From building to scaling: Leadership lessons in the age of AI

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Hello everyone, thank you for tuning in again.
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I am Kaylee Batesman, the Managing Director at Sheikan Code.
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And today we're discussing from building to scaling leadership lessons in the age of AI.
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What does it take to build a successful tech company, scale it, and then embrace the next wave of innovation?
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I'm lucky enough to be joined today by Asha Kalidindi, co-founder of Agniandflair.ai, who is here to share her journey with us.
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We're going to explore a little bit about the leadership lessons she's learned along the way, how AI is changing the way that we work and what today's professionals need to thrive in an AI-driven future.
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Welcome, Asher.
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It's a pleasure to have you on here.
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Thank you so much for joining us.
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Thank you.
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It's a pleasure.
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The pleasure is mine.
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Thank you.
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Well, thank you for coming on and wanting to um chat with us and inspire our community.
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Um, can we hear a little bit about you and uh your journey so far, please, to set the scene for our listeners?
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Absolutely.
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When I mean, just to give you a complete overview of what we have done, right?
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It's never about me starting a company, it is a community of people who have come, brought us together, both for Agni and Flair.
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When I started Agni, it was just a very small team, and all of us were doing a lot of hands-on roles.
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At that time, it's all about innovation, and AI was not in the picture.
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That was six years ago.
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And but the theme is the same.
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How do you bring in the same set of?
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It's it's not just about adding people, it's about building the people with the right skill sets and bringing a lot of innovation to the customers.
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So the same theme has uh is continued with flair, but in this case, it's more of an AI product company.
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So with Agni, it has always been okay, how do I make sure that all the innovation is getting to the hands of the customers?
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How do we make it successful?
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Sales and marketing, get establishing the teams, going to customers, understanding the market.
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So there has been a lot of, I had to wear a lot of hats to make it extremely successful.
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And once it has become part of Wipro two years ago, the biggest challenge that we had is how to globally expand it, right?
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Take the same innovation globally.
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Fortunately, with Wipro, we were able to learn a lot of lessons from building to scaling the company.
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And now it's uh it has global presence.
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The past eight months, as you all of us know, that had there has been a heavy, heavy need for bringing the same type of work more with an agentic AI flavor, and bring in a lot of similar innovation, but in a much more expedited way, and bring in ideas completely different to customers and enable a lot of people with AI skills.
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So ultimately, building a company is all about innovation, building people with the right skills and ensure that we deliver for the customers.
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So Flare AI is a complete into an agentic platform, a similar theme to Agni, but more of an AI flare flavor.
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And the journey with Agni has been services, and with Flare, it has it is a product company, and we have global scale in the first year.
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So, still from a startup to exit to a scale.
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Now again, we are jumping into becoming a startup with Flair, but in a completely new way of looking at things.
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So it's it's a very interesting journey.
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Yes, I bet.
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And like you said, there's been so much change recently as well.
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It's just been crazy for people in the tech industry how fast things have, I mean, the tech industry was fast previously, but how much things have really increased with AI.
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And what was your background previously?
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What what what kind of got you to the point where you thought, I'm gonna start a business?
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Like what happened there?
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No, I uh business has been a passion of mine.
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Um it's been a passion from about two decades now.
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I've tried a couple of product companies trying to balance kids' work and a lot of studies at the same time doing very good work in terms of building ideas.
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But what I saw is this is my path, right?
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I saw myself building a business, and I would like to, I would like to have become a motivation for a lot of girls who have to balance a lot of things and it can be done.
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You have an idea, you chase it, you fail, and you come back and build it again.
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So this Agni has been my second company in terms of ideas, where the first company I brought it to a certain level but couldn't take it completely to market.
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I've learned a lot of lessons.
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With Agni, I started with market first ideas, taking it to market quickly, understanding the market, and again recalibrating the whole idea and bringing that organization more of an experimentation rather than a straightforward, okay, build the idea, then go to market.
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So it has been a completely different way of looking at it, which made it extremely successful.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I love that because I we always said on this podcast that when people want to that they have that moment where they start a business, it's not for the faint-hearted.
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It's not one of those stories, you know, you see all those wonderful stories on social media that say things like, This time, you know, a year ago, I started a business and look where I am.
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And it doesn't always go that smooth.
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And it it's it's for a certain person that wants to do that.
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Um, so we love how you know people just have that moment where they're gonna start a business and then they're gonna start another business.
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And um, yeah, it does take a certain type of individual to want to do that, definitely.
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It can be done, it can be done as long as you have a passion for it and you're willing to slightly sacrifice other areas.
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Yes, yes.
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And I wanted to ask you a little bit about that actually, um, and the and the lessons along the way.
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So that you have built and scoured successful businesses um before co-founding flare uh.ai, um as you mentioned.
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So looking back, what have been the biggest leadership lessons from that journey?
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And is there anything that you would do differently?
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See, one of the things with Agni that I've learned is when you are building a company, you have to really look and validate if the idea that you're building is resonating in the market.
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Are people looking at the differentiation the way you are thinking?
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You cannot fall in love with your idea and think that will it'll it'll work for everybody out there.
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So that is one of the biggest lessons that I have learned.
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And entrepreneurship comes from my family also.
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So I've been keenly observing a lot of uh family members who are critical founders.
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My aunt is a big um is a founder too, my dad is a founder.
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So we've I've seen how they struggle in certain ideas, where the failure points are, and that really helped me.
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So for Agni, at one point in the beginning stage, it's all about experimentation, learning, and looking at the market and recalibrating your idea.
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At a certain point in time, it's it's about a scale, right?
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How do you scale this entire idea globally and ensure that you get the right leadership roles and make sure that it works from four people to 400 people, right?
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And that quality also doesn't dilute with growth and scale, and you're taking the customers the way you promised.
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Yes.
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When you are a very boutique company.
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So that is critical lessons that had to be learned.
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Yes, and I love the fact that you said you know, you can love your idea, but if it if it's not working or it's not resonating with the people that you hoped it would, it must be quite a lesson to have to stand back and think, yeah, but what how can I change this?
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You know, it they say um some people have founders syndrome where they just won't take a step back and see from other people's points of view that perhaps why this isn't working, or um, you know, things, as we said, move incredibly fast in tech as well.
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So even if you think your wonderful idea a few years ago was brilliant, how do you change it to keep up with what's happened as well with the changing market?
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Absolutely.
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And with Flair, we've changed the pace at which the market is moving.
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The vision that we had six months ago is not the vision that we have today, because originally we thought we were only working on a very specific market set segment.
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The more we are looking at it, we've expanded our products, product offerings, we have expanded globally, we are looking at different verticals.
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So the idea has has become multifold, but you just have to be able to adapt and you should have partners who are really energetic, right?
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It's in in terms of very uh adaptive to change.
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Yes.
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It's critical that you have the people around you are not really fixated on an idea and a vision, but they're also adapting, especially in this day and age with AI.
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It's critical that you adapt to the new ways of looking because every day there is a new idea coming up.
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And building has become so easy.
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Now it's all about making sure you get it right to the market quickly and adapt to the market conditions as they are changing.
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So that is a critical thing.
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Definitely.
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Um, and I love that because at startups as well, you get people who want to adapt.
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It's a certain type of person who is okay with having a quick meeting and just, you know, let's do this, let's roll this out.
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Whereas some people, and there's nothing wrong with, you know, whichever type of business you choose to work for, but some people like the corporate, they like being in, you know, you have to have 30 meetings before a decision is made and something can be implemented.
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But certain people love being at startup.
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I love being at startup and a smaller company because at the end of the year, you have achieved so much, which for some people that is a bit much to be a part of.
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But you know, when picking your team as well, you must have looked for those types of qualities in people thinking you need to be somebody that is going to be flexible and come along on this journey with me because it's going to be forever changing.
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Yep, absolutely.
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And more importantly, you need extremely passionate people.
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Yeah.
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People who have that grit to change, people who have handle uncertainty.
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So if you're not able to handle uncertainty, then it is very difficult to start a company and get to a point where we are today with both agne and flair.
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Yeah.
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So that is the that is that is it.
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That that that phrase there, how to handle uncertainty, that is absolutely true.
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On looking for people in small businesses and startups.
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Um, you're absolutely right.
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Again, it takes a certain person um to want to be part of that environment, but so rewarding as well when you you're part of that person's journey and that company takes off.
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And uh and you are a part of that.
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It's um really rewarding to be in there.
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We were very fortunate to have good people everywhere, right?
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Who understood what we are doing.
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And sometimes when you're scaling the company, it goes at a certain pace, the vision doesn't get down below.
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But um, what we have done is we really started having people engaged in the process, which helped us quite a bit.
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Yeah.
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And on the note of um team and careers as well, for women who are working in tech today, how do you see AI changing career opportunities?
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Um, and what skills do you think will become even more valuable over the next five years?
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I don't see women and men differently, right, in in an IT career or in any career, right?
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You go there by merit and you go there because you're a certain type of person, like you said.
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And for everybody out there, one of the key things with AI that I would suggest is start looking at your job.
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See if you can do the same thing differently with the current tool.
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Start with that day zero, and you will eventually learn quite a bit, right?
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What we have done from the past decade or decades is we were segmented to a very specific role in the company.
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Although we know exactly what can be done as a whole process.
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We never experimented looking at the same thing and building it completely new.
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Now you don't have to, if you have a certain role as a developer, QA, BA, the IT roles, you don't have to get stuck with it.
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You can learn all these AI tools and become this best version of yourself by understanding the tools and making yourself very, very well equipped with the latest findings that are happening.
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And that will get you to a point where you know you're not sitting there waiting for AI and getting worried about your job, but you're already learning and ahead of the game.
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We see a lack of AI is not about technical skill set, it is also a way of thinking.
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Yeah.
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It's extremely critical that you use the tool to build ideas, build the same work that you're doing differently, experiment with it because the time it takes is very fast.
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And the iterations of your work, what took 10 hours, is now less than 10 minutes.
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So the scale at which you can do things um and adopt with change and use these AI tools to the next level is what is needed.
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Yes, I love that.
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And and almost taking a step back as well and and thinking, you know, how can I change?
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I I was um I was having a discussion with somebody recently about uh how I so I used to be a um copywriter and I um have realized that if I was still a copywriter in a studio, my job probably would have been replaced by now because I I can quite easily do that.
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I keep seeing a lot of colleagues on LinkedIn saying that they've lost their jobs, um, and people that were writers are companies are now turning to AI to churn out them, you know, the easy things that they don't necessarily need staff for.
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Um and it's that moment where you almost need to catch what's happening and think, how do I evolve?
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If AI can now do my job, how do I move forward and do something else but still be of value?
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Because we're always going to need that human touch to things.
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It's not like writing is all going to be replaced by AI suddenly, but how do you move yourself into a position where you're still needed and valuable on that team?
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Um, and I suppose being at a company like yours that at least understands that as well to help you move into new positions where you can develop at, you know, flare.ai, for instance, um, and uh, you know, know that you can learn and develop there uh instead of getting stuck in a company and then just feeling like I lost my job because I couldn't, I I couldn't learn anything new here.
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Um that must be quite a challenge as well to be thinking, you know, how do we how do we continually develop people here as well and keep them, like you said, passionate and um innovative and wanting to keep pushing uh to make the business a better place.
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That that must be quite a an ongoing challenge as a founder.
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Um it just it depends on how you look at it.
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So for us, it is extremely um it's an extremely adventurous uh period, the past seven to eight months.
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So what we are seeing, right?
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I know the market says that hey, um yes, AI is going to replace your job, but that's not X exactly what it is.
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There are certain aspects of your job, definitely, which the AI can do better.
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And you will be able, you need to use AI to make this much more refined and better.
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But if you're able to expand your skill set, not to one specific thing, but to a broader skill set and enable your agentic skills to make sure that you're providing more value and start using that to do more things, right?
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Originally, when you're when you're writing documentation, technical right, any technical writer, it's all about writing day and night.
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At some time point, it's extremely boring.
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The most boring tasks can be now be done by agent AI, but the technical stuff, the context, the validation that you have to build, all that is still something that is in the human's head, which requires human validation.
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Yeah.
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So you can go and explore beyond technical writing.
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You can do a business architecture writing, or you can do a technical design document.
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So you can be much more valuable in your role if you start expanding.
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In with flare and in agni, what we are doing is we are trying to make it extremely what took days and days and nights sometimes for all these technical jobs, losing sleep over many, many issues and working through day and night without a structure.
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Now we are able to make things interesting in a very defined amount of time.
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Right.
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And people are enjoying as you start exploring new ideas, new skills, and they feel accomplished, right?
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The idea of coming to a job is not just do the same thing over and over again.
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Um, as entrepreneurs as found us, we never had that opportunity.
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It took us six months for anybody to move from one role to another because we have to backfill that role.
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Now we can have the same person retrain on skills and enjoy their job while doing much more than what they did before.
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So our goal is to make a 400 company operate as 4,000 instead of really bringing down the jobs.
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You and it should be a force multiplier.
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It is not about cutting the jobs down.
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So that is why we are very passionate about building people.
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And from our founders, Vijay, Anand, everybody is passionate about changing the process, the changing the culture of the company.
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And if you do that right, you are able to help multiple customers as well, and multiple people on that side.
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So it's all if you should be passionate about building an idea, take it to market, help customers, help people around you, and that gives us a purpose.
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Yes.
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It helps businesses build um build revenue in this process.
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You really make it all about people.
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It's not just us and agent Dick AI all the time.
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Yes, exactly.
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And feeling accompany accomplished um is is really what you want to feel so you don't want to leave as well.
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Like you said, you have to um even if people are promoted, you have to backfield.
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But for people to keep leaving because they're not happy is expensive.
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So, how to you know retain your staff because they they feel like they're actually um achieving something really um is key.
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Um, so you have experienced both scaling and established uh business and uh launching something new as well.
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Um, how does your leadership style change at different stages of a company's growth?
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And what have you learned about building high-performing teams?
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It's an excellent question.
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A very detailed question.
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I'll try to give you an answer that makes sense to me.
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So when in the startup mode, you have to be very, very close to the idea.
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You have to make sure you are very close to your first 20, 30 people because that's where everything it's challenging.
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You won't have the funds to work through, you won't have customers who listen to you.
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So it is a very close group of people who really work through making sure that the idea really works.
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They believe in something and they have to handle a lot of uncertainty.
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So there is a lot of passion there.
00:20:48.160 --> 00:21:08.160
But as you scale the business, once it's successful, you have a half a dozen customers, it becomes more about establishing the processes, getting more senior people who can think beyond a startup business and make it much more scalable so that the same idea can be built across multiple customers.
00:21:08.319 --> 00:21:11.599
So scale is the toughest problem in my world.
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:18.720
I felt scaling and building a global business is a very big problem when compared to a startup idea, right?
00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:20.160
For me personally.
00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:23.599
So my leadership style changed.
00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:27.440
I was still stuck with the old ways of building the business hands-on.
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:43.200
And it took me a year or two to understand okay, it requires different skill set, different key leaderships, and more planning, which is not the case where you adapt and react to the first two years of your startup.
00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:54.079
And planning is something that you, as an entrepreneur, you have an idea every day, and you need somebody to take that idea and make sure that it flows.
00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:59.759
So the leadership there requires more senior leadership who has taken an idea, established.
00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:07.119
Established businesses, established organization structures and working through the entire organization, see if it works.
00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:14.480
So this building an organization at that level requires a different set of skill sets, which I have learned.
00:22:14.640 --> 00:22:16.960
So both these types is all about people.
00:22:17.039 --> 00:22:28.960
And endgame is how you still need the same type of people who can react to change, but some people who can take the change and make sure that it is well understood by everybody in the company.
00:22:29.119 --> 00:22:30.400
That is critical.
00:22:30.720 --> 00:22:40.240
Yeah, that's brilliant advice because, um, like you said, the first 20 to 30 people will be very different to when you scale that.
00:22:40.319 --> 00:22:46.160
And you must have had this moment where you just thought, I need I need some help at this point.
00:22:46.240 --> 00:22:54.079
Like I need a different person that kind of has that mindset, has that growth mindset and being able to scale something.
00:22:54.240 --> 00:23:07.359
Um, and yeah, like you said, that that's that again, that's not for everybody, but it you know, just you having that that point where you reach and realize uh yeah, I'm gonna need some help here.
00:23:07.519 --> 00:23:20.079
That's we're gonna need not just a bigger team, but somebody that understands how to implement and develop that team, um, which is a very different mindset to startup team.
00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:27.839
Yeah, and blending that is also very challenging because if you want a senior leadership, they've come from established companies.
00:23:28.079 --> 00:23:30.960
Coming into a transition company is a challenge for them.
00:23:31.519 --> 00:23:41.440
So you have to be very key, very honest about your current state where you want to be, but still not lose the nimble, agile way of looking at the company, right?
00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:42.079
Yes.
00:23:42.559 --> 00:23:44.880
So it is a balance that we have to strike.
00:23:44.960 --> 00:24:02.880
So leadership, um, from my sense, you really have to work with the certain type of person, but they also have to be willing to change and not completely cement an idea into a big organization structure, have an organization structure, but still work as a startup at heart.
00:24:03.279 --> 00:24:13.839
Yes, and suppose not to lose the values as well that you started with at the beginning and almost having to check yourself sometimes.
00:24:14.319 --> 00:24:17.359
Do we still have the values that we had when we started?
00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:20.640
Like is it still what we you know wanted to do?
00:24:20.799 --> 00:24:27.759
I know things changed, but do we do we still have those core values at at the the core of uh what we do here?
00:24:28.319 --> 00:24:29.200
Absolutely.
00:24:29.440 --> 00:24:33.519
Scale brings a multi-dimensional problem, yeah.
00:24:33.839 --> 00:24:39.839
Not just financial people, culture, values, and at the same time, you have to keep growing.
00:24:40.559 --> 00:24:41.839
Yes, exactly.
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:48.559
Um, and I know as well that mentorship uh has helped you in your career as a founder as well.
00:24:48.720 --> 00:24:53.519
So um, and it's been a very important uh part of what you have built.
00:24:53.680 --> 00:25:02.400
So can you share a piece of advice that you've received or now that you give to others that has had the biggest impact on your journey?
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:11.759
So I haven't taken mentorship um specifically, right?
00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:14.079
I've never approached somebody for mentorship.
00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:19.599
Mentorship for me happened by working with people along the way, right?
00:25:19.839 --> 00:25:22.079
Working with various kinds of people.
00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:30.400
Um, it could be our teams, the partners that I work, who has influenced me in certain ways of thinking on how to think differently.
00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:37.279
Customers who needed certain things and who want us to represent certain aspects of it made me think differently.
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:49.200
So at every point in time, mentorship is a journey, not just a couple of discussions with somebody who is senior to you, and they give you a piece of advice that might not exactly work in the same way.
00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:59.119
But what I typically do is and what I advise people to do is uh one of the big things that you need to have is passion.
00:26:00.559 --> 00:26:12.559
If you have the passion to do something, even though there are multiple setbacks, you will look at leaders, athletes, you'll look at all these guys who have really worked through setbacks.
00:26:12.799 --> 00:26:15.519
Choose the person, choose the type of person that you need.
00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:17.279
Keep reading, right?
00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:26.720
Look at all how the world is evolving around agentic AI and see what ideas are being worked in the worked in the market.
00:26:26.799 --> 00:26:32.640
So for me, it's all about business, building a business, exiting, building a business, exiting, right?
00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:37.920
Or probably building a business, a long-term business at some point in time.
00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:54.240
So I keep looking at a lot of leadership articles, looking at all a lot of business structures, business models, and automatically the more you think about it, you you make that your habit of implementing it in real life.
00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:58.160
And when you're doing it as a leader, it impacts the people around you.
00:26:58.319 --> 00:27:01.119
It helps people around you to think differently.
00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:05.200
So that's how that is my way of mentorship with my team.
00:27:05.359 --> 00:27:10.880
For me, I have always had my father who has mentored me on several ways.
00:27:11.039 --> 00:27:14.319
So that has been always depending on the problem.
00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:26.079
I usually go to a specific person and I have a lot of people who think differently, but I go align with somebody who exactly who can tell me in certain areas where the problem is.
00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:33.839
For financials, I go to my CFO, who is the best, and making sure you do all the financial planning.
00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:38.480
For engineering, I go to somebody else who can give me a perspective.
00:27:38.720 --> 00:27:50.240
So my job as a business owner and a founder is to combine all these perspectives and make an extremely good uh company which works for us and the customers.
00:27:50.559 --> 00:27:52.079
Yes, I love that.
00:27:52.240 --> 00:27:54.319
And did you realize as well?
00:27:54.480 --> 00:28:09.759
I suppose when you started something that we've heard from founders as well, or even those that have stepped into leadership, is it's it's quite a shock when you realize that people are following your example.
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:30.640
So there you're setting the standard and the tone for the company, and people are looking to you for how you're working, and you know, you going to different people and hearing different ideas and not being, you know, kind of blinkered on things and making sure that you do um seek advice from other mentors along the way.
00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:40.079
What was that like when when you did you know start a business, but you're in that leadership position where suddenly, you know, you're the mentor to everybody?
00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:44.000
Like that's that's that's quite a challenge for some people.
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:54.640
Yeah, that's that's scary at times because you figured it out with multiple in multiple different ways on how to navigate through a business world.
00:28:54.880 --> 00:29:03.440
Um, but when people specifically come for my advice, I definitely based on the context on what they're looking for.
00:29:03.599 --> 00:29:22.400
Um, if it's a team that is working with me or somebody who has come externally and asked me for advice, I take, I go into that point of journey where I was there thinking about the exact same things in my life and try to tell them exactly how it everything panned out.
00:29:22.559 --> 00:29:23.039
Right.
00:29:23.279 --> 00:29:33.839
I had a lot of my uh graduate students, my friends, a lot of people come in for advice, but advice is free and cheap.
00:29:34.319 --> 00:29:41.839
So the thing is, I you have to definitely spend the time to give them the context and see if it helps them.
00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:42.480
Yes.
00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:44.799
That's how I look at mentorship.
00:29:45.119 --> 00:29:55.759
And um, what we are looking from Flair and Agni is to go back to our um go back to our universities who have helped us grow in this part.
00:29:56.319 --> 00:29:58.319
We went to the University of Memphis.
00:29:58.400 --> 00:30:10.000
We are also looking for University of Tampa, where we have where these are the specific uh universities that help me, we are going back and giving back to the society, whatever we learn.
00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:10.559
Incredible.
00:30:10.799 --> 00:30:19.279
Similarly, in India, we are going exactly to the same places that I have learned and worked before to see if I can give it back to the community.
00:30:19.440 --> 00:30:20.720
That's the least we could do.
00:30:21.039 --> 00:30:22.319
Yes, I love that.
00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:28.319
Yeah, and then that as well trickles down to your staff as well, who might be thinking, I'd love to give back.
00:30:28.480 --> 00:30:32.559
And um, you know, they might have volunteering days or opportunities.
00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:36.240
Um, but that is something that is built into a company culture.
00:30:36.319 --> 00:30:40.799
It's not something that suddenly overnight you all have this idea of giving back.
00:30:40.960 --> 00:30:43.759
You know, you would have been thinking about that for some time.
00:30:43.839 --> 00:30:46.799
Um, it'd be very much in your uh DNA.
00:30:47.119 --> 00:30:56.880
Yeah, and what I think is sometimes the right advice at the right uh time always gives you a different way of thinking and it helps you.
00:30:57.119 --> 00:31:02.640
Giving a job to a certain person at us when there is a need helps them think differently.
00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:08.480
So there is a positive impact, not just with one person, but the whole family.
00:31:08.559 --> 00:31:10.160
And that's how we think, right?
00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:16.880
If we are able to help them with a good idea, if our work helps multiple people, that is that's a good thing for us.
00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:18.480
Yes, exactly.
00:31:18.799 --> 00:31:28.880
Um, so we have a uh wonderful community who are gonna really um resonate with your story, they're gonna absolutely uh love hearing your journey today.
00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:46.480
If you could give one piece of advice to a woman who is curious in our community about AI but isn't sure where to get started, what would you tell her and what would first steps, what first steps should she take today?
00:31:48.240 --> 00:32:09.680
If if this person is looking for a job and they're completely outside of their current role and they're looking for a job, I would definitely um encourage them to look at exactly what is happening in the market and how new roles, complete new roles are happening all the way from developers to forward deployed engineers, right?
00:32:10.079 --> 00:32:17.039
I would aspire to become this forward deployed engineer now, even though you don't have a very strong technical skill set.
00:32:17.279 --> 00:32:24.160
Now you have the ability to learn it very quickly, which was not the case two years before, right?
00:32:24.799 --> 00:32:34.799
So um I would look at all these new roles that are completely coming in and look at how to build the skills for those roles, which is very critical.
00:32:35.039 --> 00:32:39.680
The whole world is going towards, okay, this domain expertise.
00:32:40.240 --> 00:32:54.000
So you have to while you're building your technical skills on AI, you have to spend a lot of time on becoming this domain expert who can really use this AI skill sets to give a business outcome.
00:32:54.640 --> 00:33:09.759
So that's exactly where you have to be because the organization model is more about not about uh coding anymore, or not just writing documents or building test cases or building certain other aspects on the business.
00:33:09.920 --> 00:33:19.680
It's about how do you use this Agentic skill set to help a banking firm, to help an insurance firm, to help a life and annuity um career.
00:33:19.839 --> 00:33:29.279
So it all depends on which business that you want to choose and try to look on how to become this forward-deployed engineer who can build solutions for business.
00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:31.119
That is what I would suggest.
00:33:31.440 --> 00:33:33.680
Yes, that's such good advice as well.
00:33:33.759 --> 00:33:53.519
Um, because not only to um uh take a look and figure out how to um move with the times and that things are not all about coding nowadays, but we got a lot of uh people in our community who are quite worried about you know not not being technical is the other thing.
00:33:53.680 --> 00:33:56.559
Everybody thinks working in tech, you have to be technical.
00:33:56.640 --> 00:34:02.000
And we started this podcast to try and bust that myth that there are so many different roles.
00:34:02.079 --> 00:34:07.680
We dip into all of the different roles and opportunities in tech, but it's still that misconception.
00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:10.079
Working in tech, you have to be technical.
00:34:10.239 --> 00:34:11.280
That's gonna be my job.
00:34:11.360 --> 00:34:17.360
I'm gonna be a coder, I'm not gonna talk to anybody all day, I'm gonna work on in isolation.
00:34:17.519 --> 00:34:19.039
Um, and and that is it.
00:34:19.280 --> 00:34:32.320
But especially around topics like AI, everybody thinks, oh, I have to have the computer science degree, I have to be very technical, um, I have to have you know taken maths and further maths and all of those things.
00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:34.079
But it's really not the case, is it?
00:34:34.159 --> 00:34:41.760
I mean, you have must have so many different roles at your company that most of them are just not technical.
00:34:42.400 --> 00:34:43.519
Then absolutely.
00:34:43.679 --> 00:34:49.280
Yeah, and now with it, it is it agentic care is a way of thinking.
00:34:49.519 --> 00:34:57.039
As long as you have you can think logically on how to arrive at a solution, you already have a coder.
00:34:57.199 --> 00:35:00.400
The best coder is sitting right next to you to build the idea.
00:35:00.559 --> 00:35:01.119
Yeah.
00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:03.519
Today I was thinking about some idea.
00:35:03.679 --> 00:35:09.760
Typically, I would spend a lot of time with my team to go and check on how we can build this, a lot of discussions.
00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:18.159
I'm able to do that on a couple of AI tools and build that idea to a certain level and then go and show it to my team for visualization.
00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:20.320
That has never been the case.
00:35:20.559 --> 00:35:33.760
So the point is you in this day and age, you have to be extremely flexible in learning, understanding the context, and making sure how to apply it.
00:35:34.079 --> 00:35:40.639
Apply all that coding skill set that a lot of coding tools are giving to a business outcome.
00:35:41.519 --> 00:35:44.000
That would be the key to success.
00:35:44.480 --> 00:35:49.519
And coding's coding in a certain language is no longer a successful outcome.
00:35:49.760 --> 00:35:52.079
It was even till one year ago.
00:35:52.239 --> 00:35:55.280
It's no longer this that is that is not the only one.
00:35:55.440 --> 00:35:56.960
You cannot stay in a silo.
00:35:57.119 --> 00:36:02.639
You should be able to do everything around to build that business solution.
00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:06.719
So I think it's it's very interesting times.
00:36:06.960 --> 00:36:12.800
Um and all of us will be forced to if we are not adapting now.
00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:15.039
We are we will be forced to learn.
00:36:15.360 --> 00:36:16.639
Yes, definitely.
00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:21.440
Um, and that is a lovely note to end it on um because we're already out of time.
00:36:21.599 --> 00:36:24.079
Uh it is absolutely flown by chatting with you.
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:28.800
Thank you so much for coming on and uh wanting to share a little bit about your journey.
00:36:28.960 --> 00:36:36.800
Our community are gonna absolutely love hearing all about your journey so far um and uh all the lessons that you've learned along the way.
00:36:36.880 --> 00:36:37.599
So thank you, Asher.
00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:38.719
It's been a pleasure.
00:36:39.119 --> 00:36:40.480
Well, thank you for the opportunity.
00:36:40.559 --> 00:36:41.280
It's a pleasure.
00:36:41.440 --> 00:36:43.599
I've heard about Sheik and Code.
00:36:43.679 --> 00:36:45.840
I didn't realize that I would come here one day and talk.
00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:46.480
Thanks so much.
00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:47.440
Amazing.
00:36:47.599 --> 00:36:49.280
That is that is wonderful to hear.
00:36:49.360 --> 00:36:52.400
Um, and our community are gonna absolutely love hearing your story.
00:36:52.559 --> 00:36:59.679
So thank you for inspiring our community members and giving back and um for everybody listening, as always.
00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:03.679
Thank you all so much for joining us, and we hope to see you again next time.