Show Notes

In this episode, Manuel Martinez talks with Nidhi Nayak, an Enterprise Support Lead with extensive experience across data warehousing, cloud architecture, and technical leadership.

Born and raised in India, Nidhi shares her journey from studying mathematics to becoming an engineer, and how her passion for problem-solving drove her career choices. She walks us through the multi-stage interview process she navigated as a recent graduate in India, including how she prepared months in advance for campus recruitment.

Nidhi discusses her progression from an ETL developer to various technical leadership roles, explaining why she chose to broaden her knowledge across multiple technologies rather than specializing deeply in just one area. Her approach paid off as she moved from on-premise systems to cloud architecture, ultimately achieving all 12 AWS certifications.

Throughout the conversation, Nidhi offers practical wisdom on:

• 
  
• Using certifications strategically to validate knowledge and build confidence
  
• Teaching others as a pathway to deepen your own understanding
  
• Developing presentation and documentation skills for technical and business audiences
  
• Creating effective boundaries and knowing when to say “no” to new responsibilities
  
• Setting clear goals with personal deadlines to stay accountable
  
• Balancing technical expertise with customer-facing responsibilities
  

This episode provides valuable insights for both early-career professionals looking to map their path forward and experienced practitioners seeking ways to expand their impact beyond technical expertise.

Listen to the full episode to hear Nidhi’s thoughtful advice on continuous learning, strategic career planning, and finding opportunities to grow even within comfortable roles.

#CareerDownloads #TechCareers #CloudArchitecture #WomenInTech #CareerAdvice #ProfessionalDevelopment #AWSCertifications

Transcription

Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to really understand and uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me a coworker. Her name is Nidhi Nayak. So we’re no longer on the same team, but we did spend almost a year together, kind of interacting. I understood the different things that she had kind of had experience in. She was really kind of a lead in the group that I was a part of. She helped kind of guide and direct me in certain areas when I had certain difficulties. I looked at her background, I thought it was pretty interesting. I’ve seen her kind of give internal presentations and I thought she would be a good guest to kind of uncover and learn more about. So with that, go ahead and plug in and download the knowledge and I will introduce Nidhi. So welcome Nidhi.

Nidhi: Hey Manny.

Manuel: So I really appreciate you coming on and being open to sharing your experiences.

Nidhi: Of course, thank you. Thanks for inviting me.

Manuel: I know that we’re here in Austin, we’re here for a team gathering. So I mean, I was glad that when I reached out and you were open to kind of talking about this. So if you don’t mind just to start off, just give me a brief summary of kind of tell me what your role or current position is and just a summary of some of your roles and responsibilities so that people understand kind of what you do now.

Nidhi: So hey, everyone like, currently I’m the enterprise support lead. So as an enterprise support lead, you are not just only the technical account manager, like you’re handling your customer, but then you are working with the people. So like we are, there is a pool of TAM, the cluster of TAM, whom you are managing. So managing in the sense like mentoring, so if they have any questions, they will come to you. So you need to help them with those. Taking care, like if they are on a vacation, so making sure that they have proper coverage, so those tasks. And apart from that, for my own personal interests, I’m also like working on a couple of internal projects and also contributing towards the technical community field so that I can stay in touch with the development and my technical skills. So yeah, and I really enjoyed working on this role.

Manuel: If you don’t mind telling me kind of where you grew up and eventually, you know, what got you interested in technology, like everybody’s has different, but at some point, there’s something that called you towards that field. So if you don’t mind just kind of sharing.

Nidhi: Sure, so I born and brought up in India. So I’m from the state Madhya Pradesh. So I did my schooling there. And during my schooling, I decided to become an engineer. So I have this aspiration since my childhood. And as I started growing up, I have more interest towards the maths. I like to solve those problems, those logics. So that’s how I took that as my career path. And then I came to know, okay, I can do the engineering. So I’d take the entrance exam. I passed it and like that time in 2020… 2002, basically. So everything was revolving around computers, IT. So I thought of exploring my career in that technology. So I did my bachelors of engineering from India in information technology. And that’s how I started my career. And then I got my first job in India. That was with Data Consultancy Services. And I joined as an assistant system engineer. And that’s how my career started over there.

Manuel: As you started your career, right? So going through and understanding that you, you know, had your bachelors, what was the process or the experience like for you coming out of college? So I know for most people, and I’m one of those ones that similar to you, I went to college and went for management information systems. But for me, trying to land a job right out of college, it was difficult. I thought, I have a degree. People are just gonna come after me, but they were also looking for experience. So what was that process like for you over there in India?

Nidhi: I, as I mentioned, I like to do those problem solving logistics and how the process there works is like company first screen you through their like quantitative analytics skills. So first you have to like go through that process. Like you will get a paper. You have to solve it in a certain amount of time. If you qualify for that, then they will call you for the technical interview. So I was like during my engineering time, so whenever I’m having those summer breaks or winter breaks, I used to solve those problems from my third year itself. And I started preparing myself for like the campus interviews. So I was, I like I solved problem like quantitative, then there was logistics, verbals, non-verbals. So I used to get those books and start working on that. And like once I started, I really kind of enjoying those things. Then like I just to prepare for an interview, right? Like you need to have certain skillset, like how you are going to talk, what you need to talk. So I did a crash course there. That crash course helped me to like excel in the GDPI so that I can appear for the interview. And that’s how like I prepared myself. And on my fourth year, I started like finding the campus jobs, like where like we can just companies are coming. They are like examining that a candidate, candidate qualifies, then you will move to the another round, like the group discussion rounds. And then once the group discussion is done, you will be moving to the personal interview rounds. So there are like technical personal interviews, HR rounds. So I prepared well ahead before reaching to that stage that helped me in my career path.

Manuel: So is that pretty common down there to go through multiple stages like that? Because I know here, again, it’s very company dependent. Some people have multiple interviews, some have one, some do a screening, some don’t. So is that commonplace?

Nidhi: Yeah, so for like recent college graduate, that’s a common process because like they are hiring in like bulk. So like, and people are appearing. So like more and more number of people are appearing over there for interview. So they need to screen the candidates so that is the process of elimination. So suppose if like thousand candidate appears for the writing exam, maybe like 600 qualifies, then the group discussion comes. So in group discussion, maybe only 200 qualifies. Then the technical interview in the HR may be like 100 or 150 qualifies. So that’s how they screen the candidates.

Manuel: So that’s the process there. And that’s why you were able to sign up for the crash course because this is a commonplace thing where people go through and help coach you.

Nidhi: Yeah, so yeah, like I talked to the people who were already faced those like my seniors and all. So that also helps in getting the guidance. So I was checking with them how they prepared, how they landed into the job and then the internet, right? Like you can search those things. So like that time it was not that active, but still there are forums where people share their experiences that helps me to prepare myself for that.

Manuel: Awesome, so then now you go through, you land your first role and you mentioned that you enjoyed kind of the research and the preparing part. So then what was kind of, how did you feel once you landed the role and actually started doing the hands-on practical work?

Nidhi: I feel I really enjoyed that. So it’s not like whatever you are studying in college that you are doing as a part of your work. So the company used to provide your training. So like we had like two months of rigorous training over there where we were doing the hands-on. Like the experienced people from that company, they were coming, they were delivering us the session, helping us with like how we need to think when you’re building a software for our customer, right? What all things you need to take into the consideration. So until college, we mostly did the theory and like work on small projects, but this is like something you’re building for a customer. So like here, like bugs cannot, you cannot take a chance, right? Because it may crash their environment. So you need to be very careful. So all those skills they taught us. And yeah, like first, when I got my first project, I was very excited about that. It was in the data warehouse environment. And I started my career as a ETL developer over there in Informatica. So like I paired up with the senior resources. First week I was monitoring them, what they are working. They explain about the project, the process. And like we have to build the technical design documentation. So understanding the requirement. So we used to get the documentation where the requirement was written. We were understanding that and converting that into the technical design documentation, like how we are going to code that. And then I was working on the coding. Then we have this process in place. Like once you’re done with the code, you need to do the self review to make sure that like everything is in place. Like if you, whether you have added the proper comments to your components or not, whether you have checked in the components, whether you have connected the right ports or not. So that we were doing. Then we were sending that to the peer review and we were performing the unit testing and then they moved to the SIT, UAT and the production. So that was like my first experience as a developer. And I really enjoyed over there. There are of course learnings. And like sometimes it happens that you are not doing things in the right direction. So there were seniors who were guiding us, providing us a feedback. And I was taking everything as a learning for myself. And that helps me in excelling my career.

Manuel: And do you think that the process that they had in place of kind of, again, having the framework, having the checklist, having a senior to kind of go through, do you think that that helped you build confidence in understanding that, not that you weren’t confident that you could learn it, but it kind of helped you maybe accelerate your learning as you’re kind of going through?

Nidhi: Yes. Yeah, so it helps me with that. So like initially, like one or two years, mostly my focus was on learning how to develop the things, how this process works and all. And once I’m done with that, then my second goal was like to dive deeper into that particular area. So I started reading like documentation, help notes appearing for the certification examination for that, so that I can verify like where I am currently in that particular stage. So that’s how I started. So I started as a developer and then like I moved to the lead role and then I thought not to stick to one particular tool, but to learn other tools which are present in the data warehouse environment. So I started to like Ab Initio, Teradata, Netezza, I worked on those tools and slowly, slowly started getting into the other aspects of the projects like building a shell script, those kinds of things. So yeah, that’s how I started.

Manuel: And what made you not want to, again, not that it would be a bad thing to specialize, but what is it that called your attention or is there somebody that gave you the idea that says, you should learn other technologies, other areas? Because a lot of times, especially now, I hear from younger people, or not even younger, but people newer to the field, at whatever stage of their career, where they go, I’m gonna be cybersecurity, or I’m gonna be this, and they’re very hyper-focused. And me, I was always a generalist. Now I did have specialty areas, but one of the things that early on I had someone that was like, okay, I understand if you wanna do networking, but you have to understand how the servers work, how all this, because to them, the way they explained it to me is communication. That’s fine if you’re not the expert, if you’re not the network admin or the network engineer, but you need to understand how to speak to them, the language, so that when you’re troubleshooting, you can’t just say, well it’s the network? I don’t know. Well, no, what are you experiencing and having that? So what made you kind of think that I wanna learn more areas?

Nidhi: So yeah, like when you start, your focus is very narrow, but when you are working in the environment, like when people are doing the things, like when you’re talking to your colleagues, building your network, then you will check with them what they are working, what they are learning, how it is helping them. And again, your work scope is also slowly start increasing. So that makes you like thinking about the direction, okay, this is something I should learn. This is something new, because you don’t want to be in a situation where like you are just working on one thing, right? Because in three years, you don’t have anything to do, right? So your growth will be stagnant in that area. So to grow broader, you should have a broader set of knowledge. So that’s how I started learning into the other technology and working on those projects so that I can use the hands-on skill and my technical expertise over there. So yeah, like from developer to the lead, to the architect, then again, test manager, then admin. So I did everything, whatever is required in the data warehouse industry. And again, I worked for multiple customers. So that also gives you a kind of domain knowledge in various domains to help like how the banking industry work, how the insurance industry works. So yeah.

Manuel: And I did notice that, so when I looked at your profile, I did see a lot of, again, the end role that you had, a lot of engineering, a lot of architecture, the big thing that I saw was a lot of consultancy along there. So you mentioned you’re working with a bunch of different customers. So do you think that that kind of helped you and you enjoyed it? Again, having the variety and you’re building more knowledge at the same time, right?

Nidhi: So having a variety is the thing, like you are solving different kind of problem, right? So if you are working on a multiple project, so suppose if I work this, one project is like kind of one problem statement for a customer. Maybe they are just building a data mart focused on one specific area. So you worked on that. Now you want to work explore some other option. Okay, now the customer want to pull data from like JSON files or CSV file, which I have never explored earlier. So this is the opportunity for me to learn that. And they don’t want to load into the Oracle, they want to load the data into the Teradata. So okay, I’m going to learn Teradata. So that’s how I started building up my learning skills over there. And I’m continuously doing that. So even now as well, I’m just like not focusing on one thing. Though my core are a data warehouse, but I like focus on networking, security, at least the person should have like, what I feel person should have like 200 to 300 level of knowledge if you want to grow. Because currently everything is growing so fast, the competition is increasing. So keeping yourself up to date is very important.

Manuel: Yeah, and that’s something that at some point, I’m going to dig into, because I know it’s later on in the career, but the way that you continuously continue to stay up to date and building that technical competency across all areas. So within that role, it sounds like you had the opportunity to kind of grow, to move around, they didn’t kind of keep you just in a specific area. So what is it that eventually made you decide it’s time to kind of leave here. Again, we don’t have to go into detail, but you know, you’ve moved up, you’ve moved around. At some point you decided to kind of move out. What was the reasoning? Was it you didn’t have, you know, any more growth? Was it you felt that you had learned a lot? Did someone reach out to you? Again, everybody has a different experience.

Nidhi: Yeah, like it’s a combination of everything. So growth wise, yeah, I was growing. There as well, but like I want to go outside, right? I want to increase my knowledge, like how the world looked like, like outside of my comfort zone. And my manager shows that faith. So like I got the encouragement from their side. So it is them who pushed me, like they were guiding, Hey, like you can do this, you should do this. So like first opportunity, I got it through my manager only. They asked me, go check, explore, help customer work directly with the customer. Because from India, we were not working in offsite environments. Like we hardly communicate with the customer like face to face. Mostly it was over a call. So I got that opportunity. And like my managers used to guide me, Hey, not just focusing on the career, like the your day to day work, but also focus on something else. So like I used to give a training there back home in India, like on Informatica. So I had expertise over there. So I used to train in my company. They have like a week of training plan and I’ll just go sign up for that. So I trained them and that also helps me to like learn because when you’re training somebody, you are learning it and looking at it in a different perspective. Sometimes people asking questions. So you need to ensure that you are able to answer those questions. So that’s how like, I like to do multiple things again, one focusing on one thing, but other things keep you motivated, like kind of break from your current work. And like it’s a distraction. You can do this and again, focus back to your day to day work.

Manuel: Kind of thinking back of our time working together, it makes sense because the times that you did where I would come to you with a problem or when you were speaking to kind of the group about different things, you did a very good job. And I don’t know if I ever told you in the past, but you would do a good job of kind of explaining to where I’m like, oh, okay, maybe I’m not the expert in it, but I know enough to understand, like you explained it enough for me to understand like, okay, this is an area I don’t have knowledge in, but after you talked about it, like, oh, okay, I get it. Or I understand enough. Or if I have other questions, I know now who to go to. The question I have here is similar to you. I started teaching and doing trainings and you quickly identify your gaps and also how to properly explain things. I don’t know if you ran into this, but I would teach somebody something. And there’s a lot of times where I would assume or just understand they have that level of knowledge. And two things, one, you just, you could tell by the look in their eyes, like, I don’t understand. You get people that would be willing to kind of speak up and ask questions. So the question I have is, is that how you develop the ability to kind of communicate and explain things? And did you develop an enjoyment for that? Because I agree, teaching it to somebody else forces you to really know the material. So when somebody asks you a question, so what was that experience and what do you think really kind of helped you grow that skill?

Nidhi: Yeah, so yeah, as you mentioned, right? When initially I started, I was teaching, sometimes people just give a poker face. We don’t know whether they understand or not understand those things. So I checked the feedback scores, that helps me. And then like I came to know about the process of like reverse shadowing. So like if I’m delivering something, right? At the last day of my training, I used to ask them, okay, like let’s have some 30 minutes. Let me ask these question to understand where you are at your knowledge, like in this five days training, what have you learned and all. So I used to ask them the question. So sometimes, and this I clarified on the first day that hey, last day I’m going to ask the question, so make sure you are attentive in the session. And then when I was asking questions, a few were able to answer and the people who were not able to answer, at least they know that this is what the answer is. Like they discover that during those discussions so yeah, and like whoever is not able to speak, sometimes they reach offline or sometimes maybe they don’t bother. So yeah, that’s how the experience was.

Manuel: So then again, you’re going through your, you decide now your manager’s kind of pushing you to expand out of your area. And that’s, in my experience, that’s not very common. You do find some people that will go through and like you said, push you out of your comfort zone. So as they were pushing you out, what did you kind of decide to do and what was kind of that next step?

Nidhi: So yeah, like I came initially first, my first onsite was Singapore. And I went there, stayed there for a month, worked with customers, went back to India and then I was working on my US visa. I came here and here I was the onsite lead. So I was working in the customer office. So like I was sitting next to the customer. And like the part which I was missing in India is to get those minute details, right? Like when you’re directly working here, you have more knowledge over here, what exactly is happening? Because sometimes like over the phone or over the documentation, some information is missing or we don’t have that transparency. So here like I don’t have to wait to set up a call. I don’t have to go and write the documentation. I’m like, hey, this is what my question is. This is what I’m currently working on. We talked about it. Is it what you are looking for or you want me to change something? And then like same moment, we resolve those questions and I got my answer and I was able to work on that. So I was playing the role of onsite coordinator over here. So I was doing hands-on minimal, but my task was mostly related to gather the customer requirement, preparing the requirement documentation. And then like I have the engineers in India. So like talking to them, explaining them that requirement, they were building the code and then my task was to review that, what they have worked on. And if there are some missing areas, then like guiding them, hey, this is what was missing in the code. Can you add this or this testing was not have done or maybe it’s something, some logic was not done correctly or the optimization doesn’t happen correctly. So that’s how that role started. And yeah, like after that, I thought, okay, I’m good enough to be an architect role. And then I started looking for an architect role. So yeah, I landed into the Informatica like data warehousing architect role, where I worked on the solution for the customer, gain confidence because like when you’re switching the roles, your responsibilities are changing. So like just sitting in front of your computer and now like interacting with the customer, understanding what they are looking for, how that solution is going to help them, building that solution for them. So that was the experience.

Manuel: And as you’re going through and you mentioned now, you’re dealing more with the customers, you’re more customer facing, getting into architect roles. And especially I would think at the architect level, you’re not only speaking to engineers and technical people, but you’re also, in my experience, you’re also talking to senior level, director level events or director level people.

Nidhi: Yeah.

Manuel: How did you develop the skills to communicate at those different levels? Because it’s very different talking to an engineer, talking tech versus talking to a director or a C-level suite to explain, they don’t care about the technical details and understanding how do you communicate the business value or the business needs or what are they looking for and making sure. So how did you develop that skills as an architect at the same time?

Nidhi: So yeah, like the technical side, I got that lot of experience. So then for the architect side, initially, again, when you are working, sometimes you face this challenge that you are talking to customer and you are like talking to technical. But then you are getting the feedback, maybe customer says, okay, what you are trying to say. So then you got the hint, okay, like whatever I’m telling, it may not make sense. So then you started giving them some examples and then slowly I was reading some books, watching some YouTube videos that helped me and shadowing some other resources that helps me in building that skillset.

Manuel: So it was a big enough team that you had other people to kind of relay and watch. So you’re not, even though you’re customer facing and you’re here, you’re not by yourself.

Nidhi: So here, yeah, I’m on my own self, but I’m just talking about my past experience. So like how I develop that skill of like talking to a director over there, because all that skills helps me to land over here and excelling in this particular role.

Manuel: Okay, and then what kind of transpires from that point, right, so you’re at this architect level and I see a common theme so far is one of the things is, apart from developing the technical expertise, you’re also learning and enjoying, explaining and teaching to other people. What exactly is it that you enjoy about the lead portion of it and the architect level? And I don’t know if you’ve ever done any management. Is there a reason or do you like still being just kind of lead part and not having to do full manager? Have you thought about trying to, I’m just curious.

Nidhi: Yeah, like I thought about the management, but I think maybe I’ll excel more on being the individual contributor and on the technical side. So that path I chose, like I’ll just excel in this particular path and as a like enterprise support lead, so you are not all manager, but like you are kind of a mentor to your clusters. So you have the responsibility of all the TAMs which are inside your cluster to make sure like, whether they are following the process, guiding them, right? Like here we have a concept of documentation, so making sure that they are documenting the things correctly. And sometimes it may happen that the information is lost during the communication, so making sure asking follow up questions to get that information and that helps even them to write that information in that STAR format.

Manuel: You do do a lot of mentorship and it seems like you enjoy that, you do very well at it. As you’re kind of going up, did you ever have any formal mentorship or is it really you had similar situations where you had leads that were doing the same for you and that’s kind of what made you continue?

Nidhi: Formal mentorship in the sense like we are working here as a technical account manager, so sometimes a new hire joins, so we are onboarding buddy so those kind of things I have done. And then apart from that, you are like for my TFC side, I do have mentees over there as well, so I mentored them as well over there on the TFC side, but that is more on the technical side.

Manuel: But never more on like an actual, like a mentor where you would think like career coach type of situation.

Nidhi: No, I have not worked on the career coach related scenario.

Manuel: And you didn’t have anyone either, so you’re just everything that you’re doing, you’re just kind of modeling based on either what you see or your own personal experience.

Nidhi: Yeah, my own personal experience of what I’m seeing, yeah.

Manuel: So you’re in this architect role and I saw a couple other consultancies, so as you’re deciding to move on, I know previously you mentioned that you had a managers that kind of helped push you and guided you and gave you the confidence, so once you’re in this architect role, do you feel that you gained the confidence on your own to now say, okay, I can continue and I wanna move on? Is it again, you’re not getting the growth, so what makes you decide to move to the next role?

Nidhi: Yeah, like I was working like data warehouse almost 14 years, right? So it’s always come to the mind like what next, what next? And then like I saw that everybody’s moving towards the cloud, so I thought, okay, let me do the AWS solution architect associate certification, and that’s how I learned about the cloud technology, what various services are there, how does that looks like? And then I thought, okay, technically I have done lot, coding and all, so let me switch towards the customer facing role. So then I came to know about this role and I started preparing, so I went to the LinkedIn, researched about the company, how that company, how that role looks like, what skills they are requiring and making sure that whatever skill I’m having that are aligning with their requirement. And then I worked on preparing my resume and worked on like my interview as well in parallel. And then I gave the interview, landed to this job and initial like six months were challenging because it’s like for my career, it’s like 360 degree turn, it’s like data warehousing on-prem and then now I’m in cloud, learning multiple services, then the role switch, like slowly I got time, training, process, talking to people, getting help from seniors and that helps me getting the direction, so yeah.

Manuel: I wanna touch on this a little bit and now that you’ve kind of mentioned that you’re kind of starting at AWS, prior earlier in the conversation you mentioned that at one point you decided to get a certification to kind of gauge your knowledge and understand where your gaps are. Between that time in the 14 years that you were there, how many certifications do you think you acquired and is that the mindset that you use when you’re going towards certifications? Is it to learn? Is it to kind of gauge your knowledge level? Everybody approaches certifications for different reasons and in different approaches, so what is it that, how do you approach certifications?

Nidhi: So I approach certification as a learning opportunity, so each certification are in different area. So as I mentioned, I have no experience in networking, security, like very basic minimal 200 level, but not the cloud networking. So when I was preparing for the networking certification, I learned about that and again, when you are doing those certification, you are achieving it, it’s a win for you. You are like seeing that as an achievement win, but that also empowers you to talk to your customer, to help other person if they have any question, hey, what does NACL looks like? Or what is like my security groups looks like? So until unless you won’t learn, you won’t be able to explain, right? You will just think about that. Sometimes you go read it, but I thought, okay, reading it and then achieving that as a certification is something like you can say, oh, I have this one. And then again, you need to continue your learning. So it’s like certification is not just the stop, but this is just the beginning so that you can start exploring that particular area.

Manuel: The reason I bring that up and one of the things that you’re probably the only person that I know personally, well, actually you’re the first, I did recently another colleague that had done the same thing is, then just to kind of give context to people. So you achieved all of the AWS certifications and at the time, I think, is it 12 or is it 14?

Nidhi: 12.

Manuel: 12, so 12 different certifications. And that to me is, it’s a lot, especially because you mentioned there’s different areas. There’s networking, there’s machine learning, there’s security, there’s data analytics. There’s a lot of different areas. And that is a goal once I heard about that, that it’s a big achievement. A lot of people don’t get that. And it is at first intimidating, it’s overwhelming, but now understanding how you approached it is, oh, okay, I get it because I pushed myself and I was like, well, I’m gonna get the machine learning. I don’t know that background, but similar to you. It’s gonna force me to learn. It gives me the checkpoint. So as you’re gathering this knowledge and do you think that that has helped you progress and kind of continue to grow, and you work with larger accounts and having that experience, outside of just kind of the notch in the belt and being able to say, hey, I’ve done this, what are the other benefits that you think that certifications you get? Because I know that some people go through and pass the exam, but then you ask them about it and they’re like, I don’t know. So what would you say is your method towards studying? Because it’s one thing to say, yes, I studied, I learned. Okay, but if I’m going through and I decide I wanna go through it, and again, it doesn’t have to be specific to AWS, but I’m just curious, what is your methodology or what’s the process that you use to approach new subjects?

Nidhi: So first I go and research about that. So suppose if I have made my mind that I need to work on my networking certification, security certification. So I’ll first go, there are multiple channels available, multiple documentation available. So first I’ll do the groundwork, getting that information from wherever the source and having that somewhere documented, okay, for like I need to go and look into these YouTube videos, these trainings I need to do, some like internal notes are available, somebody has already created those notes, so just reaching out, hey, can you share those notes? Can I refer that? So first I gather all that material and then in day-to-day time, we don’t always have the dedicated time to work on our studies. So like if I have decided I come up with some timeline, okay, by month end, I should be done with this certification. So then I spend my weekends to study that, off hours, off working hours, I study that, learn those things, appear for the mock test, that will like, initially it will gauge you, right, where you are, okay, these are the area where I’m lagging. Again, I’ll work on that. Then you go, write the exam, get the result and you pass. So then it’s like, okay, now I know this. So when I’m talking to my customer, so because we are in the role, where breadth of all technology is required, right? So it shouldn’t be like my customer is talking to me something related to the LLM and I don’t know what LLM is. So at least I should have, by certification, I should have that knowledge, right? That certification give me that knowledge that I can talk 200 level to my customer. And then again required, I can pull the specialist and they can help the customer. So it’s like most, these certifications ties to the customer obsession because you want to work with the customer. You want to interact with the customer. You want to understand their problem.

Manuel: That’s something that I, at times don’t always do. So you, when you’re going through, you set yourself an end goal that I’m gonna achieve it by this date and it basically, it almost forces you to go through. Now, when you’re setting the end date, are you, is the end date that’s when you’re scheduling the exam or is it just a broad, I think by two months, I’m gonna do this or month end or whatever it is. So how do you determine what is that end date?

Nidhi: So basically depend upon the material which I have, then the amount of work. And again, our role is ambiguous. Sometimes it may happen that we like whole week we are working, we did not get the opportunity to study, right? So those dates are in my mind and mostly I have met those dates. Usually I kept like month end date and I’ll make sure that weekends, then if I’m not able to catch up over the week, then weekends, I’ll just go study and I’ll literally forget about the world that time. Just focus on my study. Because if I study for that one month, I don’t have to study again next month, one month, if I have to redo the certifications. In that one month study, I should be at that point that I should clear that certification exam. So that’s the mentality. And then I look into the work, what I’m currently doing, how I plan to manage that work so that it won’t impact the work as well as my study and that timeline. So like, I’ll just consider all those factors and then appear for my examinations.

Manuel: So then as you’re going through and you mentioned here, it’s very ambiguous and even in prior ones, so you touched on documentation, you touched on gathering different information. Are there any skills or any habits that you’ve developed over time to kind of organize how you’re doing things? Do you have a method to how you approach customer work? And again, it doesn’t necessarily have to be even just current customers, but in the past, you mentioned you were developers. They had a lot of framework processes. Is that something that you continue to do today? And is that something you would recommend like moving forward, like it’s good to have a process, especially here, it’s very ambiguous. So, you know, if you don’t have your own process set, it’s very easy to get distracted, to not understand what you’re working on. So how do you personally manage your own, how are you your own project manager, I guess is the question.

Nidhi: Yeah, like the focus, the first thing, you should have a clear focus, clear path, then comes the planning. So your focus is like, this is my target, then comes the planning, okay, this is what my planning is, like I should be doing this, this, this, then it comes the resource, gathering that resource. And after that, the final thing is, you need to study for that. So you need to dedicate time for that. So that’s how I approach those things. Initially, I was very poor in time management during the start of my career. And then I learned, like, you should write those things. So I make a small, small notes, even now I’m using OneNote, I have those tabs created for each and every certification, so that I can write there, okay, this is what I need to do, this is what I have done, this is pending, and like, when you do mock test, sometimes your answers are wrong. So making sure that you go check why that was wrong, and work on those things. So that is related to the certification. But yeah, like in my day to day work as well, I’ll prefer to create my to-do list, and then look at what is the priority one for now, so that I can first focus on the priority one, and then slowly work on the least priority ones.

Manuel: As you’re doing that, are you still also setting timelines? So you mentioned priorities, and I’ve talked to different people, and again, that’s something that I’ve tried adapting bits and pieces from different people’s careers. Are you doing a to-do list for the day, for the week, for the month? Like how do you approach what you should be doing, and not only just what you should be doing for your current role, but I’m assuming, just based on my experience with you, you’re probably also planning ahead, is understanding, okay, what am I trying to achieve? So how do you go through and do your specific goal setting, both day-to-day, for the year, for, you know, what do you do?

Nidhi: So like my personal goal settings, I usually do during the December timeframe, because that is something, like the work-wise, it’s a little slow, we have like the vacations, and all those times, I utilize that time, and then I look back to see what I have not done this year, so that should be in my to-do list. Something, and I like to do different things, so like I’m not like, okay, I’m just sitting on the TFC, no, I want to do some coding as well, I want to do some mentoring as well, I want to do some hiring as well, so then like I just like put those things, timelines into a small, small buckets, okay, maybe a week I can focus on mentoring things, maybe like a month I can focus on my certification, so this month my focus is only on my certification, so I’m not going to work on the internal project, I’ll just take care of my day-to-day task, and prepare for certification, certification done. Now this is my breathing time, so this breathing time I’ll focus on my project, so that’s how like I switch contextual switching I do, so that like your mind, right, it also refreshes with those contextual switching, and that’s how like I move towards those tasks.

Manuel: As you’re going through and doing the different tasks, and I asked this because especially early on in my career I struggled, as you’re going through in context switching, are you also having to set boundaries and being able to tell people no, right? Is that something that you do often, and how do you approach that? Because I know I want to help, and it sounds like you enjoy the mentoring, you want to help, I don’t know that you’ve ever told me no when I, you know, we used to come and ask questions, but how do you approach it? Like what’s your methodology, or how do you determine what to say no to? Because I struggle at moments where it’s just, yes, yes, yes, and it’s overwhelming, how do you go through and manage that?

Nidhi: Yeah, so like as you mentioned, right, it’s hard to say no, but sometimes like there are situations, right, like you already have like 10 things in your plate, right, do you have room to take 11th or 12th? If you have, then you can take it, but if you don’t have, right, you don’t want to mess up with those 10 things, and you don’t want that two additional things to be added to the plate, and you are not giving your 100% to that. So if I’m in that kind of situation, then I’m saying no, I just want to focus on these 10 things first, I want to devote my 100% on that, because if you are doing something half-heartedly, that doesn’t make sense, because again, you have to rework on that, that’s what I learned. So if do something which you think that you can just give your 100% and then that thing is done, that’s it. So it will be gone from your to-do list, that’s what I feel, and I look to the thing.

Manuel: Outside of kind of those roles and responsibilities, the other thing that I’ve noticed, and again, not just here, we’re working together today, you give presentations, one of the things that I’ve noticed that you do very well is you speak very well, you’re able to communicate just your ability to give presentations is very good.

Nidhi: Thank you.

Manuel: Is that something that you’ve consciously worked on? What are the ways that you develop that? Because it’s not easy, and a lot of times people have an anxiety or a fear, but especially today, and I hadn’t seen you do a presentation in person. So this is the first time you did very well as speaking loudly, speaking clearly, and the other thing that I noticed is as you were speaking, you weren’t just speaking here. Hey, blah, blah, blah, like as you spoke, you made sure to speak and address the entire room. How did you develop those skills and what made you kind of want to work on that?

Nidhi: So as I mentioned, right, I used to deliver the session to my company within my company. There was an academy training center, right? So I was delivering those one week sessions to them. So that helps me with my public speaking, at least the fear which we have. The first session when I gave, I was in a stress, I got up 4 a.m. in the morning, I was preparing for my lectures. Second time, little bit better, better, and then the thing is like when you are hearing other people’s, you are learning from others’ experiences as well. Sometimes like people do mocks, we have this concept. So people do mocks, they receive the feedback. Maybe you are one of the feedback provider, but there are other stakeholders who provides the feedback, and you will learn some new dimensions about that, right? And then you can work on implementing that in your own area skill sets. So that’s how like I’m just, it’s just a journey I am currently doing, so yeah.

Manuel: And then the academy, I know you mentioned that you’re doing the teachings. As you’re going through, was there any training process or did you just kind of sign up? And you’re, all of this is pretty much self-taught then, is that correct?

Nidhi: Yeah, so actually as I mentioned, right, my manager asked me, hey, this is something came from learning department, training and learning department, do you want to do that? And I’m like, yeah, let me just give it a try. So that’s how I signed up for that. I gave it for first time, then another quarter I gave, third quarter, and I started seeing like I have, and now I’m having more confidence because I’m talking to people. I like, if you can ask me, I can just like deliver the session on those topics without even looking at the slides. So that level of confidence I got. And then I got the recognition as well within my organization. So when you are getting the appreciation, that also boost your moral, right? So yeah, those small, small things helped me to work on these things.

Manuel: And do you think that that also, when you’re speaking to executives at that level, do you think that that experience, and I don’t know if you consciously did it knowing that that’s gonna help you at that level, or did you as you’re now speaking to directors C level, did you kind of see that, oh, they are listening to what I’m doing, I’m able to articulate this properly. Is that something that, again, you discovered on the job that that how this works, and you just kind of continued?

Nidhi: Yeah, so I discovered on the job, and like we have speaker certification. So I gave, I prepared for that, I cleared those one, because there also you will learn small skills, right? Like how to take the break, how to maintain the eye contact, what you should say, what you shouldn’t say. So all those small, small skills, you will learn from those trainings. So yeah, like the person, what I feel is, everything has a learning opportunity, even the interaction which we are having, that is also a learning opportunity, something I’m learning from you, something you are learning from me. So all interactions, I’m just treating as a learning opportunity, maybe very small things, but something I got.

Manuel: I know we covered a lot of different topics in a short amount of time. Is there anything that we’ve kind of missed along, I know that we’ve mentioned 14 years, and now AWS, is there anything along your career path and your career growth that maybe we kind of skipped over, that it comes to mind?

Nidhi: No, I guess we covered everything.

Manuel: Outside of, we’ve talked about learning and studying, how to continue your career growth, speaking. Is there any topic that I… we haven’t touched on? Is there any question that I haven’t asked you that you’re like, you know what, this is something that I wish I would have known 10 years ago, like a younger Nidhi would have said, not that you would change anything, but maybe had I known this 10 years ago, it would have accelerated this part of my career, or I didn’t take this chance, or I did take this chance, but maybe I should have approached it differently.

Nidhi: Yeah, so like if I look back, right, so like the things which currently I’m doing, so like I worked on my writing skills because we have a different way of writing. So like, I usually write the technical design documentation that is more on the technical language, but when you have to write something related to the business or the strategic thought, then your writing styles is totally different. So that I learned, then when you are interacting, right? So like, you are not interacting just in the technical terms, you need to think from the perspective what measures it is giving. Like just not saying, just not providing the data, hey, like I’m just managing the cloud infrastructure, no. I am optimizing the cloud infrastructure which is helping in like 10% optimizations for the customer. So like thinking from that perspective, like the data perspective, which I was not thinking earlier, but now I started thinking towards that.

Manuel: And I’m glad you brought that up. So I’ve done a number of these podcasts, I’ve had a number of guests. We’ve talked about presentation and speaking, but I think this is the first time that anybody’s brought up writing. Not technical documentation, because again, that is something that I feel is, it’s important and that’s something that’s helped me in my career is being able to write technical documentation, to be able to write instructions. And I use that to be able to progress in my career because the way I approached it is, how do I move out of this role? Like if I’m an admin, if I’m an admin and I see an engineer position, how do I move that without, you start to become the expert. Well, if I write documentation and have everything, so that when I leave, whoever comes in can do that. But strategic documentation, that’s not something that is taught up much outside of Amazon, similar to this is the first time. If you would have known that 10 years ago, what do you think that that would have done in your career for you?

Nidhi: Again, it could have made me better prepared for those strategic discussions, because documentation is bringing your thoughts on a paper. So when you are documenting, you are seeing what your thought process is, how you are narrating that. And when you are reading it, like reading it loud, whether whatever I have written is that correct, or I should add more. So when you are reading first time, take a break, then second time when you come, oh, some data points are missing in this documentation. So I should add that. So same way when you are preparing for your speaking speeches, better first write it, read it loud, see if something is missing over there, and then take your peers, ask them, “Hey, I just want to do a mock. Can you just take a look? Suggest me anything I should add over here, this is what my flow will look like.” So that will also help you in polishing your presentation.

Manuel: We’re at the point now where there’s a lot of generative AI. With your writing, apart from seeking other peer feedback, do you think that using tools like that is a good opportunity? Not necessarily, you know, maybe it’s for spell checking, because I remember I used to just use spell checker, like, “Are there any spelling mistakes?” No, okay, let’s go, we’re good enough. Do you think not to have it write it for you? Because I think you’re not developing the skill, but using that to get feedback, was that something that you think would be helpful?

Nidhi: Yeah, of course, that saves time, but the thing is, don’t rely 100% on that, because it may not know the facts, what you know. So if you are getting that feedback, just see whether that feedback is relevant to your documentation or not. And then work on that feedback, because the language sometimes which Gen AI uses, people can easily find out that this is something generated by the Gen AI versus has been written naturally.

Manuel: So maybe use it to help you, maybe with the first draft or two, but then continue and then seek out peer feedback.

Nidhi: Yeah, like final touch should be yours after getting the peer feedback, so yeah.

Manuel: And any other skills that you can think of that you would say, “Okay, hey, “here’s something that you would have found helpful,” or is it really the key points that you touched on? Because I believe that you’ve, you know, certifications, the way that you approach learning, and even just general interactions, like that’s an opportunity to learn and listening and also learning from others and the feedback they’re giving.

Nidhi: Yeah, I guess those are something, the thing is every, like you are the owner for all those things, right? So if you think that something is making you exhausted, just switch to another thing. And then again, maybe later, once you are refreshed, come back to that. So it’s like you are the person who is driving, everybody has different way of thinking, different way of working. So like you need to think from like the perspective what like works best for you. Some people like, okay, certification, maybe like I would prefer once in a quarter or once in a year. That’s okay, that works for you, but then have that as your goal and make sure you’re working towards that. It shouldn’t be just sit and lie on your to-do list. It should be knocked out by year end. So that’s how your planning should be.

Manuel: Well, I have enjoyed the conversation. I think there’s been a lot of, you know, actionable advice. I think there’s, even I personally have picked up a couple of notes so that when I go back and rewatch this, I’m gonna go through and there’s certain things that I’m gonna apply. So I really appreciate you coming on and definitely at some point, you know, if things change later on and you develop additional skills and you’re saying, hey Manny, I wanna give an update, I would more than welcome you on again.

Nidhi: Sure, thanks Manny.

Manuel: And for everybody else, I hope you enjoyed this. And again, similar to me, I hope you were able to pick up additional, you know, tips and tricks that you can use as you’re managing your own career. And again, provide any feedback and let me know if there’s additional questions that you think would be beneficial as, you know, you’re going through and navigating your career. So with that, again, thank you everyone and make sure you plug in and download the knowledge.