Daisy Ramos

I really have to enjoy the projects and the project interests for me to enjoy the work that I do. Whenever we have releases - like one of our releases this year was a good chunk of all of our work last year - those releases and milestones really, really is what I attribute the success to. Hard work and dedication are key. I'm also part of the community - I join online events sometimes where there's different speakers on topics like AI, or all the trends, the vibe coding, or the software, because it's such a moving target. If you don't keep up with it, you'll stay behind. So I constantly have to join these events, and I'm going to a conference next month after years of not going to a conference.

The best advice I've been following lately is to speak up more, especially since I want to take on a lead role within my job. Sometimes people hold back on speaking just because of the intimidation, or maybe they think the topic isn't as important. But speaking up at any moment shows that influence and gives you confidence - being transparent and speaking up builds that confidence. If you're within a role, sometimes people second-guess themselves, but usually more than half of the time, they're right or they have good suggestions. That's something I struggled with in the past, and now I'm just like, I want this lead role, so I'm going to keep talking and speak up.

I would say joining communities like Influential Woman, or networking - just creating a good network where you can rely on folks, or having a good ally, because working in corporate environments, or startups, or whatever it may be is stressful. Especially if you're early on in your career, because there's so many things, so many questions that you want to ask, and a lot of different people that you work with. Sometimes it doesn't go well, or sometimes you don't land the right job, and then you transition, or if you want to start a company, or if you have some idea. Just creating a network like this, I think is the best route.

I would say both challenges and opportunities are AI. We've introduced an integrated system that we can use as a development tool, and there's a few bugs, there are a few different ways to use it, and so much is changing with that - it's hard to keep up with as a challenge. The opportunity as well is we can expand our features and our test coverage. We can work at a different speed, maybe we can work faster, potentially. But I am a little reluctant, just because I've spent more time with the challenge with it. There's so much going on with that. There's a lot of skepticism, a lot of definitely growth opportunity there, so I would love to see it as a growth opportunity.

I definitely value work-life balance. I'm originally from New York, and living in an environment where you kind of work to live versus living to work - living in a nature-heavy place has taught me work-life balance is really important. Another value is culture. I definitely value having a good working relationship with my coworkers, and we do one yearly retreat in New York, and we get together and kind of just recollect there. The in-person relationship is also important, because we're all distributed, and we're all behind the screen, and that really doesn't compare to in person. I appreciate culture, especially being from New York, where there's just so much to do there.