Sonia Hawkins

One mentor told me, don't get upset with the criticism you receive, because even though you may think it's bad or it's negative, if someone speaks to you or of you on anything, it's because you're being noticed. Their intention always isn't to put you down, but to help raise you up. That perspective, whenever I would hear any type of feedback, really helped me look at the silver lining of it all and really put it into perspective of why is this person saying what they're saying, and what's the ultimate goal of saying what they're saying to me. That has opened doors for me. It truly has. Just when I think I'm not qualified for a position, they give me feedback and say, well, if you would work more on this and more on that, you would see what I see. And it's like, oh, well, I didn't think of it that way, so let's give that a shot. Anyone else would possibly look at that and think, oh, even more reason why I shouldn't pursue something.

Learn to listen and observe. That, I think, has been really my compass throughout my career. Sometimes being young and gung-ho, for lack of a better term, you sometimes want to jump in, engage, give an opinion, be proactive in the conversation. But sometimes, depending on what the conversation is, you learn a lot more just by listening than you do by being proactive within the conversation. You'd be surprised how much you thought you knew and realize you didn't, or really just seeing how something is approached through a different lens, a different generation, really, sometimes. That has been very, very eye-opening and has helped me mature in my career. I've learned it both ways, even the younger ones behind me, they bring a lot to the table. The ones that I feel that accelerate the faster in that generation are the ones that just listen. That doesn't mean you're not engaged, on the contrary. There are those soft skills that definitely make you feel that you are part of the conversation, but it's the listeners, I feel, that move quicker than even the ones with all the degrees and certifications under their belt.

I'm seeing a lot of positive and negative strides when it comes to AI. It's not necessarily a challenge, but it is something we have to jump over and really deal with head on. I have seen a lot of benefits to it, and it's that whole culture of embracing AI and seeing it move at a pace that it's hard for us as humans to keep up with. It's just accepting the fact we're never going to keep up with it, so if this is going to think 20 steps ahead, then maybe I need to slow down 20 steps more and be a better person, embrace it, and look at it as, this allows me to be more of a human in my role. How can I enhance those human touchpoints? It's a challenge, especially in the software industry. We're seeing the risk of it replacing some developer jobs or engineer positions in software, and those are the teams that I lead. My message to them is, don't work against it, work with it. Remember, AI isn't going to replace your job, but someone who uses it will. We're looking as to how to enhance the quality of our work and how to just increase the delivery time of our work so it makes us shine more as humans. You gotta either hate it or love it, and that's a challenge, but we're learning to embrace it, and every day we get closer, we realize that we're loving it more and more.