AI Fears, Cybersecurity Showdowns & Why Ambition Still Matters | Software Sundays #30

This week on Software Sundays, KD breaks down the growing anxiety around artificial intelligence and what it means for workers, engineers, students, and creators trying to navigate the future of work.

We start with the viral commencement speech where graduates booed discussions about AI, and unpack why so many young people feel uncertain about job opportunities in an AI-driven economy. KD explains why AI should be viewed as a tool instead of an enemy, while also acknowledging the very real pressure being placed on junior and entry-level workers.

Then we dive into a cybersecurity showdown where AI agents and human security teams battled each other in a live competition. KD explains how red teams and blue teams operate, why AI hallucinations remain dangerous in security environments, and why experienced professionals are still critical even in highly automated systems.

We also cover California’s new executive order aimed at preparing workers for AI disruption, including discussions around job retraining, universal basic capital, and how governments may attempt to soften the impact of automation over the next several years.

In this week’s Q&A, KD answers questions about:

• Staying engaged on difficult projects
• Managing expectations before accepting new work
• Understanding ambition
• Mastering process over tools
• Knowing when it’s appropriate to disagree with leadership.

We close with a reminder that communication is one of the most powerful skills builders can develop because the ability to transfer ideas effectively is what allows people to scale their impact.

CHAPTERS: 

00:00 Introduction to Software Sundays

00:49 AI Anxiety and Opportunities

05:10 Cybersecurity Showdown: AI vs Humans

11:17 Political Responses to AI Impact

17:17 Long-term Perspectives on AI

19:53 Q&A: Engagement in Difficult Projects

27:53 Managing Expectations with New Requests

34:02 The Importance of Ambition

38:14 Mastering Processes Over Tools

42:42 Disagreeing with Your Manager

48:28 The Power of Communication

#SoftwareSundays #AI #CyberSecurity #SoftwareEngineering #CareerGrowth #ArtificialIntelligence #Leadership #Technology #Engineering #Automation #BlueTeam #RedTeam #TechCareers #BuildLearnImpact #CommunicationSkills

DISCLAIMER: This is not professional advice. The views expressed are my own or those quoted. Consult your own legal, business, or tax advisors before making decisions based on this episode.

Build Learn Impact is on a mission to help you create wealth, opportunity, and ownership through technology.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Software Sundays Builders. I'm your host, KD, and I build systems that use software to solve problems for people and companies. This is a space where we have high-level conversations about technology and the impact that it has on our community. And we want to give you the tools that you need to walk away and increase your wealth and help shape the next wave of innovation. If this is your first time tuning in, thank you for being here. You are in the right place. And if you've been rocking with us for a minute, it is great to have you back. Before we get started, quick disclaimer Software Sundays is for informational purposes only. Please consult your own legal, business, or tax advisors before making any decisions based upon information you found in this show. With that being said, the information is valuable and it is accurate. So let's jump in. Just to start for the news, graduates boo a commencement speech about AI. This was a funny story when I heard it, because it really speaks to how anxious young people are feeling. I'll say young people and old people, everyone is feeling about AI and the type of impact that it's having in their lives. They're looking at the news and looking at articles saying that, you know, there's not enough roles, that people are getting laid off thousands at a time just to make room for AI. And that's starting to have an effect on the people's minds and how they look at the technology. But it the most interesting part about it is the fact that you should not be looking at AI as an enemy, or it's not your competition. It's really just a tool that we have access to. And all of us have access to the tool, right? It's not like I am the only one that can access ChatGPT or I'm the only one that can access Claude. All of us have the ability to go leverage the tool and go get some opportunity from using that tool. So that's how we have to look at it. When people are booing the tools or they're booing the technology, I think we're missing a large part of how effective it is. We're missing the part that it's only a tool and it can only be used by the people that understand how to use it effectively. And yes, I understand that there is a risk to entry-level roles and junior level employees where companies are actually saying that, hey, we would rather hire someone who's a bit more senior than someone who is early in the game because we give that senior AI, they can go do 10x the work, quote unquote, versus that junior employee, they are still figuring out what the skills are that are needed to best succeed in that role in that industry and that function. So there's definitely a balance going on there. But it is funny when you're seeing people talk about AI or they're telling the students, the graduates, that hey, you know, AI is the greatest technology that is going to exist in your generation or our generation, this lifetime, whatever it may be. And then they're getting a boo. And then when they bring up uh, you know, some other topic that doesn't involve the technology, that doesn't involve AI, that's when they're, you know, they're hooraying, there's excitement. But it's like they're all just tools. We shouldn't get so emotionally invested and emotionally impacted by the tool or the mention of the tool. Because it's not like you're gonna put the tool back in the bag, right? Like, so it is very interesting. I it is almost like I wonder what the students were feeling at the time. I know a lot of them, like I said, they they are anxious, they are worried, and this was actually a commencement for humanities school. So we're talking about artists, writers, more creatives. And I will say that a lot of those roles are maybe seeing the most impact with just the tools being able to create copyright, uh, being able to create images and videos, and that being something that people are kind of learning to deploy or learning to use. And so that's a definitely a big change, but there's still opportunity in there, right? The people that are understanding that AI is here, that the tools are here, they're looking at their ability to do well in marketing, their ability to do well in and as a creative, as how do I use the tool? How do I become that more experienced marketer? So it that opportunity is still here, even if people are a little nervous and uh, you know, I'll say complaining about it. Some other news. The AI and humans battled it out in a cybersecurity showdown out in San Antonio last month. And this is a very cool and interesting article to me because it really highlighted how hands-on cybersecurity is. And when you think about the different components to cybersecurity and the different roles, you have a red team, you have the blue team, you have a purple team, right? Which is really just a mix of both. That red team is the attackers, and this is when we're thinking about ethical hackers. These are the people that are trying to go into the system and trying to identify vulnerabilities. They're trying to find the weaknesses that a black hat hacker would go exploit and take advantage of to either steal money, uh, do some type of fraud, or do whatever they're gonna do. Those blue teams, security professionals, are going to address the vulnerabilities. They're going to be monitoring the logs, they're going to be doing everything in their power to make sure that the vulnerabilities cannot be exploited. And then, if they are exploited, if there is some attack vector that is discovered, that they are closing it down, locking it down as quickly as possible. So this game that was, or this competition that was uh conducted over the last month was very interesting because it showed one the objectives of both sides and kind of gave a little hint into what is actually happening when we think about SOCs and cybersecurity and what those different components and roles look like. But it also gave a very good description and highlight an emphasis on what AI is going to do inside of that space. So traditionally, the red team would be more security professionals that are experienced at getting inside of the system. And then the blue team would be college students who are still learning and training, but they have enough experience to protect the system. This year, Anthropic was able to get a team in place, a team of AI agents in place that was actually operating as another blue team. And their job was to make sure, same as every other blue team, make sure that no data was being uh accessed and that any attackers were being identified and kept out of the system. So that was the AI's job along with everyone else on the blue team. The interesting part was the attackers also had access to AI. So they were using new tools and new models to actually help them conduct the attack, helping them run scripts, helping them identify vulnerabilities or uh parse logs. Every side had access to the same tools. Again, the software is available for all of us to use. So it's very interesting to see what happens when both sides actually start using them. The funny thing about it is that AI and cybersecurity has some of the same challenges that you would see in AI in any other industry or use case. The models are going to hallucinate. They are going to make decisions that may not be based on the right assumption or the assumption that a human would normally make. They are going to try things that we would not want them to do. And that could be good or bad, sometimes depending on what they end up doing. But those same risks exist no matter what function you bring AI into. So seeing the AI in this cybersecurity use case, which are interesting because one of the hackers had created their bot that would install malware on the target host, that target system. But instead, the agent ended up installing the malware on the attacker system, which is not something you would ever want to do. In this scenario, the malware probably wasn't too dangerous. Uh but imagine if you are in this the scenario and your AI starts installing either a package or some type of tool that is supposed to solve one problem, but it ends up solving or creating 10 more additional problems without actually making it clear that it's doing that. That's going to be a risk that's going to add more vulnerabilities to a system than it's going to fix. So that's the type of problem that experienced professionals are still needed to be able to identify, watch out for, and fix when it happens. Because you have to understand it will happen. These systems, these tools are not perfect. They are going to make mistakes, and they're going to make mistakes in very creative ways. So being able to call upon some type of experience to say, hey, this is the thing that we need to do, and this is the thing that we need to avoid, that's going to be incredibly useful for every person in every industry and every business function to keep in mind. Because those types of mistakes will actually cause problems eventually. They're going to cost money, they're going to become an issue if you don't have someone who understands how to combat them. And on the political side, California's governor signs an executive order aimed at protecting workers impacted by artificial intelligence. And I know I took a lot of AI, every one of these stories was about AI, but really that is the story in the current year. In 2026, AI is almost everything. So be prepared to listen to it, be prepared to understand, and just don't get too emotional about AI. Understand that it is very deep into everything that we're going to do and everything that's going to happen over the next 12 to 18 months. But because of that pervasiveness and how deep it is into every industry and every country, there are actual AI fears that are leading politicians to investigate solutions to protect citizens from being displaced by AI. And I mentioned it, right? The layoffs that are happening because companies are saying, hey, we can automate this, or the challenge that young workers or young graduates are having when they're applying the roles and they're not getting any any success with finding a job because these roles are not the same as they once were. Now I'll say that they're not the same as they once were because now people are looking for employees and looking for talent that understands how to use the tools because everyone is trying to be more efficient. So that role that was traditional, that role that you could have learned all of the skills that were necessary inside of university, inside of school, that role doesn't exist in the same way that exists today. And there are so many other people that are looking for those same roles, and you have the same skills as them. So that competition becomes even more challenging for everyone experiencing right now, experiencing it right now. So these types of policies and these types of decisions from policymakers are really designed to help slow down some of that change to make it more consumable and make it more acceptable for the general population. But the actual uh executive order didn't change any laws, didn't result in some new policy that's going to dramatically affect the way people live. But it's focused on creating plans and calling for plans to deal with that scenario when it starts to actually happen. And I'll say when it starts to get worse. It is calling for an investigation into universal basic capital, which is a spin-off of universal basic income, which I've heard a lot more about since 2020 and since COVID. Like basically the government just giving people direct payments, almost like a permanent stimulus that would help families and individuals really just continue to pay for their needs. And it's a stopgap to deal with the fact that when you're laying off a lot of people, that their income is going to basically go away, right? They don't have any money, and they don't have any jobs, they don't have jobs, they don't have any money. You want to be able to give them some type of direct money, some funds so that they can still afford to pay for gas, they can still pay for housing, food, all of these things that they need to pay for while they transition to that new role. And that is going to look very different for different countries and different states, right? Because we have smaller versions of those programs. When you think of Section 8, that is UBI, but it's basic income for housing. When you think of food stamps, it's basic income for uh food. That universal part of it is really just expanding those programs to actually one, cover more people, so making it more accessible, and two, covering more items that people need to pay for, besides just food and housing and shelter. So it's a necessary change from a financial uh stability standpoint. I do wonder how these people are gonna pay for these programs. It like the money, I don't know if it really exists. You know, everyone, every country, especially the US, the debt is so high that I really am curious how it'll be sustained if those plans actually get implemented. But it's worth knowing that the government is trying to think of creative ways to make people feel more comfortable, to solve the problem that people are feeling and deal with some of that anxiety, that fear that is happening because of AI and automation and the rise of these technologies. But I think the most important theme really to remember is that even in the short term, you may face a challenge. You may not get the opportunities that you're expecting or looking for or hoping for. But over the long term, these tools cannot replace you and I. They cannot replace a human that has the drive and the willingness to learn and think critically. That skill and that ability is not something you can just train an agent or a robot or some other artificial tool to do. They're only going to go as far as the people that use those tools. So you're definitely going to need to continue to learn. You're going to need to continue to think about creative ways to use the tools available. But if you have experience inside of whatever the industry might be, it might be the financial services industry, it could be real estate, it could be marketing, and like you're super creative with uh creating images or invoking an emotion in someone, that ability, that skill that you have is only going to be expanded with AI, with technology. And you literally you can replace AI with technology and it'll always have the same impact because AI is just the technology of today. A hundred years ago, the technology of the day was industrials, it was steam-powered things. And what could an industry or what could a team do with steam? And 10 years ago or 20 years ago, what could a team do with a website? What could a team do with a computer? All we're doing is giving people and giving teams and giving organizations access to faster tools, better tools that allow them to do way more than what they could have done for so much easier than what they could have done it for previously. Don't again, don't get too caught up in the emotions around the technology and the tools. Figure out how to make the most of the opportunity that you have available in front of you. So if you want to go deeper into any of these topics and explore the opportunities that they create for you and your family, join BLI University. Join the community and stay involved. Every week we are discussing the biggest changes that are happening behind the scenes with a community of builders that are actively driving the revolution. So make sure you are staying tapped in and secure your seat today. And we're gonna get into our QA section for this week. Lots of interesting experiences that were uh or that are going to be uncovered for this week. The first question: how can I stay engaged on a difficult project? So, first things first, you have to be very specific about what the difficulty is that you are having with staying engaged. Is it that the project is not interesting? Is it that you're having some friction with your team? Is there a skills gap that is causing you to feel pain whenever you're trying to do your work or whatever it may be? You want to make sure you are understanding exactly what that problem is and solving for exactly what that problem is. So if you're finding that the challenge is your team and working with your team, you can address that by having more conversations with them and trying to find a level ground on how you guys communicate, how you guys work, like what is your way of working? Is that clearly understood by the people that you work with? Do they understand when you need to take a meeting? Do they understand your responsibilities outside of work? Do they understand how you need information to be conveyed to you and how you like to convey information? Like if you don't have that dynamic set up in your team, it's going to cause friction, it's going to cause some stress because every day you try to collaborate with them, which is something that you need to do on the team, right? You're collaborating, you're working together to make decisions, to push projects forward. Every time you try to make any progress, you're going to have some issue. You're going to have some pushback if you don't have the systems, if you don't have those processes in place for you and your team to actually go through those conversations effectively. So start there. It could be setting up a weekly. Or a bi-weekly touch point with either members of your team or your management, depending on where the challenge is rooted in and where it's coming from. Like for me, I make sure that I have at least a bi-weekly conversation with my manager. Not to discuss anything involved in the project, specifically to discuss our relationship, specifically to build a rapport with them, specifically to figure out what I'm missing and what I'm not doing from a uh from a communication perspective. Like what am I not missing or what am I not getting about what we're working on that can I can address, that I can improve on, so that when we start again focusing on the work tomorrow or later on in the day, I'm coming in in the best format, in the best uh way possible to actually drive things forward. And I make sure that those sessions are really focused on not the work. You're gonna have a bunch of meetings all day about specific things that you're doing in the project or on a task, and you can have those conversations throughout the day. But you really want to focus this conversation on the relationship because that'll address some of those challenges you're having or stresses that you're having with the team and the friction involved in the team. And you can have that same conversation with your team members, with your peers, with your juniors also, like whoever you feel like is the person you need to collaborate with the most and out that you're collaborating with the most, set up those sessions. It doesn't have to be weekly, it doesn't have to be bi-weekly, it can be monthly. Make sure you're building those pathways so that you can nip those problems in the butt as early as possible. If your problem is due to your limited experience in the industry or the business line that you're operating in, that's going to require you to study some of the policies in the organization. One of the things that I do weekly is to review some of the internal documentation that we have. The strategy of the organization, a lot of that is stored somewhere. It is defined and documented somewhere inside of the company. It could even, if it's a much smaller company, it might be in the head of the CEO or the founder, and it may not be written down as many places. But for most enterprises, you're going to find the policies, you're going to find the standards, the guidelines that are really creating the framework that your company and your team is expected to abide by. When you find these documents, review them. Make sure you can study them and understand what space you're operating in. Once you get that context, it makes it much easier for you to understand what to prioritize. And it makes you a stronger team member inside of that business, inside of that function, because you understand the why behind some of the things that you're doing. And that will get you much farther than just trying to go in blind and picking it up during the work, during the conversations. Another thing you can do is have conversations with people one-on-ones that are handling similar responsibilities andor even related functions, right? If you're getting some data from a team and you're having to act upon it to prompt some other team to do some work, have a meeting, 15 minutes, 30 minutes with the team that you're getting the requirements from and the team that you're you know giving the requirements to. Understand what their needs are, understand what the gaps are between that flow and understand kind of what they're prioritizing and doing right now. When you have those conversations, it again makes you much stronger inside of the work that you're doing because you can say and point to specific team members and specific asks and specific resources that these people can share with you. And that's going to be very helpful for you and the work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

And another thing you can do is to practice. Practice, practice, practice.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

It's gonna be more difficult, but if you can find an extra hour, an extra 30 minutes to run through a process and document your experience, getting those repetitions in to actually improve the work that you're doing, that's going to allow you to study and just improve way faster. And then if you're finding yourself just overall not interested inside of the business or the team or the thing that you're working on, it is okay to say that this is not the right fit for you. It is okay to say this is not what you want to work on and to go find and transition into a different team or to a different role that more directly aligns with your values and your needs and the things that you want for yourself. There are other opportunities that might just be a more better fit for you to engage with.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

So look into those.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Next question is how should I manage expectations before accepting a new request? So this is incredibly important to understand when you are working in a fast-paced environment because you're going to receive new responsibilities. The scope of your work is going to change very often, very quickly, and you have to be able to deal with those changes when they come, as they come. And two things to keep in mind there is think about it as a request that needs to be processed. But before you actually accept the responsibility as something that you need to do to change or something that needs to happen, you should spend some time validating the approach and understanding that you the request itself and understanding what change is actually required in order for you to fulfill that request. So this will require you to slow down a little bit before just saying, hey, I got this new ask for my manager or my peer or whoever it may be or the client, and let me just go do it. Need to make sure that you really understand exactly what needs to be done. And that could be what needs to be done today. It might be a one-off request that you just need to provide something, and that's fine. But it could be a request that is expected for you to do in the future moving forward. That's going to require you to shift some things around in your process, your normal functions, your normal responsibilities to make room for that new responsibility, that new scope. And that requires you to update your plan. That requires you to really estimate how much effort, how much time, how many resources is going to be to be required to take on those new responsibilities. And you have to be able to separate that, like the fulfillment versus the acceptance of that. Those are two steps that will require different skills from you. Recently, I have experienced the scope of my role expanding to include a number of challenges or to a number of changes and responsibilities due to an org structure change. We have different leaders that are kind of taking the company, taking the organization in different directions that we had not been going in previously. And those directions are requiring new reporting, new systems and processes to happen daily and even weekly. And even changes in the org structure where the size of my team has decreased, where I have less people that are supporting me. And I have different managers that again are coming from different areas of the business or even outside of the company altogether. But we still bull, we still gotta show up, we still gotta do the work. But during this time, I have to make sure that I'm making it clear what the expectations are for what I need before I can accept the new request. And I'm being transparent about what shift, what type of effort is going to be required for me to sustain those changes and continue to make my responsibilities or meet my responsibilities as I absorb these new responsibilities. So again, the the biggest tip and the biggest thing that has worked with me is really confirming before I start wasting any effort, before I start doing any type of work, concerning myself and learning what can slip, right? If you only have enough capacity for 10 tasks and you get five new tasks, that doesn't change your capacity, right? Unless something else changes in your processing or your ability to take on new tasks, you have to figure out what can slip, what can wait till tomorrow, what can be deprioritized so that you can focus on that new priority. And that decision should come from your manager, it should come from the person that is giving you the additional responsibility and who assigned the original responsibility. So they need to be making it clear what is the goal and what is the objective and what balance can be made to meet both or meet one or the other.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

And another thing to do and to keep in mind is to remember that your attention, your time, your energy is finite, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

So you have to understand that any change is going to impact something else. It may not be felt the first day because you may be able to absorb a change by you know putting out more energy or putting in some extra time. And that's something that can work for a few days, for a few weeks at a time. But over a sustained period, you have to figure out how to actually manage the responsibilities in the allotted time that you have so that you're not pulling again, you're not pulling time and energy away from other areas of your life that deserve their fair share of your focus. And that's going to require you to be a little upfront with yourself about what you're actually willing to dedicate and invest into the team or the project or the organization. But it's something that you have to understand and be mindful of throughout.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

What does it mean to be ambitious?

SPEAKER_00 34:05

So the definition of ambitious when describing a person means to have a strong desire and determination to succeed, achieve a specific goal, or attain power, wealth, or status. And this is one of the most important qualities that everyone should strive for. Every human, every person needs to be ambitious, needs to think about what ambition is in their life and in their goals. Because in this world, you're either growing or you're dying. And the very act of creating an ambitious goal and moving forward toward that goal and by putting actual energy and time and effort towards it, it's going to cause you to grow. It's going to create some growth inside of you. And that's what you want. You want to be growing. Because again, you can't even stay stagnant. You won't even be the same. You'll start to die, start to decline if you don't have that growth in front of you. And the greatest part about ambition is that it's directly tied to the thing that you want. It's directly tied to the goal, the objective that you have. So if you have a big goal, but you should have a big goal. If you have a dream that excites you, that makes you want to move forward, that's going to give you the energy and the confidence you need to make the goal, to take the steps forward, to do the things that are required for you to go and grow in the direction that you want to go and grow in. Crazy part is recently I found my 10-year plan from 2024. And I hadn't looked at it for a while. I made a new plan earlier this year that was in a different format, different place. And certain things were in this in both. Definitely my focus on my family and my community. That was in there. Definitely my focus on improving my skills and learning more and growing physically, like my strength, my speed, all of that. That's all in there. But there were some goals that I realized are no longer goals that matter to me. There are some goals that I realized that I had said two years ago that I made and I looked at them, even the goals I made earlier this year, and I realized how big they are, how scary they are to look at those goals and realize wow, like the amount of energy that would be required for me to actually hit that goal is going to take something from me. It's going to require me to be a different person than I am today. And that's not easy to look at. That's not easy to understand and be okay with when you are just trying to go through and make the next milestone. So it's definitely important to have these goals to make sure that you are keeping your direction clear and understanding like where you want to be in the future. Because you got to have that direction for yourself. You don't set it for yourself, somebody's gonna set it for you, and they're gonna give you goals that you may not even be comfortable with. They may give you goals that you don't even like, they may give you goals that don't give you any excitement in your life. So you definitely have to make it for yourself, but be comfortable being uncomfortable with some of your goals. Be comfortable being a little afraid or a little nervous to think about the goals and how much it'll really take from you. Because it's again, it's just gonna challenge you. It's going to make you, if it's exciting enough, if it's valuable enough to you, it's going to make you stretch in that direction. And there's nothing wrong with stretching to be a different person or a better person than who you are today.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

What is the engineering tip of the week?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

So, my tip for this week would be to focus on mastering the process over the tool. Again, in 2026, AI is here. All of the tools have changed. 10 years ago or 20 years ago, you may have been using VS Code as your IDE. 10 years ago, uh IntelliJ came out with a bunch of features. Today you have cursor and clawed code, which is super AI development. The same process that a developer needs to go through to build software and iterate on that software and deploy that software, those haven't really changed. You still need to go through the design process, you still need to go through the uh planning process, testing, development, deployment, maintenance. All of those parts and stages still exist, but the tool that you use to do them have shifted slightly, and they will continue to shift. So you have to be flexible, you have to be mindful that it's not a tool that's allowing you to do this thing. You're doing this thing using the tool that you have available right now because it's the best tool for the function that you're trying to accomplish. This week I had to switch from doing a data process or processing some data with Excel to processing it with Python because my data set had exploded in size. And the team that I'm working on, they are heavy into Excel and UiPath and even Power BI. And a lot of the times it was working. It had worked for them for at least the last year to create and build the reports that we have been generating. But again, I mentioned there's been a lot of changes recently, org changes, there's been changes to the number of applications that are being tracked. A lot of this all led to just being there being more data to process and more steps and more work to actually handle. And I found that doing a lot of these processes with Excel or doing them with uh these other tools no longer was working for me, especially based on my experience and what I am familiar with. So I had to shift over to the thing that I was familiar with and understand that I'm still doing the same work. I'm still doing the same processing, it just the code for it looks a little different. But I understood the process, I understood I need to build this data set, I need to process and filter the data, I need to present the data in this format. All of those functions are the same, even though the tool that I decided to use changed. And we can always go back and forth. Like I'm still using Excel and Python, but because Excel was too slow for the processing, I decided to only use it for the final visualization. So I'm building pivot tables after I'm building pivot tables in Excel after processing and merging the data with Python. So I'm just breaking up the functionality and still making sure the actual goal, the objective, the output is consistent with what I expect and what I want. So that's something to keep in mind. Uh but the thing is that when you rely too heavily on a specific tool or a specific platform, you start to miss the opportunities that would allow you to move faster and more efficiently with some other tool or platform. So remember that great builders can use any tool in any environment because they understand the problem that they're trying to solve. And they learn to break down the system so that they can identify individual pieces and recognize similarities that make it much easier for them to pick up new tools and you know work in any environment.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Next question is when can you disagree with your manager?

SPEAKER_00 42:48

So the more senior and experience that you become, the more likely it is that you're going to disagree with a direction or an instruction or an approach that your leadership or your manager, your boss is giving you. And that's okay. It means that your experience has given you a more concrete perspective. It means that you're more opinionated about the way you solve problems because you have more experience to draw on to say, this is how I know that the problem is a problem. This is how I know that this these are the challenges we'll run into if we try to solve it this way versus solving it this other way. So that's a good thing. That's all expected.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

And you have to be able to navigate those situations. So be prepared to.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Should disagree because in the middle of a fire is not the time to disagree with the commanding officer. In the middle of something going wrong is not the time to say and have a bunch of disagreements about how we move forward. At that point, we kind of need to just go with the flow. We need to go with, hey, this is the strategy, this is the way forward, the path forward that has been defined inside of the plane. We have to use this because this is an emergency, right? But if there's ever a time where you're planning some new project, when you're going about adding a new process into your responsibility set, and you want to make sure that you're doing it in the best way possible, at that stage, at that phase, is the best time to really make sure that your approach that you're going to move forward with aligns with the approach that your manager is suggesting for you or targeting. During those times, you want to make sure you have your arguments in place for why the decision you're making is the best decision. It doesn't have to be anything super formal, super you know, uh advanced. It could be a simple bullet point like this is the problem, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, and this is why I think this or the or these are the solutions that I have available. This is why I think this solution is the best way to move forward. Having it just structured somewhere where you can either deliver it to them verbally or email it to them doing like chat or whatever, whatever, to like allow them to review it and make some sense of it. That's going to be helpful for you to keep that in mind because the way that they're going about it may be based off of their assumptions on the options that are available, based on their assumptions on the resources that are available. And you may have a different level of awareness that they don't have. So you have to be able to put that awareness and package it together in a way that is helpful for them to be able to understand where you're coming from. But then you may come to the point where you have done everything you can to clarify the real the reasons why you think this way is the way forward, why your suggestion is the right way, and you may have exhausted all of your arguments, and your manager is still deciding to disagree, they are still going and telling you to move forward with the decision in the direction that they said was the best decision. And on those times, unless you're ready to separate from the organization, again, just be prepared to disagree and commit. Be prepared to document it first that you disagreed. Document that this is the decision that has been decided by that manager and on this day, and this is how they gave it to you, and do it. Again, or not even again, make sure there are no ethical or legal reasons why you were disagreeing. Like, unless it's something like that, that's the case, you need to go told the HR. But if there's no like professional reason not to, and you just disagree because your experience and the things that you know, go forward with it.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

And go forward in a way that is not going to like you're not trying to see their way fail.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

You actually want to commit to the path forward to the approach and commit to its success. Now, it may still not work, and you may have been right, but you need to make sure you're doing everything that you can to make it work, and you're not just sabotaging yourself and your team just because you want to prove that you are right.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

That's what we have for our Q ⁇ A for this week.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

Uh quick just mindset thought for you is to remember that communication is one of our most underrated skills. It is a skill that we have in our arsenal that we can and should use wisely because communication is how you take an idea that exists only in your head, only in your mind, only based on what you know, and give that idea to someone else for them to either build on or for them to execute on.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

So it allows you to do more without using your hands, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Like if your mind was the or is the driver to control you and your ability to do things, you're bottlenecked, you're limited based on what your hands and what your body can actually accomplish. But when you communicate those ideas to someone else in a way that is effective, in a way that allows them to understand where you're coming from, then you can allow them to extend your abilities. And that can be infinitely extended because you can infinitely communicate your ideas, but you can only communicate an idea that you understand how to communicate effectively, right? So practice different communication styles, practice refining that skill, practice and listen to yourself with different audiences and communicating different ideas, like everything is not always going to be a professional career idea. Some things are going to be more personal, some things are going to be more social. Be able to have those conversations and communicate those ideas to other people so that you can have that success and achieve the goals that you have for that particular type of communication. Because that's the whole point. Your idea. So you really need to focus and think about how you communicate, when you communicate, and what you are communicating. And that's all we had for this week on the show. Thank you everyone for joining. Thank you for uh investing some time and energy into the platform, into the space. We definitely appreciate it. Thank you uh for tuning in every week. Some quick announcements before we drop off. Uh, one happy birthday to my guy George. Uh, enjoy your trip this weekend, and I hope your body starts feeling better and that you are taking care of yourself inside of that dreary weather. Uh, and definitely hope to see you very soon. We're gonna figure out how to do that. Happy birthday to my little cousin Peyton. I love you, youngin, but I definitely want to see you move a lot faster with things this year and moving forward. Uh, but just keep growing, keep doing you, keep being great and keep challenging yourself to excel in your academics, in your basketball, playing, all of that stuff. So keep doing doing your thing and being great. Um, happy Memorial Day to everyone. Uh, finally got a three-day weekend, so I'm definitely gonna enjoy that. Uh, got some plans with my grandparents tomorrow. So I'm very excited for that. But we unfortunately not gonna be able to do any type of grilling this year, or at least for this weekend. I thought about getting some burgers on the grill this weekend, but no luck. Not this year, not this week, I'll say. So if you throwing something on the grill, put something on there for me. I heard about some like roasted pineapples on the grill with a little spiciness to it. Next time I get outside, I'm trying that. So I'm giving you that little tip. Um, and Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim brothers and sisters. Uh I think Eid Eid Al-Ada is coming up this week, and it is a celebration of the sacrifice that the devout followers of Allah has, and a like a thank you, gratitude to God for his um not just patience, but his what do you call it? Uh like his generosity when he gives you something when he makes an opportunity for you to not have to sacrifice the thing that you might normally have to sacrifice. So I hope everyone is enjoying that celebration as well. Um, but that's all we have for this week. Happy Sunday. Enjoy your week, stay warm or stay cool, depending on how you're feeling and where you're at. Um, and I will see you next week on the next one. Peace out, my peoples.