Astha Sharma

I believe in karma - if you keep doing the right things and following your ethical values, it will come back to you. During hard times, I always made sure that I was working hard, showing discipline, and following my work with honesty. These three things have helped me a lot: honesty, discipline, and my right ethical values, along with hard work. As long as you are showing up to office every day and doing your job, being honest to your work and to yourself, and following the right ethical values, what can make you fail? Nothing. Maybe you can be down for a few minutes or a few days, but you'll be right on the right track. I know most of my answers revolve around ethical values and honesty, but I truly believe there is nothing else in the world which is better than this.

The best career advice I've received is: don't go with what is going on in the trend - follow your passion and keep learning. Ask questions. I believe asking is a beautiful thing. For a moment, if you ask someone a question, you might look like you don't know something. But think about it in the longer range - if you don't know anything and you just ask, maybe in that moment in front of two or three people you can be known as less knowledgeable, but how it will help you to grow over time! Everyone is clueless at one point, right? No one came to the earth knowing everything. So always ask questions. Ask. That is a key point, I think.

I would say it's going to be filled with a lot of ups and downs. But if you will keep asking the right questions, keep following your passion, and holding the right ethical values, you will make it there. Whether you're starting as a programmer or a business analyst, it's going to be challenging at first - you might have to start from opening in Excel, then slowly start writing SQL queries, and then further maybe making a PRD as a project manager. What will make you reach there? Honesty, hard work, and keep asking the right questions.

I think the biggest opportunity I've learned here after coming to the U.S. is that if you are honest and you are making good connections, it will help you in a long way. You make good connections by doing your work right - when other people benefit from your work, it gets recognized, and then you start getting connected with the right people, and that can help you reach the right place. As a challenge, I feel that coming from a different country, I was taught that as long as you do your work, you should be fine. But that's what is different in America - you also need to make connections. The only thing I had been taught in college back in India was that as long as your marks are up to the full and you are very good in education, you would do absolutely brilliant in industry. But it's not the same in America. You have to have the right connections to be where you want. For example, I got 3.9 out of 4 in my second master's, but still I took some time to reach where I'm working right now. So it's just the different cultural values from where I come versus what is here. That's where it's a bit challenging, I think.

No matter how much hard time you are going through, do not leave your ethical values. Do not choose the path which gives you a shortcut and goes through a wrong or unethical way. Time might be tough, and who is on Earth who has not faced a tough time? But don't leave and don't compromise with your ethical values. Beyond my professional work in IT surrounded by computers and technology, I am a very regular person who wants to make sure that in my day-to-day activity, I connect with humans as much as I can. In the current society where we are trying to find every answer through AI, what we are missing is connection with humans. As soon as I go out of the office, I try to be away from AI and social media, just to make sure that if I have even 5 to 7 minutes of time to have a conversation with someone during the subway, I take it. I notice when an older person enters the subway and needs a seat, or when parents with an infant need help, because we are so much into our phones all the time. I am trying to do as much as I can to give back to society, because that is what helped us reach wherever we are. It's always about taking, but it's also about giving.