Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
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AI Mistakes: Focused Resilience and a Specialization Bet with Daniel Lemire (4/4)
If you had something to share, what would you say, and how would you say it? Daniel Lemire asked himself the same question in the process of creating AI Mistakes. As it turns out, AI Mistakes isn’t just a platform for learning in public. It’s something Daniel must be doing. Want to know why? After completing the vision board and gaining more perspective on the layoff event that would change his direction, Daniel knew where to begin. But it took time to translate what he had written on the post-it note about his needs in a role to a role at a specific company. Through intentional mindset shifts, feedback from others, and additional help from a mentor, Daniel chose to make a bet on generative AI. Join us for episode 326 and the exciting conclusion of Daniel’s story. We’ll discuss how the specialized pre-sales role at ServiceNow really is a culmination of Daniel’s experience to this point and how he’s filling some of the sales and marketing gaps from back when he was an independent consultant. Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He’s also the creator of AI Mistakes. If you missed parts 1-3 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323, Episode 324, and Episode 325. Topics – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes, Gaining AI Expertise, Mindset Shifts and Greater Clarity, A Role in Pre-Sales, Transition to Working for a Technology Vendor 3:14 – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes John wants to hear more about the genesis of AI Mistakes. The timeline starts when Daniel found out that he was in the group of people being laid off. “So, here I am…I think I’ve got things figured out. I’ve done really well. I think I’m going to get a really great appraisal for having taken care of business and done a good job, but actually, I got nothing…. Even now I still don’t know what anybody actually thought of my performance that year that I figured things out.” – Daniel Lemire, on not getting a performance review Though Daniel’s role had been eliminated, he and others were asked to stay on at the company until sometime during the following year (required to get a severance). Daniel recounts having to comfort his team about his departure. They had not learned to regulate themselves as Daniel had. “You’re going to be fine. You know what you’re doing. We’re putting you into a position to be successful going forward. You don’t need me to be successful. You just need to know that you can do this, and you’re good at what you do…. It just means that my next thing isn’t here, and that’s ok. I would not have been capable of having that conversation even a year prior because I hadn’t done the work that I needed to do to understand.” – Daniel Lemire, on comforting his team when delivering the news of his role being eliminated Daniel says this moment was a big confidence builder, and he feels he handled it very well with his team. Many of Daniel’s colleagues who were also part of the layoff did not handle it well. They were very angry. He reminds us these kinds of events are very difficult to go through. Having a severance package certainly helped provide Daniel time. Daniel mentioned his brother went through this kind of situation and did not receive a severance. Years early, Daniel had planned to stay as long as the company would let him, believing if the company decided to end his employment that it would likely result in some type of severance. He and a number of colleagues decided to focus on doing a good job and to deal with job loss if and when it came rather than living in fear about it. Daniel cites this mindset shift as an important point in his maturity to prepare for when the layoff eventually impacted him. “When I got the announcement that that road was going to end, that was like a golden ticket for me.” – Daniel Lemire Daniel ended his consulting business in 2009 after signing an agreement to work at PepsiCo. He was going “all in.” Once he knew his employment would be ending, Daniel continued to do great work until the very last day nearly 6 months later (something he’s very proud of). This was the catalyst for starting AI Mistakes. Daniel filed the paperwork and started developing a plan. He had learned a lot over the years since his last stint as an independent consultant and wanted to be ready for a potential return to it. “Sales and marketing is a thing that matters, and you’re going to have to do it. And I’m ready for this.” – Daniel Lemire Daniel assessed his preparedness for the uncomfortable parts of consulting if he was to return to it after the layoff. It was at least an option. “But the name AI Mistakes came out of the recognition that that is how we learn the best. Even at a very technical level…you have to learn doing it the wrong way to understand what the right way looks like…. That’s why you don’t become an architect the minute you step out of college. You haven’t had enough opportunity to make big enough mistakes…. Everybody’s made a big mistake. If you talk to anybody in operations, I guarantee you they have a sev 1 story.” Daniel Lemire Daniel highlights some of his biggest growth moments being when he really broke something. During these times other people had to pitch in to help fix the problems. We want to foster work environments so people can make mistakes that are not career ending or that they cannot recover from. 9:20 – Gaining AI Expertise Was AI a focus for Daniel when he worked on the innovation team? Daniel says there were several projects the greater innovation team worked on which were AI heavy. The exposure to AI for Daniel began by observing other members of the team and learning about it in the background. Someone was building models to improve manufacturing, and Daniel was able to see the progress and the outcome of that work, which sparked an interest in AI. “The difficulty for me was I couldn’t do any of that work. I just knew that that was the right thing to be doing…. Sometimes my role in innovation more often exactly opposite of what I had been doing previously in my career. Every job I’d had at PepsiCo was being the subject matter expert. I was the big brain. The moment I stepped into innovation, all of that basically went away. The only thing I was really good at that I brought to the team was helping with architecture and mapping out how the systems should interconnect and how we should prosecute the program of dealing with all of the things. I was no longer the expert that knew how to do the specific thing. I was working with the team to make that happen.” – Daniel Lemire A colleague on the innovation team told Daniel about GPT-3 and how it was actually beginning to work. After this conversation, Daniel got an OpenAI account, but despite thinking it was interesting, he didn’t really know what to do with it. At least initially, Daniel couldn’t find the value in this tool. “That is the number one thing I took away from my time in innovation…. What is the value, and how do you succinctly articulate that? …It can be the best technology. You can have the smartest people. But, if they are not willing to put their money to it, it doesn’t matter.” – Daniel Lemire Especially when communicating with executives, being unable to clearly articulate the value of something means it will not get funded. When ChatGPT happened, Daniel recognized it was going somewhere and began spending his time using it. While he initially did not know what to do with GPT-3, Daniel had used Stable Diffusion to generate images for some of the presentations he built during his time on the innovation team. Daniel had originally bought a couple of desktop computers with NVIDIA graphics cards to mine Ethereum as part of his innovation work. He mentions researching cryptocurrency and blockchain (and specifically NFTs). The best way Daniel knew to learn about these technologies was to build a lab at home. Once there was no way to mine Ethereum any longer, Daniels’ lab environment was left idle. He decided to use it for Stable Diffusion and began to learn how the models worked. “So, I quickly became very familiar with those AI things, and then everything just kind of fell into place…. I’ve learned enough in an enterprise environment that I can actually consult and help people understand what the next thing is that they need to do…. A colleague at work said to me, ‘you know a lot, and you’re not sharing enough.’” – Daniel Lemire The feedback from his colleague is what prompted Daniel to start a YouTube channel for AI Mistakes. See also the YouTube Feed on the AI Mistakes Website. “If I really do have something that’s useful to share, who am I going to share it with, and how am I going to do that?” – Daniel Lemire For many years Daniel would watch YouTube videos in the evenings to keep up with technology trends. Since this helped him learn things, he could provide content for other people to learn in that format. Daniel was also used to writing newsletters for innovation, and he began his own AI Mistakes newsletter. You can view the newsletter and subscribe to it here. He also had the previous consulting experience to lean on. When Daniel was thinking through what would come next for him, he felt AI Mistakes could be that paycheck. He decided to treat it seriously and focus on it. “I went from one day going into the office at PepsiCo to the next day sitting here working the same amount of time building all of the things around AI Mistakes…. I get excited about something, and I get after it. And that’s what I did…. But, having done that vision board, I also knew that…I’ve gotta focus on all of the things. I can’t just be narrow on one thing. I’ve got to think about the bigger picture.” – Daniel Lemire Daniel reiterates
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