The EITF Blog

 For this article in the EITF blog, we felt compelled to address the latest frenzy around chatGPT-3 and AI. Since January, everyone’s LinkedIn walls, including ours, have been spammed with mentions of ChatGPT-3 / AutoML. Most of them talk about how this shiny new development in AI could be the final say, in terms of replacing jobs and human resources.  There has also interestingly been an increased coverage in the media regarding ChatGPT-3 getting candidates through tough medical examinations. So we at EITF decided to try out and use ChatGPT-3. Our initial assessment is that, while tools like ChatGPT-3 / AutoML have their own advantages in human intelligence augmentation, their adoption in an industry setting will still have to wait for more maturity.  According to our evaluations, here are 5 reasons  why Generative AI tools like ChatGPT-3, BARD will take time to find adoption 1.        Bias:  A common pitfall in AI/ML is AI bias. This is a ...

In season 1 of the EITF project, we asked our experts what the transition from an IC (Individual Contributor) to a manager looks like. Here’s our general idea of where management stands today. If you look back to ten years ago, managers were mostly people who were promoted from within, and were uniformly excellent performers. Once promoted, they were expected to act as technical leadership for the team. Today, the definition of management has evolved quite a bit. Our experts from season 1 say that you can be a technical leader, but that doesn’t automatically make you a manager. Management requires a whole different set of skills.  To begin with, a notable change in function from IC to manager is that up to 80% of a manager’s day will be hands-off. Delegation is an art for managers. Management today involves learning all the methodologies and tools required - most technical teams use Agile and Zoom and Teams meetings to keep up with offshore teams. It also involves a lot of communi...

Reflecting on Season 1: In a room full of experienced individuals, how can a new employee be successful in bringing their ideas forward?   Why did we ask this?   We think this question came out of our own experiences being new employees, right out of school. We were joining organizations and working with highly experienced individuals who were subject matter experts. On the one hand, being mentored by them is the experience of a lifetime, but on the other hand, we felt like we were sometimes too intimidated out of respect, to bring up our ideas in meetings. It might not just be students who are right out of school in their first jobs who have this feeling.   Any time someone starts out in a new company, they may feel like they are right back where they started – with the same need to prove themselves and facing the same dilemmas they faced in their first job all over again. Can I ask this question? Is this the right place or right time? If I ask the questio...

On EITF season 1, we asked the following question : When you interview someone today for a position in your company, apart from the job qualifications, what do you look for in the candidate and how do you make the decision to hire or not to hire? In this article, we will tell you why we asked this question, and what we learned. Let us give you a little background for the tech industry at the start of Season 1. We began working on the EITF project in April of 2022. This was back when the job market was in a post-covid hiring frenzy. The state of things had a catchy nickname as well – “The great resignation”.  The pandemic was forcing everyone to reassess what they wanted their lives to look like in the present–and not just in 5 or 10 years. Employees had had time to reflect on their career journeys and decided to make changes that better aligned with their desires to spend more time with their families, have better work-life balance, or even leave the workforce altogether.  A ...

It feels like only yesterday that we started the EITF Project, so it is a bit of a shock to look back  on the first interview we ever did, and realize that it took place all the way back in April of 2022! It’s hard to  believe but true, and it’s been a real privilege to meet so many fantastic and knowledgeable people  through this series.  As the year draws to a close, this feels like as good a time as any to reflect on  everything we learnt in Season 1.  In this series of articles, we, along with our viewers and friends, will  be reviewing the highlights of EITF season 1. Here’s what that will look like – Each article will feature one question we asked. We will also discuss the answers provided by our experts, in separate articles. These articles will include opinions and feedback from some of our viewers, some of our experts watching each other’s interviews, and from us. We will open the forum for all of you to discuss our answers as well. If you’d l...