Building IT Careers – a Continuous Learning Journey | Ida Salo, IBM

Hi, as you very much know, my name is Ida and I'm an infrastructure sales specialist at IBM. I'm here to talk to you about how to stay relevant in the IT field and how to become relevant for the IT field. So staying relevant in tech means that you have the willingness and the desire to learn what's new in the industry. It doesn't mean that you have to know everything and anything there is in the field. There's simply too much for that to be possible. Instead, you should focus on your own segment. Whether it's storage solutions, servers, AI software, anything, mainframe, go on. Whatever your niche is, concentrate on that, no matter how new or unknown it is to you. As Conor McGregor says, the more you seek the uncomfortable, the more you will become comfortable. I'd like to add to that that you should always seek for the uncomfortable all over again. So seek the uncomfortable and when you do, you will become more comfortable and then just seek it again. The tech industry moves at an incredible speed and it keeps on accelerating and I know that sounds intimidating. I know I was intimidated and that's exactly what I thought nearly five years ago when I was applying into the industry for the first time. What I've noticed having applied to the tech industry for three times and gotten in three times is that often you don't necessarily need to know about the tech that your job will be related to or the topic that you'll be working with, obviously discounting expert positions. Instead, you may be just the person to fill other needs in a team. You need to have and show an interest towards the technology or technologies that you'll be working with and you need to have a growth mindset and the ability to continuously learn and those are skills that you are able to learn. Those are skills that you can go for. So how can you actually build a growth mindset? Having a growth mindset means that you're always able to learn and that your skills and traits are not set in stone. At IBM, we talk a lot about having a growth mindset. We're constantly offered and assigned new learning materials. We have massive amounts of training and are encouraged to study and develop ourselves further than even we think our potential goes and we offer that even for you from IBM skills academies. IBM believes that you can expand your thinking even if you yourself sometimes doubt it and a growth mindset isn't something we build once and we're set. So don't get that wrong. It's something that needs to be constantly practiced. So imagine an elastic band. If you use it daily, it keeps its elasticity and holds whatever you need it to. But if you stop using it for a long enough period and then try to use it, it'll crumble or snap. Most of you've probably seen this. Your growth mindset does the exact same. If you practice it continuously, you're able to take on challenges larger than life without getting overwhelmed by feeling the stamina and the energy of going for it. But if you don't practice it for a while and then take on a larger than life challenge, you may not be able to complete it, at least not without feeling overwhelmed. In order to make it easier for you to practice a growth mindset, make it a habit. Bring the habit of challenging yourself not only into your professional life but also into your personal life. For me, this meant multiple things. But the most conscious personal challenge I have is running. I used to hate running and considered myself to be as far from a runner as possible. I started running in ridiculously small amounts, ridiculously slow, feeling uncomfortable, and thinking everyone was looking. No one's looking. This challenged me mentally more than physically at first. Now the discomfort, the challenge is more physical. I go beyond running further, running faster, and running for a longer time. And slowly, I'm starting to consider myself a runner. And how this actually has reflected into my professional life. I honestly thought I couldn't work in tech because I was a non-technical person. Because when I started in the tech field, I was still studying my bachelor's in business. I couldn't understand or remember the abbreviations or the language related to AI, related to servers, mainframes, or in the newest ones, generative AI. But with the same attitude of challenging myself to run, I started slowly and accepted that this would be a long learning journey. Where I'd most likely have to repeat, repeat, and repeat questions to finally understand the tech conversations that were around these topics. By allowing this time without unnecessary stress of, oh, I really don't understand anything. I really don't know anything. I ended up learning the language used around AI. And I ended up doing my master's thesis on it. So it's possible. Our aim is to nurture continuous curiosity. To have the desire to know more regardless of the topic, despite the amount you think you know about it. Whether you think you know nothing about it, or if you think you know everything about it. For those of you who think that you know nothing about a topic at hand, I offer you two possibilities for your reality. One, you really don't know anything about a topic. Which means that this is your chance to learn. You will never get this exact moment, this exact opportunity again. The second reality is the other quite common possibility. You already know what the topic is in relation to, and maybe even a few facts about it. In this case, acknowledge that you are not starting from scratch. Don't undersell yourself. You are not starting from scratch. Don't undersell yourself. You already learned a small amount of information, so you can also learn the next new information that's given to you. Regardless of which of these realities you have, treat the moment as a golden opportunity to expand your knowledge. Treat it as your new challenge. And for those of you who think and believe that you know everything about a topic, I dare you to ask a few questions from yourself. Have you gone through all of the information that's out there? Is there room to expand? Where can you expand and why? Alongside accumulating the knowledge to the very next level, what can you contribute to the information that's out there? What thoughts and questions have your search for information raised? Share these with a friend on social media or any other medium and start a conversation. You might start a conversation that ends up bringing up the next innovation, or at the very least, you or someone else might learn something new. So, how do you further cultivate the skill of continuous learning that is boosted by a growth mindset? My first tip for you, assume you don't know. You most likely know some, but by assuming that you don't know, you lose your preconceptions and your biases. You can better evaluate the information that's out there and you can look at it from an objective manner. In addition, it helps to get rid of the embarrassment that you might have and that comes from not knowing and asking. It gets easier to ask those stupid questions that, of course, we all know don't exist. And for me, in my current job, the question I considered my so-called stupid question was, what is a server? Which I asked during the first week of my training. But for this talk, I became slightly curious and asked my colleague, what is the simplest question I have ever asked you? And he answered me in a heartbeat. I know, worried, right? I had asked him, what is the difference between Sun and Nas? Honestly, I had to laugh because the answer I gave him was, can you please remind me what the difference is again? The reality is, you might not know after the first time. You might have to repeat that question. And that's okay. Repeat it. Ask it again. My second tip for you, in order to cultivate your continuous learning habit, is to transform your identity. Ditch the box you're in. Ditch the identity that you associate with the topic. I personally associated the topic technology with my lack of technical capabilities and with myself being a non-technical person. I threw out of the window the identity of not being a technological person, once I realized that all those people that I call techies have also once been the ones to know nothing, and now they're experts in it. I started later in the game, so it obviously makes sense that I have a lot to catch up on. So not me, nor you, should fear not knowing everything. Even the experts need to continue developing, need to continue learning, need to see what's new. At IBM, we had a company-wide learning experience this summer that reminded me of all of this. WatsonX, which is IBM's enterprise-grade generative AI platform, was introduced to the entire company through WatsonX Challenge, a week-long project that included trying out the platform and making suggestions for its improvement. Why am I telling you about this? I sat with my left side, I had IBM Finland's CFO, and on my right side, I had a senior AI expert. Around the table, we had a bunch of people who also just wanted to understand the new tool. All of us were at the same starting line. The CFO, the senior AI expert, and myself. All of us brought different perspectives and different knowledge to the table. One explaining the effect of WatsonX on the financial bottom line, another going through the use cases of WatsonX for business, and one telling us how WatsonX actually works from a technical perspective. All of us without preconceptions, all of us with a need to learn about WatsonX, and all of us learning more from each other. Attach a new identity to the topic, whether it's my dad's an AI engineer, so it must be in my genetics, or I'm a music lover and I really want to know how my headphones work, or something as abstract as I'm a productive person and I wonder how IBM's generative AI, WatsonX, might make my work more productive. Find the curiosity in everyday struggles, in everyday questions, and everyday statements, and attach them to your life. Attach them to your identity. My final tip for this continuous learning journey for you is don't expect to do it alone. Don't expect to do it alone. Yes, I've researched plenty. The last article I read was about health bidding and maximising the performance and the endurance of consumer-level NAND flash. Did I understand everything? No. Did I learn something? Of course. Yes, I've gone through books and articles about technology, through magazines about the latest and greatest inventions, through courses that teach you about AI, storage solutions, generative AI, mainframe servers, but the reality is I can't learn it all on my own. A lot of knowledge is easiest to access through discussion. Now, I think I know what you might think. Well, she works at IBM, so she has access to all the correct people, and you're absolutely right. It's easier for me to access the correct people, but what's also true is that you have nearly the exact same access through modern tools like social media and email. So, ask. Get in touch. Reach out. Don't hesitate at an event like this to come and have a chat and ask those questions that you might think are too simple to ask. Today, we had a coffee room set up. Did you visit it? Did you start a conversation with our experts in generative AI? Did you reach out to us? Were you there? If you didn't, make sure to reach out next time. Whoever it is you want to have a discussion with, whoever you need to talk to to learn something new, and you can learn something new from everybody. So, have the courage. Start building your growth mindset. Set your next challenge and start learning. Continue learning. We've all heard the saying, knowledge is power. Your knowledge, my knowledge, their knowledge, whoever it is, knowledge is power. So, grow your power through continuous learning. Assume you don't know. Transform your identity. Ditch the box you're in and attach the new identity to the topic. And don't expect to do it alone. We're all here for you. You're all there for us. We need to learn more from each other. We need to have a growth mindset and continuously learn. Thank you for this opportunity to teach you something new.