes hours of recorded meetings going over the topics. The detail is provided is amazing, but the major problem is that the learning curve is so initially steep to even begin to understand the basics of what you are looking at.