Amanda Toland

I think I definitely work hard if I have a very set goal - I'm pretty goal-oriented, so if I have a certain goal in mind, I pretty much will do whatever it takes to get there. I think I'm authentic. I try to be myself, I try to be vulnerable to other people, and try to understand other people. I think I try to create these real relationships with people, and I think it's important. I think that helps a lot, and I think it helps a lot more than people think it does. Being genuine and building authentic connections with others has been a key part of my success.

I think people don't think as much about the relationship aspect of it. Obviously, get your technical chops up to speed - I would learn a lot more about coding and development than we really needed to know before in my field. The line between design and development was a much harder line before, and now that line is gone, basically. So I would advocate for people to learn about design principles, but if they really want to do product design, get more into code and don't be afraid to play around there. And yeah, meet people in real life - it's crazy that I have to say that in this day and age, but I think it's kind of true. Get out there and make friends with people that do cool things that you also like to do. If you can connect with other people that like to do the same things, you guys can nerd out on cool opportunities and things. That will definitely help you, because you can learn from these people, these people may work at this company or know someone who works at this company, and I feel like that's gonna help you get a job a lot faster than cold sending things on LinkedIn.

I think consulting, especially technology consulting, is facing significant challenges right now. During the pandemic, there was a huge boom - a lot of companies had stimulus money and had to modernize really quickly because they weren't working from home or didn't have the capacity to be more remote. We had a lot of projects, hired a lot of people, and were able to get a lot of work. But it's been 6 years, and a lot of that has dried up. A lot of companies are leveraging AI and thinking that AI can do a lot of this work for them. They're also leveraging less custom solutions and more out-of-the-box things like Salesforce, which decreases the need for someone to create a custom UI. The agentic workflow is something I see less as a challenge and more like an opportunity, but it is very, very different and disruptive in our industry right now. You can just write a prompt and say create me a screen that does this, and it does - and that's what my job is. But I think that strategy piece will always be there, and users are people, so you'll always need a people advocate for users, or a translator. The fundamental role of my position changes, but that's how technology works. When I went to college in 2009, my career didn't exist really. The AI thing is a huge opportunity - how do we use this to our advantage? It's incredible that I can do these designs in actual code. It's almost like an architect being able to build a home live with real materials. The opportunity is in establishing that dynamic with developers, not stepping on each other's toes, and increasing the speed of development. We can ideate and create completely new ideas - you can create 10 ideas in a third of the time you used to, proof them out, pick the best one, and interact with your design in real code, like an actual product. I'm so curious where the role's gonna go and what the future of that is, but I think there's a huge opportunity there.

Honestly, authenticity is really important to me. That's one of the reasons I joined my company - it's a really strong ethos that my company has. It's been harder these last maybe 3 or so years, just with the economy, and our company has gone through a lot of transitions, restructurings, and layoffs. Some of that authenticity of people is still kind of there, but I feel like people are more looking out for themselves now. But I think authenticity is really important, and just seeing the whole picture. Altruism is really important to me. Obviously I care about myself, but I think we're all on this planet together, and I feel like it's in our best interest and in everyone else's interest to try to make this a better place, and whatever small or big impact you can have on that. Whether it's your day-to-day project or your small community, I think that's really important to me. I feel like most of the time I find a good group of people who kind of share those same ethos.