Amanda Jackson

I'd say my hard work, honestly. I have been willing to step up and take on challenges and do things that a lot of people were not willing to do. Things that people said were hard, I have always been willing to step up and try to figure it out. Not always doing so with the compensation either, but it's about grabbing those opportunities and gaining the knowledge, and then that shifts you further. Especially being a woman in a male-dominated field, there have been times where I've definitely had to put in additional steps to gain additional knowledge in order to be seen on the same level as my male colleagues. There have been times where people have tried to say, 'Oh, well, you work in IT, but you're a female, so you must be like the secretary. Do you just answer the phones?' And that annoys me so much. I didn't go to school to be a secretary. I can do the exact same thing all these men can do, so I'm thankful to be in a position where that's recognized. It's about hard work and being able to take those opportunities and not pass up on what other people would just because it's hard.

The best career advice I've received is to do your research. Do your research before stepping into any situation so that you're not going in blindly. We receive these tickets and have different issues we need to come up with resolutions for, and we have to provide solutions and sometimes collaborate with different teams to do so. But it is always best to ensure you sit down and do your research on any parts of it that you can, so that when you speak with these people, you know exactly what you're talking about and you're specific about different things. I would also say to overestimate the time period just a little bit of how long it's going to take you to complete an issue. You never know what's going to come up with it. Something else may come up and you might miss that deadline, so if you overestimate it and then you finish early, then that's even better.

I would tell them to believe in themselves, for one. If they know that's what they want to do, if they have a passion for it, they shouldn't let anyone try to convince them otherwise or minimize them. They need to always know exactly what they want, and they need to go for it. They need to go and get those certifications. They need to know that continuing education is always going to be a thing, so this is not a field where you go and get your degree and then you're just done with school. You need to always be in the mindset that you're going to continuously be learning new technologies and new things as they come out, new softwares, new processes. They need to be willing to work through it, and they need to make sure they love it. Don't just do it for the money, just because people say, 'Oh, it's great money in it.' No, you need to do it because you love it and you have a passion for it. That way you can continue learning, because otherwise you will get burnt out. And if you're a mom, don't go on call.

The biggest challenges right now are probably related to DEI. With that being moved, tech companies don't necessarily have to hire women or people of color anymore. I mean, it's already a male-dominated field, so I think we may now be even more so competing with a bunch of resumes from just standard white males. I hate to put color and all that in it, but I think it may be a challenge coming into the field. Some people even buy tools that automatically remove a woman or a person of color's resume from the stack without even actually taking a look at any of them. So we have those things against us now. But I think that also creates opportunities for us to step out a little more on our own, to try to create things that we can't be fired from, to try to work for ourselves, to try to create more business and entrepreneurship opportunities. I think it opens the door for those things. AI is a huge opportunity right now, but it's still fairly new and it's taking over a lot of things, and it's not stopping anytime soon. I really think anyone looking to get into the field should probably definitely check out AI, try to get some certifications, try to learn how it works, try to learn how it takes the data, how it's processing the data. That would be helpful moving forward.

For one, definitely having a team that I can work with where we all enjoy working with each other is one of the most important things for me. I do like to work independently, don't get me wrong, I love that, but I also like having team members who are just as efficient working independently as well as in a group. I love the fact that we all kind of understand the way our minds work, so that we're able to navigate these different puzzles we have together. As far as home life, I really just value the fact that I work from home, so I'm kind of like a stay-at-home mom, except I work here. I actually really value that. I love being able to be home to make sure I'm cooking, to make sure the house is clean, to make sure home is actually a home outside of everything else that goes on in the world. There are so many things happening now that I really think we need to sometimes just block it all out and just focus on what we're doing within our own personal lives. That matters most.