2025 EES Pluralsight: Navigating Tech Careers in the Age of AI

Hello everyone. Hi. My name is Juke Kenny.

I’m with CodePath. And we’re excited to welcome you to our breakout session today. Before I introduce the session, just a couple of quick announcements.

Please utilize the chat. We love to see engagement in there. We want to see you know you all asking questions and chatting it up.

But please keep the comments relevant to what we’re discussing during the session. And then secondly, we will have a quick video at the end that will have a survey link for your feedback. So please keep an eye for that and would love to hear how this session goes for you today.

So with the reminders out of the way, let’s dive in. I’m excited to introduce today’s panel which is Navigating Tech Careers in the Age of AI. And we have two speakers joining us today.

Let’s give a warm welcome into the chat for our first panelist Anthony D. Roza. Hi Anthony.

Anthony is the president of newsletters and programming at Pluralsight. He’s a veteran at Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and the Daily Show, where he actually earned an Emmy, which is really cool. And then our also joining Anthony and I is Manolo.

Bring him on stage. Hi Manolo. Manola is a full stack software engineer at Floralsite.

Also a George Mason grad for any George Mason students out there. And he began as an intern and now builds scalable web applications across the stack. So yeah, let’s give them a warm welcome in the chat.

Everybody say hello. Thank you so much to both of you for joining us today. We’re really excited for you to share your wisdom with our CodePath community.

Let’s let’s kick it off and get started. To kick us off, I would love if you if we could hear from both of you a bit about your career path and specifically, you know, what may motivated you to pursue a career in this field. Anthony, why don’t you start us off?

Sure. Yeah. In my career, I’ve made a lot of zigs and zags, but I think the throughine has been media and technology.

I I started out as a technologist. My first job was as a web developer. I I basically was a freelance website builder and I did that to pay my way through college.

And that really helped me get my very first job, which was building a a website for a commercial real estate company called Newark. They were very early on trying to get their listings online and I had to teach myself how to build a database to get that those listings online. So that was my first professional foray into tech.

I I I was able to springboard from there into managing tech projects and then later in my career I kind of pivoted to to journalism. I always had the itch to work in news. And the startup that I worked for which I was doing technology work for was acquired by a company called Thompson and they merged with Reuters.

It became Thompson Reuters and Reuters is a news wire. So I I saw an opportunity there to jump into the news business. I applied for a job and from there I went off into my my news career.

But now I’ve kind of gone full circle at Pluralsight combining news and technology together in my new role there. It’s so interesting. What a cool track.

How about you, Lenolo? Yeah. How did I get into my career?

Interesting question. So I I’m never really knowing that I wanted to do computer science, which is what I’m doing now. I didn’t know I wanted to be a full stack engineer.

I was just a gamer and I used computers and more so consoles. So, I was kind of already in the tech space. And I happened to have a computer science class at my high school.

And since I was already a nerd into games, I was like, "Okay, I’ll just take the class." and I actually liked it. It wasn’t that bad. And I enjoyed coding.

And apparently there was a career for me there as I found out from my uncle and dad. And so I kind of got pushed into, you know, the computer science industry. And I went for my degree in George Mason there.

And I met a lot of cool people. I happened to get some good internships at a couple companies and that’s where I ended up landing my full-time role here. So yeah, that’s kind of how I got started and you know like like Jude said, I’ve been building full stack web applications ever since.

That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m think that your journey kind of mirrors what of a lot of our students their their trajectory that they’re going through. So that’s great.

Keeping it in the career journey topic area. This is for Anthony. Looking back, what are the most valuable experiences or decisions that helped you break into tech?

I decided to just go for it without necessarily having a job in tech. And that was just going online and learning and trying to acquire skills through the any means necessary. And then I I started to build it for myself.

I was building those doing the web development just to kind of use the tools that I found and doing tutorials and and and just trying to you know succeed and fail and just over time just picking up those skills. I think just having the the the just feeling like I I really wanted to learn these skills and pushing myself to to do it was really important. I didn’t necessarily have a job in mind or even a specific opportunity available, but I was trying to make an opportunity for myself by acquiring those skills and thinking if I teach myself these things eventually there will be some opportunity that comes around.

So, I think that was a really important experience and a decision that I made because if I I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have gotten that first opportunity that led to all the other opportunities that came after that. That’s awesome. It sounds like you had a really strong growth mindset that really, you know, kept you kept propelling you in this space.

And Manolo kind of what are some habits that you that helped you starting in your first year in the industry? Kind of what are some things maybe similar to what Anthony was talking about of this self-learning and and what what did you what habits did you get into at the start? Yeah.

Similar to what he said growth mindset learning really important you know when you’re first getting into your career there’s a lot of things to know from an engineering standpoint like you haven’t really most likely built and scaled applications by yourself and there’s a lot that goes into that a lot of facets there’s a lot of things to learn about just from my standpoint like I’m a full stack engineer but there’s a lot of paths that you can go you can be in cloud you can be in security and Now there’s AI and there’s a lot of facets just in with that. So you need to have a growth mindset. You need to be willing to learn.

And that has definitely helped me earlier in my career which I still am in my early career. So yeah just just the learning habit. Being willing to talk to people because that also helps your learning.

You don’t know what you don’t know. And talking to people is kind of like a glimpse into your future. So they’ll tell you what you don’t know and tell you where they failed.

Just like sessions like this and that definitely helps you out big time when it comes to you know being early in your career. Yeah, networking is so important. I feel like in my career too I’ve always that’s always helped me kind of get to the next level or get to my next next thing that I wanted to to achieve.

And you mentioned you know this ever evolving tech landscape particularly around AI. I would love to get into talking about that since that’s you know the main focus of our of our panel today. Anthony for you how has AI changed the way tech professionals work you know at other companies or at Pluralsight both at the junior and at the senior level.

Well first of all I think we’re really early in terms of how we’re applying AI. I think a lot of people are just starting to figure out where it works and where it doesn’t work. But for for people who are trying to figure out how to how to apply AI in their jobs or what skills they should acquire, for people who are are kind of like in the junior developer group, I would say they should probably focus on learning how to prompt correctly, prompt engineering is probably a really good skill to work on.

Learning how different agents work together. Agentic tools are really becoming the the way that I think AI is going to be used in the future. So I would I would focus on that if you’re a junior engineer.

If you’re someone who’s more in a senior role, I would look at how to apply AI from a strategic standpoint. Trying to plan out like what would be the best way to apply AI in a lot of workflows that exist today at your company. And also trying to make the business case for AI is really challenging, I think, because we don’t have a ton of examples of where AI has yet produced a lot of ROI for an organization.

So, that’s something that you’ll really have to spend some time trying to figure out to prove to the organization that applying AI in different ways is going to actually be something that’s profitable for your organization. Nice. I see some questions coming in in the chat.

Maybe we can grab a couple of those. So we have Brian asking what are agenic tools? I think you you just had mentioned those Anthony.

Can you talk a little bit more about what those are? Yeah, so it’s sort of taking AI and giving it a set of instructions and parameters and having it go off and sort of do things semiautonomously. Whereas normally with AI, you’re doing a lot of prompting.

You have to you have to continuously give it information. Whereas a an agent or an agentic tool has that information baked in and you’ve given it a sort of a set of instructions and parameters that has to stay within and it goes off and it does its thing based on those parameters that you’ve set for it. And I really feel like that’s where things are going to be headed in the future because you’re not going to want to be sitting at a terminal giving instructions to the machines that you’re working with all the time.

You want the machines to be able to have some tasks that you want it to do and then go off and do it on their own. And I think that’s a really important skill to have in the future. That’s awesome.

Kind of thinking about those those different types of AI. Can you talk about the reliability? It looks like somebody’s interested to know kind of how reliable do you think AI is in terms of your work.

Manoli, do you want to take that one or should I? I mean, yeah. I mean, I can take it.

I definitely use a lot of AI tools. You know, we’re moving in the age of AI. If if it’s out there, you should definitely check it out and see if you can use it.

And that’s what I’ve been doing. But as far as the reliability and usefulness, it kind of goes back to, you know, what Anthony was talking about, like you need to be good at prompting. You need to be good at providing context.

One thing that, you know, you’ll realize about AI is if you don’t know what you want it, you pro it probably won’t either. So, you know, you need to be good at providing it good sets of instructions in order to get the job done. If we’re talking about agentic AI and as far as you know asking for it to do things provide you with ideas you need to give it the right context who are you and what do you want and there’s a lot of tools that are coming out that are you know doing better at you know providing context to AI such as MCP servers and such like that because that’s something that I’ve been utilizing when I’m you know coding or using AI agents and s such like that because it allows you to provide context to LLMs a lot easier.

So yeah. Nice. Are there any other specific AI tools or technologies that you use regularly that you could recommend to to our community?

Yeah. So typically like there’s just your regular LLMs like chat GBT and Gemini. You know, if you have some thoughts not just for engineering, you know, if you want to plan a vacation or whatever, you know, just be like, "Hey, I’m trying to do this, like give me some pointers." so there’s those, for planning purposes, and whatever other LLMs that are out there because there, you know, there are a lot.

And also just in terms of the, agentic tools, I primarily use, those as a coder. I’m an engineer. So I typically use GitHub copilot you know providing it context as far as what you want from it codewise use MCP servers to let it you know access your database or you know whatever workflows that you’re using like if you’re using Jira you can integrate it with Jira and pull down tickets and give it the full context of the ticket before you start working and such.

So just using those MCP servers to provide context and you know also making sure that you’re prompting correctly has been working really well with me for co-pilot. There’s also cursor which is another tool kind of like copi pilot a fork from VS code that has a lot of those built-in prompting and instructions that and I think I already mentioned cloud code but there’s a lot of things out there just like for coding and you know there’s like there’s a whole bunch of stuff like if you’ve ever heard of lovable it’s really good at building you know like front-end like web applications like from start to finish like even if you don’t know code So there’s a lot of things out there. You just got to go and find it.

Nice. Any other tools, Anthony, that you would recommend? All of the same tools that Manolo mentioned.

I use cursor for my coding platform. I use Claude and Chat GPT for the LLMs. I’ve kind of experimented with some of the video tools like VO.

There’s a app called captions that I’ve tried to mess around with that helps create social media content. A lot of the video stuff is hit or miss. Midjourney I mainly use for image generation.

So yeah there there’s constantly new tools that are coming out every day. I try to stay on top of it through things like Product Hunt, or just, being on social media and there’s certain folks that really seem to be on top of, what the latest tools are. And I I’ll look to, people on X.com or on LinkedIn just to to follow them and find out what new tools I should be testing out.

We cover a lot of emerging AI tools in our newsletter. U, one of the newsletters I produce called Prompt. And Katie Canalis is the head writer there.

She is a really great job of covering what the latest tools are as well. So, Katie kind of keeps me on top of what new tools I should be testing out. Amazing.

Those are some great resources that we will definitely share out with with our audience. We’ve got some more questions coming in. Before I go into the last the the AI question that we have, let’s take a couple of these.

How important is it to understand the background processes of AI and ML algorithms? So is it not just seen as a black box? So does this include understanding the mathematics and parameter tuning to optim optimize these models?

So how much how in depth do they need to know about AI to actually utilize these tools? Should I take that or is that for Manol? Oh yeah, sorry.

It was from the chat. Let’s let’s have Manila kick us off with that one. Yeah.

So, it it’s it’s interesting. It it really depends, on what you need to get the job done, right? The bare minimum that you need to get the job done, I think, is good.

More knowledge helps you get the job done better. But, you know, you can get an analysis paralysis if you don’t understand linear algebra, but you want to use GitHub copilot. It’s like I don’t necessarily need to know the underlines of how like you know these large language models are working and what deep learning is and stuff like that.

Like I can go and use it right now if I say hey I want to build this app like so I don’t think it’s really as important to know like the underlying workings unless like you want a career in AI like you want to be like a machine learning engineer. If you just are interested in you know using the tools and you know building applications with them if you know you’re a coder like me then I would try and understand not necessarily like the inner workings but like how can I prompt how can I pass context how can I you know utilize AI to make better you know features and write code better and such like that which you don’t necessarily need to know linear algebra for. So, yeah.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I I think if you need to get closer to the metal that you have a different type of role or job and having to know like the the nuts and bolts may it depends. It depends on what your role is.

I think in most cases, like what Manola said, you really don’t need to get that deep in the weeds of it. And you probably want to spend more time in what what’s your task, what’s your goal, what are you trying to accomplish with the tool that you’re using. But I think human the human in the loop is extremely important.

You can’t expect AI to be reliable or accurate 100% of the time. It’s often not accurate. And having a human to do those fact-checking or or or double-checking the work is really important.

So that keep that in mind when you’re using these tools. Yeah, that’s a great point. You know, humans are still necessary even though AI is you know, becoming in the forefront of this industry.

So do you see AI as a threat to traditional engineering roles or are you looking at it as an opportunity for growth? Anthony, do you want to start with that one? Sure.

I I do think it is a threat to some entrylevel programming. I think if you’re going to enter the technology field, you’ll want to you want to learn how to program. You still need you should understand how programming works.

You may not necessarily be doing programming because a lot I think AI is going to take a lot of that work away from us. But there are tons of different roles in technology beyond entry- level programming. So get get the basics of programming out of the way so you understand it, but you’re going to have to uplevel from there.

Because I do think AI is going to probably take on a lot of those entrylevel programming jobs. And you’re going to have to find other paths to take on and other skills that are things that AI can’t do as well or as efficiently as a as a human can. There’s creativity, there’s strategic thinking involved.

There’s a lot of other roles in technology that’ll require more of the human element than AI has. And that’s where we’re going to have to find those paths to get into those different roles in the future. Yeah.

How about you, Manolo? What are your thoughts on if it’s a threat or an opportunity for growth? Yeah, I I I can’t really say like how much of it is like a threat.

I mean, yes, there are definitely really big capabilities of AI. But like I’m not necessarily like looking too far forward and using it like as a replacement of like an engineer. Just like Anthony said like there needs to be like a human in the loop as of right now.

And if you give AI complex tasks, it’s going to fumble even if you give it the right context. It’s just not really the best for large code bases. But who knows what the future holds.

It can definitely get a lot better and it seems like it’s really on track to do that. But as far as it being an opportunity for growth, it absolutely is. There are a lot of tools out there right now and you can take advantage of them right now.

And you can leverage AI to learn about AI. You can leverage AI to get better at programming. As long as you are using it as a tool instead of as a crutch, I think that, you know, you’re not really going to be as replaceable as somebody who’s completely dependent on AI because if the AI is getting better than like faster than you are, then I think that’s really one of like the metrics of, you know, if it’s going to be a threat or not.

Yeah, definitely. So, what are some of the technical or soft skills that you believe are becoming that increasingly more important in this age of AI to make sure that you’re setting yourself apart? Yeah, I mean I think it always goes back to learning.

You got to stay learning. AI is learning. So, you know, why are we not learning?

Why are we not using AI to help us learn? You know, keep on growing your network. Talk to people about how they’re doing things.

What are they using? How are they using it and why are they using it? You know how are they learning?

Just continuing to keep that learning mindset I think is very very important. As far as technical or I guess soft skills because mindset is everything at the end of the day. It’s going to you know push you to do the things that are going to move you forward.

And also to I would say I’m more on like the soft skills here, but I think it’s really creativity and confidence that is going to put you forward. There are a lot of tools out here right now and a lot of people doing things because everything is at your fingertips right now. Everything that you want to learn, everything that you want to do, especially like with agents now, like it’s it’s it’s out there for you to go and get.

You know, if you have an idea, like you can build it, like you can rapid prototype it with something like lovable in like, you know, like 30 minutes depending on like how complex the idea is. So, you know, if you have that confidence to go get the things that you want and build the things that you want and the ideas and the dreams that you have, like I think that is one of the most important things because even if you fall short, then you know, you can still say, "Hey, I built this crazy thing. Maybe it didn’t work out, but you know now I’m working at like you know a Fortune 500 company because they picked me up or something like that, you know.

So I would say that it’s a great point. Yeah, when you’re with you even if you’re failing at something, you’re still learning a ton along the way. Anthony, you had mentioned especially for early engineers that they’re going to need to have some extra skills to set themselves apart.

Do you have any any to add? Yeah, I mean communication skills I think are really important. Being able to get your ideas across, especially if you want to move up in to roles higher up in the organization from a technology standpoint.

If you eventually want to be a CIO or a CTO or a SISO, you need to be able to communicate with people who are non-technical and get across non-technical I’m sorry, get across technical concepts to people who may not grasp like the nuts and bolts of the technology. Both being able to speak really fluently to those folks but also be able to write really well to get those ideas across and present them really well. So that those are things I would I would work on beyond technology.

I think data literacy, and someone in the chat mentioned critical thinking being because I think AI is going to give us a lot of information and we’re going to have to decide what’s useful, what’s not. And also being able to determine because it is often so plausibly correct, but it’s actually incorrect. It’s it’s good at making you think it’s right, but it’s actually not.

So that critical thinking skill is really important because it can fool you into thinking it’s telling you something that’s accurate, but without that critical thinking skill, you’re it’s going to get go right past you. So I think that’s another important skill for folks to develop. Awesome.

I’m hearing critical thinking, creativity, confidence, and continuous learning. What are some tools and resources that you would recommend in growing these skills and staying up to date with emerging tech trends? Especially in this again age of AI.

I will throw this one to Manolo to start. Yeah, so tools to continue growing. I mean, you know, we work at Pluralsight, so I’ll throw that one out there.

I’ll throw that one out there first. You know, there’s a lot of good content on there as far as learning goes. If you have a path, you know, if you want to be a software engineer, we’ve got content for it.

But you know, you don’t always have to go to like a company like Pluralsight to get your learning. There’s always YouTube University. I know there’s a lot of graduates from there.

You know, I’m definitely on there. Stay on there. Learn a lot from YouTube.

And also just like doing I mean if you have things that you want to do like I would just I would just go get that. That’s not necessarily like a tool. But like as far as learning goes, I I would consider it a tool.

And you know, there’s AI. AI is is is really good for a lot of things. And learning is one of those things.

You know, if you have something that you want to learn, you know, whatever LLM it is, go to Chat GBT, go to Gemini, be like, "Hey, I want to learn this. How should I go about it?" Hey, maybe it recommends you pull. Hey, maybe it recommends a project for you to do.

You know and like it’s also another one of those mentors that you could potentially use if you don’t have one because you know I mean everybody’s saying like it kind of does have a PhD relatively might not have a physical PhD but like it knows a lot you know take it with a grain of salt because like Anthony said not always right but you know it is a good rough draft and it can get you started as far as you know learning the things that you you want to yeah I would I would agree with Manolo Pluralsight actually has a lot of courses for soft skills as well, not just technical skills. So how to communicate your ideas and technology well. I would recommend that.

I would also recommend the networking aspect. Getting out, meeting people, learning from them. Inerson meetups, meetup.com.

There’s a lot of technology meetups that happen all over the country. There’s probably one that happens near where you happen to be. This is a great events like this are fantastic not just for listening to speakers talk about concepts and things that are useful to you but meeting other people who do things similar to you or are are doing things that you eventually would like to do learning how they got to where they are in their career path.

And I would also I would echo what Manolo said about hands-on. I think it’s really important to spend a lot of time just getting in the in the weeds and and and just trying and you’re gonna fail a lot when you’re doing hands-on stuff. Part of learning to to code and anything to do with technology is getting comfortable with not succeeding all the time.

You’re but you learn so much from all those failures and all those every time you try to build something and it doesn’t work. You’re just picking up little bits and pieces of information that you wouldn’t have picked up if you had succeeded all the time. So, don’t get comfortable with not always getting it right.

That’s how you learn. That’s how you build. That’s how you grow.

And hands-on learning is really, really I think probably the most powerful thing that I did was spend a lot of time with hands-on learning. So, any opportunity you have for that, I say go for it. Amazing.

So we talked a little bit about like entry entering the the workforce and early career stage. Let’s talk about career growth and progression. So how should early career engineers approach growth and advancement once they’re they’ve got their foot in the door in a fast changing field like tech.

And I’ll give that one to Anthony. So I would recommend always go first for the basics. Get your foundation and don’t try to leap all the way forward you know and try to take on something that is too advanced.

A lot of times I get excited about really interesting new technologies but they’re way more advanced than I’ll be able to take on. But then if I take piece by piece bit by bit I kind of build my way up to it I’ll eventually be able to gro like the concepts that I need to get to that more advanced level. So don’t feel ashamed or that feeling comfortable with saying I don’t know and asking a lot of questions is really important and starting at that base level and building up your foundation up to where those more advanced levels that you want to get to.

You know you have have to have you have to be humble and you have to have some humility to be able to start at the very beginning and take it to the next step. So I would recommend really starting at the foundational level and kind of going from there. And then for Manalo in this in this vein, how can new engineers advocate for themselves in the workplace to find more opportunities to contribute meaningfully within the organization?

How how do you do that? Yeah. Advocating for yourself is something that I definitely struggle with.

I’m not necessarily the type to, you know, say, "Hey, like look at all the things that I’m doing. You know, I want this and I want that." Like I I’m not really the best at that. Like even like coming to events like these like and just like communicating in general, like it’s it’s it’s tough for me, you know?

Like my heart was beating before I pulled up here. So I’m not going to lie. Like and this is also like the first time like I’m talking today so you know for a grain of salt great but like stuff like that isn’t really good for me.

And so I I would say you just you just have to do it. You’re the only one that’s going to do it. Even if you’re afraid to do it, you just have to go ahead and say, "Hey, I want this." and you know, not being afraid to do that, but being able to say that you want a thing is is one part of it.

And having that courage and that willpower to go and do that. But you also need the evidence to support why you should get the thing and I think that really comes into your work. So if you do good work and you are making an impact, whatever that means to your team or your organization, you need to find out what that means because what you might consider to be an impact might not actually be an impact to your team or organization.

And so if you are figuring out what that impact is that they want to see and you are actually doing that when you actually ask for what you want then there’s a lot more evidence to support it. And also you should bring to the table that evidence to support it if they’re not actually paying attention to the visible work that you are doing. So just to summarize you need to know what you want.

You need to know what the evidence is that would get you what you want and you need to bring that to the table when you’re talking to the people that can actually get that for you. Yeah, that’s a great Yeah, that’s a great answer. I would say get comfortable with being uncomfortable because the only way you grow is is to put yourself in situations where like like Manolo said, this isn’t easy to get up and speak to in front of people.

Public speaking for a lot of people, myself included, is not something that I find comfortable. But but you kind of push you put yourself out there because a I want to help other folks and it’s it’s great to get Pluralsight out to more people and let them know about it. So yeah, you just kind of have to push yourself and and yeah, it’s it is often uncomfortable and advocating for yourself is often uncomfortable, but it’s really important and I think Manolo really gave a great answer for that.

I agree. Step by step. That was that was a great answer, Manolo.

Let’s talk a little bit about teamwork and collaboration in this changing AI world. How is AI changing the way teams are working together? I’ll give that one to Anthony to start us off.

I missed a what was it about team building again? How is AI changing the way that teams are working together? Let’s say in you know at Pluralsight for example.

Yeah. I I think it it so a lot of times people start out with AI and they’re they’re using it by themselves and trying to figure out you know what is the best way to apply it. In terms of collaboration, I one of the ways that I’ve used it to collaborate is creating GPT models in chat GPT because those can then be shared and you can use that as a a resource for taking all the shared information that people have into one single place and they can ask it questions.

So let’s say you have a bunch of documentation and it’s really hard to kind of go through all those documents one by one. If you upload if I upload my docs, Manolo uploads his docs, Jude, you upload your docs, now we have this collective repository that the GPT now has access to and individually we can benefit each from each one of our documents or information that we’ve gathered in the respective areas that we work in. So that’s one way that I think it’s really powerful as a collaboration tool.

And the coding platforms is another one because there it’s a team effort oftentimes to to build an application. That’s really a great example of how AI can be used in a collaborative way. And then for Manolo, what makes someone stand out in a team environment, especially as a newer software engineer, newer professional?

Yeah. You know, standing out is relative. What does standing out mean to you and what does standing out mean to the people that you’re standing out for, quote unquote?

I think it kind of goes back to you know what we talked about before which was like how do we actually know whether or not you’re making an impact like what is your team looking for? What is your organization looking for? And so standing out is finding out what those things are and then delivering on those things.

You know, you’re already kind of standing out as a relatively newer professional because you know, you’re still in your learning phase. So, if you’re learning but also can still deliver, there’s like a lot of potential there, especially if you’re delivering on the things that people are really looking for. But just to give like a a a general answer, honestly, like what I would say is is standing out, I would say just, you know, making sure that you really are lightening the load on your team.

If you are reliable, if you are, if you’re then I would say that that is how you would stand out as a newer professional. Nice. Let’s we’re we’ve got a few more minutes left to of the panel and then we can transition to a Q&A and take some of the questions that have been coming in from from students.

But let’s talk a little bit about advice and inspiration. So, what is something that you wish you had known when you were just starting out in your careers? What’s something that would have been help looking back?

What’s something that would have been really helpful? And Anthony, if you want to start that one. That your career is not a straight line.

You’re you’re not going to have this direct path that you’re going to walk through from one job to the next. My career was a lot of different ziggs and zags and detours. And I don’t think those pivots are necessarily detours, I think that when I made those changes, I I gained a lot of new skills that I didn’t have.

And if I wasn’t pushed into these directions that I hadn’t planned on, I wouldn’t have picked up these completely new things and I wouldn’t have met people that made made these new connections. Expanded the universe of types of jobs that I could have in the future. So that I think that was really valuable and I didn’t in the beginning of my career I wouldn’t have thought that.

I I would have figured that you know I really should kind of stay on this straight line. And I went from tech to journalism and kind of now in a combination of tech and journalism and I love my job today and it’s because I had that experience of tech and journalism and combined them into one. So may I I don’t think I would have predicted that in the beginning.

So you kind of have to be comfortable with not kind of knowing what the future has laid out for you. And it and most likely it’s going to be a lot of changes for the good, but it may not always feel that way as you’re kind of walking along that path. Yeah, I totally agree with that.

Keeping an open mind on that on that windy path. How about you? Anything to share in that?

Yeah. So, something I wish I’d known when I was starting out. I think that I mean, there’s a lot of things there’s a lot of things you learn along the way.

Hard to choose just one, but I think I’ll piggyback off what, Anthony said a little bit. You know, like your career, I’m still new in my career, but just life in general is a series of zigzags. You know, you’re going to fail a lot.

And that’s okay. You learn from your failures and I think that you’re never really you know losing or completely failing if you don’t give up. So I would say that you know embrace the failure, learn from the failure.

And also along the lines of zigzagging, you know, like make sure like the tech field is for you. Like if when we were at the we’re I’m I’m assuming that everybody here wants to be an engineer, but you know, just make sure your why is is in place. Like why do you want to be an engineer?

Like what kind of engineer do you want to be? And you know making sure that you have direction as far as like how to get that you know like I started off you know in college just doing the the projects in college weren’t really putting me on the path to be a web developer like I found that on by myself right and I ended up liking it right so making sure that you get that exposure into like all of the facets of the tech field might help you figure out whether or not you know you want to be here in tech or maybe you don’t even want to be in at all. Maybe you want to do something else.

Like I think having the answers to those questions are really important. Because that’s this is your future, you know? And you you want to know like where you want to be.

And you want to make sure that the job that you choose makes you happy because you don’t want to wake up and go to a job that you don’t like. No one nobody wants to do that. So make sure that this is what you want and that it makes you happy.

Great advice. Yeah, you spend so much time working that, you know, you want to make sure that it definitely aligns with your values and and your goals. Can you share a moment of failure or challenge in your career and what you learned from it that kind of helped shape where you are today?

Anthony, I’ll give that one to you. So, I’ll give you one. When I was at the Wall Street Journal, we we wrote up a big transformational roadmap for where we thought we needed to take the company to kind of help them integrate technology and a lot of the things that we saw happening around media where outside of the big traditional newsrooms, they were applying a lot more technology and tools into the work they did.

And in a lot of news rooms, you find that people are very set in their ways and they like to do things the way they’ve always done it. So it was very difficult and challenging to convince those folks in in some pockets of organization to come along that journey that we felt like we needed to take them. So wasn’t necessarily a failure, but it was a challenge.

And it was a a real big challenge to kind of go through all these different departments and pockets of the newsroom to get them to believe that this was the path that we need to go and that this roadmap that we had set up was going to help us succeed. So it just it just shows that you really have to have a lot of patience and you have to really kind of u put in a lot of work and and and effort into convincing and and changing hearts and minds. And a lot of that people don’t realize is a part of working in a company beyond just the skills that you have.

Being able to persuade people, being able to get your ideas across is a very important skill set to have beyond just like the the day-to-day operations of what you do. So, that was one of the big challenges that I had at the journal. And being able to get through that, take it to the other side is something that I I felt eventually was a success and I was able to learn a lot along the way that I could take that to other jobs that I had after.

That’s awesome. Such a great point. Goes along with that the when we talked about the the skills the the complimentary soft skills the communication the persuasion and and you know really leaning on those anything to share Lenolo on any a moment of challenge or failure that’s helped propel propel your career yeah I’m not really the best at choosing favorites and things like that like I don’t know if I have like a de facto moment of like aha like this is my failure and this is what I learned like my I feel like my learning is like more of a series of failures because you’re going to have a lot in your career and a lot in your life and also like a series of challenges and I would say through those series of challenges like a common theme that I’m starting to realize is that you know there are no failures that are you know I mean there are some failures that are quote unquote will worse than others but like you always will learn in the end and don’t be afraid to take on those failures.

Don’t be afraid to take on something just because you’re going to fail. Like just because you think that you’re going to fail, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take it on. Just from the beginning of my career, like I was afraid to, you know, take on my internship, I was afraid to take on tasks.

Like even in my career now, like I’m afraid to take on certain things that I feel like I might not be competent in. You know, if like I don’t know the tech stack or I don’t know the language. But like you taking on those tasks and taking on that learning is what will make you understand the problems for the future.

Like you learning. Even if you do fail, it’s like, oh, I messed it up this time, but this next time, this is how I’m going to go about it. So, know that you can do anything, it’s just about how many times you’re willing to fail in order to do it.

And you know, even if you have to fail a thousand times, like you should still go for it if you think it’s worth it. You know, if like you had to start a hundred businesses to become like a billionaire and on that hundth like you would become a billionaire for short, you’d be like, "Oh yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna start 100 businesses then." you know, but like if you stopped at that 99 just because you didn’t know, well then, you know, that’s that’s your billion right there, you know. So, I would say definitely don’t be afraid to take on those failures and and I would say embrace them.

Awesome. Great advice. Okay, we’re going to take some Q&A from the audience.

So Charles is asking, "For someone just graduating looking to get their first software engineering role, what do companies like yours look for in early career candidates? That’s probably best for Manola to take, I think." Yes, I agree. Yeah.

So take what I’m saying with a grain of salt because I’m not a recruiter, okay? So, I’ll I’ll give you I’ll give you my experience. I will say that the the job market is definitely rough.

I know that you know some of my friends that are amazing engineers are are still struggling in the stock market, but I said stock market, the job market, but you know, I would say definitely don’t give up. I would say like as far as early career candidates, like I the internship is the way to go. And in order to get those internships, I would say you definitely need some sort of initiative.

You need some sort of learning. You need some sort of passion. And you need to demonstrate that whether it be through personal projects, whether it be through, you know, the learnings that you’ve built in school and or things like that or you know, you know, people and they know how passionate you are about the industry like I think that goes a long way.

But I think rather than you know looking for like I I don’t know exactly what recruiters are looking for. I would say just make sure that you have the skills to do the job and you know if you do and you’re still not getting reach back at that point then it’s just a numbers game. Like I said like don’t be afraid to send out like a thousand applications because if you get that one that’s all that matters.

Yeah. Cast a wide net. Yeah.

Oh. Anthony, anything to add to that? The only thing I would say is that just applying or sending in resumes and praying for someone to get back to you is not the best strategy.

I think Manol is right that it’s a numbers game and yeah, you have to apply for a lot of jobs to eventually get someone to respond, but you kind of have to be creative and find ways to to get to people. Sometimes there’s six degrees of separation using LinkedIn if there’s a friend of a friend of a friend that somehow is connected to that person. Networking.

I mean, I hate to say it, but it really does make a difference. Being able to try a way to triangulate your way to the person who may be at that company in any some sort of role is really important. Because oftentimes you could have a great resume, but it’s really difficult to even get that resume in front of the hiring manager.

So, whatever you have to do to get the attention of someone at that company is is really important, I think, in in this day and age. Thank you. Okay, we have another question from Lynn.

How can someone early in their career, especially in the age of AI, show genuine excellence beyond just building another demo app? What what’s something in addition to that that they can do? Manila, do you want to take that one?

Yeah. So this is this is the the tough thing about just being in the job market. Like a lot of these things are subjective, right?

You know, like if you build like being building a good demo app not too long ago was amazing, you know, like if you just got out of college, like you could get picked up for a a good job, you know, but now like the expectations have been have been rising a little bit. And so as far as genuine excellence that is basically in the eyes of the recruiter. So it’s it’s kind of hard to know and and just to piggyback on what like Anthony said like you need to know you need to know people and how you need to talk to people that are getting jobs.

You know you need to talk to people that are hiring for jobs. What are they looking for? Because that’s your rubric.

So you need to build up your rubric of what genuine excellence looks like. And you know that is through networking and figuring out what are people hiring for, what internships are you looking for and what who have they hired, talking to them. And you know, building up that rubric and so then you can make sure that you demonstrate genuine excellence when you go to apply to those jobs.

Yeah. We have one that’s another question from David that’s kind of in line with that is so what is something that Pluralsight specifically looks for in entrylevel software engineers? Do you have any insight into that?

I know you’re not a recruiter but anything to offer there? Yeah, so I am not a recruiter. I I can’t I can’t can’t stress that enough.

However, you know, I I did get hired at Pluralsight, right? And you know, as far as what they’re looking for at the time, it was it was passion, it was, you know, it was dedication, it was, you know, ability to learn and want to learn. But, you know, just like, just like the tech industry, so does the recruiting industry change as far as what they’re looking for.

Now, I don’t know. You know, like I know some amazing engineers that just came on for our summer internships, but I don’t know exactly what got them hired. I can’t necessarily say it’s the same thing that got me hired and because, you know, if it’s a different recruiter, they might have different metrics for genuine excellence.

You know, it is all about, you know, figuring out who your audience is and figuring out what it is that they want. And that is exactly what, you know, they’re going to be looking for. And in order to get those answers, you you have to ask either the the source or somebody that you know has been hired and what they had and then you can kind of triangulate from there.

It’s a science. I’m sorry guys. No worries.

Thank you. Oh, that was great. Great insights.

Okay, let’s see. I there’s a good question I would like to give to an Anthony and I think this might be our last one as we wrap up. So how can students balance using AI tools with still learning the fundamentals?

You mentioned how important the fundamentals are, but like h how do they balance that those two? I mean I think AI can be useful to kind of get you started to kind of give you almost an outline of what you need to do. But then you have to go off and kind of learn the fundamentals.

Now, I think you can learn some of it through AI. I mean, you can go back and forth with different AI chat bots and things like that. You’re not probably going to get the hands-on experience that you need for the to really have the fundamentals kind of sear into your into your brain.

The only way I think that you really fully pick up the fundamentals is by doing. So I would recommend using AI tools to give yourself a learning path and to set you off on where you need to go, maybe places that you need to go to learn, whether it be Pluralsight or somewhere else. But the hands-on skills are where you’re really going to have the most impact to to actually have those fundamentals for you to really grasp what those fundamentals are.

So that that’s that would be my that would be my recommendation to kind of how to balance both the AI side of things and and the learning side. Yeah, great answer. Manolo, anything to add to that?

Yeah, learning by doing. I I I can’t stress it enough. Like Anthony said, that is that’s one of the best things you can do.

You know, you learn through your failures a lot more than you know, you learn from theory. And I’ll say that, especially like going to school, like I’m not the type to pay attention to things if I don’t see the practical knowledge. Like I was not paying attention to linear algebra before AI came on the scene.

I was like, what is linear algebra? Why do I need this? And so like like if you have that goal in mind, then it’s definitely it’s definitely a lot easier to learn from theory.

But you know, you get that goal in mind from failing with that that hands-on. So, it’s I can’t stress that enough. Amazing.

Thank you both. So we’ve reached the end of our session. I just want to really express gratitude for you both sharing your time today and your wisdom with our CodePath community.

So, thank you so much for being here. Please drop some appreciation for Manolo and Anthony in the chat. And before we wrap up, sorry, there’s still one more.

I would love to hear we we ask all of our speakers this question before they leave. So what’s your top piece of advice that you would like to share with our emerging engineers at CodePath? I’ll let Anthony start and then Manolo you can can go ahead.

I would say stay curious. Continue to have that passion for learning. That’s the thing that’s going to drive you through your career.

We’ve mentioned this many many times during the session that the hands-on is the best way to pick up those skills. So when you when you see something that you want to pick up, figure out a path, use AI if it helps to kind of give you that path, but then go off and and find a way to apply those skills in a hands-on way. So stay curious, use the tools, reinforce them.

That’s that’s what I would recommend doing. How about you, Manolo? Any any quick words of advice?

Yeah. Yeah, there’s a couple things, but I’ll say probably one of the most important things is probably mentorship. Mentorship is is a really big thing.

You know, like your network is your net worth. You know, we’ve already talked about how networking is important to get you know, into these roles. And also it’s a glimpse into your future if you know you have somebody that can you know is where you want to be and tell you how they got there and also growing with you like that’s that’s huge like you know like you’re coming to events like this for mentorship and that’s going to help you you know get your direction moving forward like if I had somebody like Anthony in my corner like after I was like hey I I want to do this and he’s like oh I’ve already been there you just got to do this and this and this.

I’m like, "All right, cool." Instead of dancing around in the dark and I don’t really know what’s going on. So, you know, like I mentorship is huge and you know, if you can’t get it from one person, you can get it from a lot of people in events like this. So, keep doing what you guys are doing.

Awesome. Thank you so much to both of you. Okay.

Well, we’re going to close out. We’re going to transition to a brief video from our host Bobby. And keep an eye out for that survey link.

Thank you, everybody. Bye. Thank you.

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