Latest / Women Who Ship / 6. Proof of Work as Insurance Part 1: A conversation with Tanushree Panigrahy
Transcript
- Sarah Williams: Welcome to Women Who Ship, the podcast for women in tech who are tired of proving themselves in rooms they've already earned a place in and are ready to lead like they know it. I'm your host, Sarah Williams. Let's dive in. Sarah: Hey friends, welcome to Women Who Ship. Today's episode features a special guest, Tanu Shri Panagrahi, host of Stay Ahead of the Curve, and we are talking proof of work as insurance. Tanu spent two decades in Enterprise Tech before making a bold, cold pivot to the vendor side. In part one, we get into moving from chasing external validation to building proof for yourself. And why this AI wave feels different from every shift before it. Let's get into it. friends, welcome to Women Who Ship and a special guest appearing with us today. I am welcoming Tanu Shri Panigrahi, and we are discussing today proof of work as insurance. And I found Tanu based on her work on. A podcast and substack called Stay Ahead of the Curve. And what I really connected with was the honest conversations that she's having with women as they're navigating the AI disruption. So welcome, Tanu. Thanks for being here. Tanu: Thank you, Sarah. Happy to be here. Sarah: So tell us a bit about you your career journey. Tanu: yeah, it's it's been interesting. So my path has taken me through nearly two decades now in both consulting and implementation side, where I have spent more than a decade, decade and a half in enterprise platforms, mostly healthcare and regulated industry in last almost a decade. And from there on I moved to the vendor side, working with partners. How they operationalize AI, especially in last two years. So I have been lucky to be sitting on the both sides of the table, the practitioner side and now on the vendor side, enablement, enabling our partners on the vendor side. So that dual view is is really the thread that has been carrying me through what I'm doing right now. Sarah: Yeah, I I'm really interested in that aspect of it. So could you tell me more about that vantage point of being on both the vendor side as well as the practitioner side? Like how are you seeing AI disruption differently from that perspective? Tanu: yeah, so like I said, I have been lucky to be sitting on both sides. So having been on the consulting side for so long, and and I'll step back, not only AI, but even all other technology transformational things that has happened in the last two decades. I have been through all of them. And being on the consulting side gave me an opportunity to work with different enterprise customers to truly understand the real on-the-ground business problems. Helping solve them and then tool agnostic. That helped being on the consulting side because I was not biased towards one vendor versus another. It was purely an honest way to approach the solution of the problem. So I have seen that firsthand, doing that. And now coming to the other side of the table, and I have worked with a lot of people sitting on the vendor side when I was on the consulting. So I knew what it takes to be on on the other side, but it was always there was a curiosity to you know, how do you handle that on the vendor side? So I took a bold decision, I know, came in cold really to a completely new ecosystem. And I thought probably all my experience from the consulting GSI side would I didn't know how much I will carry that experience switching seats. but I was surprised that all those experiences actually help me when I talk to my partners. I know exactly where they are. So I can feel their pain, I can see where they can go. So that has helped me a lot having the vision from both sides of the same coin, if you will. Sarah: Yeah, that empathy is so powerful. And then I think also your skill of like not getting too caught up into a specific tool and being having that like tool agnostic approach as well. That's awesome. Tanu: Yeah, just just being honest actually. You know, honesty has helped. Being tool agnostic and now sitting here, I don't give biased opinions, although I should sometimes, but I I think being honest helps them truly prepare for the competition as as they get into different deals, different real customer conversations. Sarah: So what made you finally make the jump from GSI to the vendor side? Tanu: like I said, I was there on the other side of the table for that long. and I working closely with the partner alliance teams from different vendors, that made me curious. And I also wanted to test myself. and the timing was perfect in a way. you know, there was a lot of change going on in the market. It was a lot of things were unknown and unsettled. so that made me nervous, more nervous than I should have been. but I think being nervous and taking bold decisions has always been a thing in my career and it had paid off. Sarah: Yeah, I love that so much. You know, having confidence is often driven by action, right? Tanu: Yeah. Sarah: And so you took the step, you took the bold leap, and I'm so glad to hear that it paid off for you. Tanu: so Sarah, you have been, you have started coaching women exactly through this kind of pivot that you you know, that I have been through, probably I'm still going through. So what's the pattern that you see most often when when someone is stepping into those unfamiliar, unsettled territory like that? Sarah: Yeah. Well, I think Tanu, like you described, you knew you had all these amazing skills, right? But then when you step into the new thing, your brain kind of starts to offer you this self-doubt of like, okay, am I going to be able to make this apply in this new situation? Are my skills really transferable? And so you start to discount the amazing contributions you've made throughout your career. You start to forget all of that. And so I, you know, try to coach women when the self-doubt starts coming up, how they can change their thinking and really power through and and think about how all of those amazing things you've done in the past do transfer and can make you successful going forward and and build that confidence to really stretch into new territory. Tanu: That's that's wonderful. I'm sure you're helping a lot of women out there who are in this junction of confusion right now. Sarah: Yeah. And you've talked a bit about that moment where you stopped waiting for a title to catch up with what you knew and you started to build that proof for yourself. So tell me what triggered that shift for you. Tanu: Like like I was saying before, the timing was perfect. When I made this decision, when I was kind of deciding between couple couple different vendors, the one that I'm working for currently and there was another. either way it was starting a complete new role, new territory. But one vendor was where, you know, I have been in that ecosystem on the other side of the table for more than a decade, decade and a half, and this was completely new. So I started cold. I came in with a lot of challenges in my head and and honestly it was challenging to fit into an ecosystem where I don't know anybody and nobody knows my skills either. so going through that struggle that I have to prove everything all over again, and that struggle kind of gave me a thought that I need to step back and I always preach this to everybody as a mentor, whenever I have got the opportunity to do so. I do that to my seven-year-old as well. that you need to be a lifelong student. And I have always been that. not a certification nerd, but I have always tried to catch up being in consulting. You have to catch up with what's going on, what changes, what new tools are coming in. But this time it was different. This time I knew that I should not just wait for. Somebody to give me an opportunity to showcase my skills, use my skills. AI was different, and you know, you're blessed with all these tools available. In fact, a lot of them available free of cost as well, to get started. So when I started learning, I was also getting caught up with the hype, chasing the hype. And it was a I I mean, I would learn something over the weekend, and next week I'll feel like, my god, I need to start something new completely. it it was stressful going through that stress week after week. And then I stepped back again and I thought, I have spent so many years solving customer problems. I probably need to use the opportunity with these AI tools to start building something that would help me believe in myself again. And and that was amazing. I started very small with small personal things just to make my day to day life easier. And from there on, I started doing customer issues as well. Again, nobody handed me a project to solve something for a customer. I started on my own, as if I'm running a consulting company. I need to solve this for a customer. Just role-playing and solving that. And that journey itself was something that I started enjoying. And then I started the community, started sharing everything. And and from there on, I think I never set a goal. I just Continue to love the journey. Sarah: I can see how you leaned in to your own value of curiosity to make this come about. So was it like a specific turning point that you came across? Like was it a single day or a week that you remember feeling that shift, or was it something that kind of came about over time? Tanu: Honestly, it was gradual, right? it was definitely gradual. But if I have to pick some moment, like I was saying earlier, after spending weeks of going through different courses online, gaining a certification didn't give give me that satisfaction. I think those were the moments when I felt I need to make something real. Something real that I can see and build that confidence in myself. I think when the first build happened, even if it was not one of those perfect. Bills, finished bills that you would ship to a customer. But something I did all on my own, I think that was the moment. That was the trigger moment that I knew I am unstoppable right now. I can go on. I'm not looking for anybody to approve you've done a great job, a pat on here. That wasn't the goal anymore. The goal was to just make myself happy. Sarah: Love it. You know, you proved it to yourself and you did the one thing that is what helps us all build confidence, right? It's like you got out there and you got your hands dirty and you took action. So I really connected with what you said about how you did it for yourself and you in that sense kind of became your own judge and you stopped looking for external validation of what you were doing. Can you talk about that mindset shift? If it is it something that you think requires a bit of experience before you can move into it? Tanu: Yeah, it's a little bit of both, but I wouldn't you know, make your listeners feel that you need to really have extensive experience to start building or start doing something on your own. but experience definitely helps, makes it faster. Like I said, you've seen those problems before. Maybe it was more of a bigger, complex project earlier to solve that. Now you probably can make it in a different way with all these amazing AI tools out there. So experience definitely helps, but don't wait for that. Use what experience you have. Learn from what you have available free of cost already. Start building something small. All of us have personal experiences. I mean, that doesn't stop, that doesn't come from 10, 15 years of corporate experience. So use that maybe. Maybe that's your starting point. so is that becoming your own judge thing you hear from your clients, the woman that you talk to, Sarah, like you know, waiting for that external validation or waiting for that perfect role that they can apply and use their skill sets. Sarah: Yeah, I think sometimes one of the key things that I do work on with my clients is that limitation of looking for external validation. So, you know, just like with you, you've had a successful career, you've got that to lean on, but then that allows you to believe confident thoughts about yourself. You know, and even I experienced that in my career. Like I got, I achieved the dream job working at the tech company I wanted to, I got promoted. And I let that allow me to believe that I could be confident. But that kind of stuff can get taken away, as we've all seen. You know, I ended up being laid off. Sometimes you make the personal decision like you did to make a jump into something new and to challenge yourself. And in that moment, you can't rely on the external validation to keep bolstering you up. You know, you have to build that confidence in yourself. And really use your mindset tools to know that you've got your own back, that you've got these skills, and that you'll be able to push forward and accomplish what you want to, regardless of what the external, you know, noise is. Tanu: That's that's so true. Noise is the right word. You know, waiting for that validation doesn't really help. That will naturally follow Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Tanu: as as you start doing what you love. Sarah: 100%. So now let's let's think a bit about the noise that I think is happening in the whole industry. So the AI moment right now, it's it really is creating real anxiety. People are wondering, is my job safe? Am I learning fast enough? And you've navigated a ton of these shifts in your own career. So could you tell me from your perspective what feels different this time? Tanu: Yeah, I mean I have I don't have like several decades, but two decades was enough. And last two decades is where we have seen a lot of shifts multiple times in especially in the tech world. And honestly I I keep saying that repeatedly that although it's been twenty years in in the tech world, but I have seen this movie before in different formats, right? Early in my career, I was I actually started my career for a product company called BMC Remedy. and believe it or not, it was on client server model. cloud wasn't a thing when I just started my career. and cloud came in and I watched that shift from client server to cloud, that hesitance to move to cloud and all that. and then workflow automation with digital transformation, and then came in process mining, robotic. process automation, which was kind of early stage of AI, if you think about it, the RPA moment, which reshaped how workflow actually worked. I learned all of it. The moment it came, even before it became a noise, believe it or not, I went on to get those certifications because I wanted to make sure I'm top of everything. and primarily because I was looking for the external validation back in those days. Early me was looking for those external validation, those promotions, those right projects where I can use these skills. but that was not always happening. sometimes I got lucky. I was lucky from an RPA perspective. I got a ton of project to work on, so I got the experience, but not everything was like that. So with AI, what I feel different, like I was talking earlier, Sarah, is Certifications is not enough because I see you know everybody is getting certified. How do you stand out differently in the market? Not only for your next job, because we all know there's a forever layoff going on. So everybody has that anxiety, the fear that I need to be ready for my next job, even if I have a job right now. So don't keep that as the aim. I did not. but that fear was real. So what I started paying attention to is learning at the same time building. So I can truly speak to it, not wait for the right title where I would be able to, you know, prove myself that I'm ready for the market that is shifting right now. Sarah: I think that with AI, everyone needs to have that hands-on experience with it so that you don't like buy into the hype in a way. You know what I mean? Like Tanu: Yeah, yeah. Sarah: even if you're a a leader at a tech company, you're a woman in leadership and you're making decisions, you need to have that hands-on experience to know what AI is truly capable of, what it, you know, what's hype. what's real and what could be a a great application for this tool. Tanu: Yeah, absolutely. Sarah: So then thinking like putting yourself in the shoes of maybe a female leader that hasn't touched a technical tool in years, what would like how would you tell them to even start? Tanu: Like I said, I was thinking when when you mentioned when we you were talking, you know, go start building. I'm sure a lot of people think and I thought that, although I started as a developer early in my career, but I left development, you know, hands on the keyboard for a long time now now. I've been into more leadership, go to market, leading teams versus me really going and building something. It varies from person to person and from your skills, but one thing for sure, you don't need to know how to code to start anything. wherever you are, whatever your role is, what fits best to your role, start. I don't like the word vibe coding, but I'll still use it. just start with one prompt. Do something that you and then keep up with what's going on in the market, because if you are a leader. You're talking to customers, you're talking to the CTOs, the CIOs, the CEOs, and you're also accountable to your team. You need to know what's going on. You don't need to know how to write a Python code, but you need to know what those things mean from a security standpoint, whether it should be a hybrid model or not. It's not just about knowing the four frontier tools in the market. We all keep using them, those words, but how do you? How do you talk to a C suite? How do you talk to your team? You need to know enough to be able to talk to both levels, if you will. Sarah: Yeah, that's a great point. thinking back to certified specialists. So you talked a bit about getting certifications and how everyone's getting certifications right now versus real builders. Do you still think that certifications matter at all or have they lost some of their weight? Tanu: I won't say they have lost the weight completely. Certifications still help. but somebody could be experienced in build experience in some some skill set from an AI perspective without gaining a certification. But people especially who are starting really cold, haven't or have been thinking that I'm not techie enough to get started, certification helps build that initial step. give you a little bit of boost and confidence as you start building. But definitely certification alone is is is meaningless to me. Sarah: Yeah, that makes sense. If you're starting from nowhere, you at least like get some familiarity before like getting in and getting your hands dirty. Tanu: So, from your perspective, Sarah's you know, the seat that you are in, coaching people through this, I'm sure you come across people who ask the same question, or same they are in the same dilemma and leadership role now, struggling to see where to start. Do you think that AI anxiety is fundamentally different from the past waves? Even if you were not coaching, you were definitely talking to your peers, seniors, your teammates, et cetera? or do you think it's the same fear, but it's just louder right now with AI? Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that the AI anxiety Tanu: I mean we just Sarah: is a real deal. I mean, this is definitely Tanu: Real. Sarah: like the biggest shift I have seen in my career. I've I've got about 15 years and I've never seen something as massive as this. And then there's just also all of the realities in the market of tech CEOs really now in the past year being very upfront about the fact that they're laying off. Due to AI. So in this case, like from my perspective as a coach, I would call the AI shift truly like a circumstance that is happening. It's not something that's just in our head. But the good thing about it is that even if it is real, even if it is different from what we've experienced in the past, we can still decide how we want to think about it and how we want to show up for it based on the coaching tools that I help my clients with. And I think that kind of goes into the next question I wanted to ask you as well. So you've got that same experience 20 years in tech. And how do you feel like your experience is becoming an advantage right now instead of something that AI has made obsolete? Tanu: yeah. And then and that's the whole whole reason why I started stay ahead of the curve community, because I did talk to a lot of women who have 10, 15, 20, 20 plus years of experience. And exact same feeling. The question that you asked me, Sarah, is all the experience, all the knowledge, all the skills I gained over these years, is it all obsolete? Or do I carry that forward and just add it on with AI? learning a new tool. That's not new to any one of us. We all keep learning all the times in tech world, you have to. otherwise you will become obsolete with AI or no AI. That was always the case. So, you know, anybody anybody who has few ex few years of experience, they they know that. They know that feeling. so I what I am genuinely thankful of is my consulting career. the all the experience that I gained. through real problems, those problems have not vanished. They are still in those enterprises. We're just trying to solve now with new shiny fancy tools. Back then as well, from cloud from you know client server to cloud and then to SaaS applications, it was the same feeling. I have seen that because I have implemented solutions across Fortune 100 companies. So I have seen that. So right now, definitely the hype is catching up. To your point, the C-suite is nervous because if they don't do AI, they are behind. But what does that mean? That means you're still solving the same problems with different tools. Maybe it makes it faster. The way you approach the solution is a little bit different. So the experience initially the feeling in 2024 that I felt that whether or not my experience will be of any use given that AI is taking over, because you know, you hear news that AI is taking over all the jobs. But two years, fast forward two years to 2026, we are in a different state today. AI definitely is impacting jobs, but it will not take away everybody's job. so I think knowing that, acknowledging that, at the same time, not being on either of the extremes, staying in the center. Learning and making your experience relevant, but with AI. Sarah: and we're finally starting to also see like some of these new roles that will appear because of AI, like the forward deployed engineer and things like Tanu: Right. Sarah: that starting to emerge, which I think is helpful in knowing, okay, like it's not just taking away jobs, it's also like we're moving into creating jobs as well. one thing, just going back to your consulting years, is there a specific moment. that you still draw on when you're deciding to how to use AI today to solve a problem. Tanu: Yeah, several engagements that I can think of. being there for so long and being fortunate enough to work with so many great companies, global companies. I was a consultant tool agnostic for a lot of engagements. So that helped. So technology was never really the hardest problem because I was not selling a tool. So I was proposing different or my along with incredible people in my team, we were proposing different solutions where you could use different types of technology. So technology was the not really the challenge in the room, convincing the stakeholders, the whole you know, organizational change management, people management, that was the hardest part. And I don't think, at least as of now, AI can completely take over that part of our work. that still needs that human creativity, the human touch to be able to address all of that. Sarah: love that. I agree a hundred percent. Like the people is always the hardest part of the equation. Tanu: Yeah. Sarah: So so thinking about that, how do you help someone see their own experience as an asset when they've been taught to feel that they're behind? Tanu: yeah, that's what the hype is doing to all of us. You know, I mean, making us feel that we need we belong in one or the other extreme, like I was talking about earlier. So again, experience definitely helps here. Even if you have a little bit of experience, I'm sure we all of us have come across one or maybe more of some problem somewhere, which was really the messiest, the worst project, worst engagement that you have ever been. And you know from your experience that technology did not solve that. So pick one of those, not to prove it to others, but prove it to yourself. That do you think any of the AI tools that exist today would completely take over that and would have done it very differently? In fact, one of my guests in my previous podcast mentioned that she has 40, 45 years of experience. She's retired right now, and she was giving Plenty of examples where, you know, from back from twenty years to thirty years, he's like, if even if there was AI, this problem AI would not solve. Maybe solve thirty percent of it, the seventy percent of it was more related to what humans can only do, at least today. Sarah: yeah. I love that so much. I also love taking that example and thinking about how you felt during that experience. So one, love the framing of like, okay, which of these things do I think AI could do? But then also think about which of those things during that time did you think you weren't gonna be able to do, but you navigated it? Yeah. Tanu: That's that's right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that reframe alone changes how people see themselves, right? So, Sarah, you work with a lot of experienced women. Do you find experience is something your clients undervalue in themselves? Or is it more that they don't know how to translate it into a new context to match to today's AI world? Sarah: Yeah, I think it's that women are really socialized to like kind of discount their own contributions, minimize their own abilities. So a big part of my work is actually helping us retrain our brains. So just like that example of like, hey, when you went through something difficult, what did it really look like when you were experiencing that? How did it really feel? And then how did you contribute to coming out stronger on the other side of that? Or if you really looked at it and made your brain look for your positive contributions to that project, what were they? You know, because I think a lot of times as women, we just sort of think, you know, what I did wasn't that big of a contribution when actually if a neutral, you know, third party would say something completely different. So I definitely, yeah, yeah. Tanu: That's that's amazing. Yeah, no, that's that's lovely actually. And and only a woman can tell another, because we tend to forget that. And then that's so important. So you're doing a wonderful job there. Sarah: thank you. Pausing part one here, the big takeaway: confidence comes from action, not the other way around. And your experience isn't obsolete, the tools just changed. In part two, Tanu shows us the real proof of work, a private AI she built for her own finances, a multi-agent tool for consulting deals. And why sharing unfinished work publicly is the real insurance policy. Follow along so you don't miss it. Let's go ship some good stuff together. If you loved my conversation with Tanu Shri about building proof of work as career insurance, you might be asking yourself, how do I take all that incredible work I am shipping and actually get recognized for it? Because here is the truth for senior women in tech. Doing great work quietly is no longer enough. Too often we hold entire projects together with invisible glue work that keeps the team happy but never shows up on a performance review. That is why I created the Get Recognized at Work playbook. It is a free, five-step system designed to help you stop waiting for external praise. Build a private evidence file of your wins, and start talking about your impact with calm, unapologetic confidence. Inside, you will get my exact template to turn your day-to-day tasks into high-impact statements using my simple formula. You will also learn how to run a weekly recognition retro to retrain your brain to notice your own value. You do not need to be louder, flashier, Or someone you are not. You just need a system to make your results impossible to overlook. Visit go.coachsarahwilliams.com forward slash recognition right now to download your free copy of the Get Recognized at Work playbook. Stop doing invisible glue work that no one sees and start getting recognized for the results you actually create.