48 posts tagged with "AI-Sovereignty-Governance"

Talofa reader,

Pasifika Have a "Technical Leadership" Issue.

Over the past few years, I've come face to face with a pretty obvious yet significant issue: the severe lack of Pasifika technical leadership in the technology sector.

And not just for making up the numbers so the business looks good and ticks the box, but for the community side of this equation that more often needs, essentially, an "ally" with technical skills to help navigate and mitigate the realities of all things technology.

Share## Pasifika Technical Leadership?

What do I mean by Pasifika technical leadership?

Pretty much what it says on the tin:

A Technical person, who happens to be Pasifika, in a Leadership position or capability.

The discourse over the last few years has been one of the following two:

1. Getting more "Pasifika into technology," a purely numbers game for bums on tech seats, OR

2. Getting Pasifika a*"Seat at the table,"*a long-tail strategy with organisations going after leadership power.

While these two things are important, I'm cognisant of a couple of things I've already seen happen.

Firstly, with the bum-rush of getting as many Pasifika hoisted over the fence into tech as possible, I've seen the casualties of the folks who could've been successful in transitioning had they been given the necessary support to succeed.

I'm seeing a new*"factory floor"*for Pasifika to get trapped in the tech industry, taking up the lower-skilled, lower-paid jobs that are cheaper to use Pasifika for than paying for LLM's on cloud.

Secondly, from the few Pasifika organisations I've seen make a play for being the spokespeople for Pasifika issues at the technology table, I'm loath to say I find some of the things I know about these organisations… unsettling?

Bar a small few, I don't have a lot of trust in the motivations of some of the forerunners in this space to be advocates for true technical leadership that will benefit Pasifika (more so than the organisation's brand power).

But we can't make everyone happy all the time, and something is better than nothing, I guess?

Anyway, back to the essay at hand.

Talofa reader,

Buckle up, this one’s a bit lengthy- but I promise it ends well.

So, What Happened?​

How come you never came back after you said the newsletter was going monthly?

My last sign-off saw me heading off into the “the newsletter is going monthly” sunset, with all intentions of finding that elusive time to sit down and write my thoughts out.

You’d think it was a forgone conclusion seeing as I actually journal most days—or at least I did at the time of my last newsletter.

Unfortunately, this practice met the same fate as the newsletter itself.

Am I here to give excuses? Of course not.

These are merelyexplanations😁

Talofa reader,

This is going to be my last weekly newsletter for now as I’m going to switch this to monthly.

Talofa reader,

I feel like the Wednesday morning newsletter post is becoming more consistent than the scheduled Tuesday one.

Talofa, Reader,

After a hectic period of work travel and exotic stress over the last several weeks, which resulted in a long post about burnout, I was fortunate enough to find the time (evenings, weekends, in airport lounges, and on crowded plane seats) to study for, and last week, pass, myAWS Certified Security - Specialtycertification.

Staying technical, even as an Architect, is important — not just to the role, in my opinion, but also to me personally.

And I don't mean "book" technical like "draw me a diagram".

I mean hands-on, build-the-thing-you're-talking-about, technical.

In an article she wrote earlier this year titled"Architects, Anti-Patterns, and Organizational Fuckery", the one & only Charity Majors laid down the gauntlet, stating that she believes "Architect" is a bullshit role.

For the most part, I agree with her.

Talofa reader,

It's been more than a few weeks since I've had the time - or more accurately, the energy - to carve out the space to sit down and write some thoughts for my newsletter.

Talofa reader,

Last week, I was on PTO (Paid Time Off aka Holiday) in Samoa for a quick break with my wife before the baby arrives in August.

This week I’m in Suva, Fiji for work.

As most of us highly-wired people know, it's hard to switch off when on holiday. Research shows that it takes about8 days to fully wind downand actually be on a "break."

It's a particularly busy period at work at the moment, different from other times of busyness in my career as an engineer.

As a solution architect, I move in a fluid space between customer interfacing engagement to work out the technical, organisational, and often economic and political challenges. And the technical and sometimes not-so-technical solutions that best help the customer solve their challenges.

Talofa reader,

Happy Samoan Language Week (here in NZ)!

Talofa reader,

Last week, I gave a talk to my ‘Pasifika Tech Network’, which I mentioned in my previous newsletter.

Talofa reader,

This past week, I've been working on a talk to give at"The Pasifika Tech Network"meetup this Thursday.

I wasn't sure what I was going to talk about when I organised and set the date (May 18th), but after a deep and pretty vulnerable discussion on our Discord server about salaries and careers, I knew I had to talk about how to navigate a tech career and share the lessons and advice I've gathered from my 20-year tech career.

I really felt for the people in my network who shared their experiences and the challenges they face with current salary negotiations, family responsibilities, and pressures at work.

Getting into tech isn’t easy, especially as a Pasifika person and a minority in the industry. It's not an industry familiar to our community, and we lack role models whose paths we can follow. We don't have the alumni network of Computer Science from the University of Auckland (at least I didn’t) to provide guidance on the tech career road-map. On top of that, being young and inexperienced, without guidance from people we trusted, and now you’re stacking a bunch of already “hard things” on top of each other.

And even once you're in, you’re still the odd one out.