When I sat down with Anemari Fiser, a former tech lead who’s now a career coach for tech leaders, I was excited to hear her story and learn from her experiences. Anemari opened up about her journey, the hurdles she faced, and the strategies she uses to help others navigate the unpredictable tech landscape. We talked about the rapid changes in the industry, the rise of generative AI, and the key skills that tech leaders need to succeed in these turbulent times.
Daria Rudnik: Today, we're going to have a conversation about navigating a career in this uncertainty that happens in the tech world, like layoffs are happening everywhere but some companies are still hiring. There are lots of hiring going on but sometimes they're not hiring you in particular. So why is that? And again, there was this big boom with generative AI, everybody's talking about it. How would that affect your career?
Anemari Fiser: Nice to meet you, well, to talk to you there, Daria. Thank you for the formal intro.
Daria Rudnik: Share your story, how you were a tech lead and moved to a career coach for tech leaders.
Anemari Fiser: I'm gonna try to keep this short story short. So I've been 10 years in tech now, over 10 years. I became a tech lead at 26, I was young and without too much experience, but I was very excited about the role. So I put everything that I had, all my energy into it, and what happened is that when the pandemic came we were in the house, not much to do than working, so that kind of just became bigger than before. I burned out, and I so I quit my full-time role as a tech leader, a role that I loved, and I had no real plan on how to move forward. But what happened is that people started to reach out after some time, like where am I? I was doing a lot of support during part of my leadership role, like training, coaching, mentorship, sponsoring, all of these sorts of support role. So they needed me to keep growing, to plan their careers, so we start to do the coffee, a call, I got myself into getting my certification as a coach, and here I am three years later. I'm a full-time, full-time trainer and coach for people in tech with a focus on tech leads, women tech leads. So yeah, that's basically the story.
Anemari Fiser: Nice to meet you, well, to talk to you there, Daria. Thank you for the formal intro.
Daria Rudnik: Share your story, how you were a tech lead and moved to a career coach for tech leaders.
Anemari Fiser: I'm gonna try to keep this short story short. So I've been 10 years in tech now, over 10 years. I became a tech lead at 26, I was young and without too much experience, but I was very excited about the role. So I put everything that I had, all my energy into it, and what happened is that when the pandemic came we were in the house, not much to do than working, so that kind of just became bigger than before. I burned out, and I so I quit my full-time role as a tech leader, a role that I loved, and I had no real plan on how to move forward. But what happened is that people started to reach out after some time, like where am I? I was doing a lot of support during part of my leadership role, like training, coaching, mentorship, sponsoring, all of these sorts of support role. So they needed me to keep growing, to plan their careers, so we start to do the coffee, a call, I got myself into getting my certification as a coach, and here I am three years later. I'm a full-time, full-time trainer and coach for people in tech with a focus on tech leads, women tech leads. So yeah, that's basically the story.
Daria Rudnik: What do you think is the biggest challenge tech leaders face in today's fast-paced environment?
Anemari Fiser: I think the key part here is the fast-paced industry. I mean tech has always been a constantly changing industry and things seem to always go faster in the space because of technology and access to different tools. So I think that the biggest challenge that tech leaders face today is actually change, faster change than it was before. And everything happens at the same time. It's not just in the AI space, but also in the expectation space. So there's more different pains coming from different restructuring in the company. So there's a lot of people management that needs to happen. There are relationships management, there are clients involved. So I think it's just the fact that there is just the changes happening or way more faster, at least that's my feeling, on the technical side but also on the people side. And you add to that the lack of support that I'm feeling or that I see people telling me that they don't have in the leadership role in tech. So yeah, that's the whole thing that becomes a mess, basically at the end of the day.
Daria Rudnik: What do you think would help them to navigate those changes? What are the necessary skills or traits they need to have?
Anemari Fiser: So I think the first thing they need is resilience, which is the ability to act in front of change in a positive way without losing your grip, without losing it in front of your team. So resilience, I would say, is the first quality that leaders need to develop in order to deal with all of this constant changing changes. And the second one I think is, and this might be a straightforward one, but I still think it needs to be emphasized as I've seen so many tech leaders struggling with it daily, which is the ability to trust their team and letting go of control, and understanding that they cannot do it on their own, and rely on their team for what's coming and asking for support. So I think these are the main essential skills that get developed in time that they are that I see missing in tech leaders that are struggling.
Daria Rudnik: How does your team leader experience support your career as a career coach for tech leaders?
Anemari Fiser: What comes most in handy, what I've seen is useful in the coaching relationship that I have with tech leaders, is that my experience helps build empathy from my side and they can see that. So the fact that I can relate to what they're telling me, to the pains, to the struggles, that I can share some of my battles and how I've gone through them, I've seen like that just by default people just seem to trust me more, be more willing to share and they kind of feel understood because I've been there. So I'm using that experience as a way to build that base trust and relationship. And coming from a place where we can talk about real solutions that apply and we can even use the language, which is also very helpful for them because sometimes you have to explain to the person you're talking to what do I mean by this process, what do I mean by this tool. So it makes the conversation flow way easier and I think that they appreciate that. So that's how I use it basically.
Anemari Fiser: I think the key part here is the fast-paced industry. I mean tech has always been a constantly changing industry and things seem to always go faster in the space because of technology and access to different tools. So I think that the biggest challenge that tech leaders face today is actually change, faster change than it was before. And everything happens at the same time. It's not just in the AI space, but also in the expectation space. So there's more different pains coming from different restructuring in the company. So there's a lot of people management that needs to happen. There are relationships management, there are clients involved. So I think it's just the fact that there is just the changes happening or way more faster, at least that's my feeling, on the technical side but also on the people side. And you add to that the lack of support that I'm feeling or that I see people telling me that they don't have in the leadership role in tech. So yeah, that's the whole thing that becomes a mess, basically at the end of the day.
Daria Rudnik: What do you think would help them to navigate those changes? What are the necessary skills or traits they need to have?
Anemari Fiser: So I think the first thing they need is resilience, which is the ability to act in front of change in a positive way without losing your grip, without losing it in front of your team. So resilience, I would say, is the first quality that leaders need to develop in order to deal with all of this constant changing changes. And the second one I think is, and this might be a straightforward one, but I still think it needs to be emphasized as I've seen so many tech leaders struggling with it daily, which is the ability to trust their team and letting go of control, and understanding that they cannot do it on their own, and rely on their team for what's coming and asking for support. So I think these are the main essential skills that get developed in time that they are that I see missing in tech leaders that are struggling.
Daria Rudnik: How does your team leader experience support your career as a career coach for tech leaders?
Anemari Fiser: What comes most in handy, what I've seen is useful in the coaching relationship that I have with tech leaders, is that my experience helps build empathy from my side and they can see that. So the fact that I can relate to what they're telling me, to the pains, to the struggles, that I can share some of my battles and how I've gone through them, I've seen like that just by default people just seem to trust me more, be more willing to share and they kind of feel understood because I've been there. So I'm using that experience as a way to build that base trust and relationship. And coming from a place where we can talk about real solutions that apply and we can even use the language, which is also very helpful for them because sometimes you have to explain to the person you're talking to what do I mean by this process, what do I mean by this tool. So it makes the conversation flow way easier and I think that they appreciate that. So that's how I use it basically.
You can watch the full interview on my YouTube channel