Personal reflections on 2024

Finding my professional niche, surfing the gen AI wave, not getting promoted, and some personal stuff

Finding my niche

This was the year that I found my professional niche (at least for now), in inclusive generative AI.

For the five years prior to 2024, I had been working in accessibility. The work was fascinating and meaningful, but I had started worrying about getting pigeonholed. Accessibility work is often perceived as being less business-critical and I wanted to try my hand at having impact on a bigger scale.

So at the end of 2023, I transferred to the Gboard team as the product manager for the expressive content experience in the Android keyboard — responsible for popular features like emoji suggestion and GIF search, and defining new features like quick sharing for generated stickers. As it turned out, the domain of expressive content (especially generated content) was full of questions around representation and inclusion which were familiar from the accessibility space, just with the broader lens of considering all minority groups.

And not long after I joined Gboard, I landed in accessibility again! I kept the Gboard role, but also was given responsibility over generative AI for for TalkBack, the screen reader which enables blind people to use Android devices. Focusing on integrating generative AI gave me a new angle on accessibility. While the intersection of generative AI and accessibility was even more niche than just accessibility, this intersection had a clearer story around innovation. Several cool opportunities arose from being the go-to person for this niche.

Getting interviewed on doubletap, a podcast on accessible technology. We talked about how my team used generative AI to improve image descriptions for blind users. The hosts were engaging and hilarious, which made doing this interview a joy.

So I stopped feeling pigeonholed. The combination of the TalkBack role and the Gboard role helped me shift from being positioned as a product manager who does accessibility to being a product manager who does generative AI, with expertise in inclusion. I’m grateful at how this lets me continue the work I have loved while broadening my scope to new user groups and focusing on new technology.

Gen AI chaos

The generative AI space was incredibly volatile this year. Model capabilities and costs kept changing — mostly for the better, but at unpredictable rates. Issues of inclusion and safety were dicey. I had to kill one project and pivot another. A third got blocked by a policy change. Teams’ shared understanding of acceptable risks and user expectations were constantly evolving, along with associated review and testing protocols.

The fast pace meant that best practices often hadn’t been defined. Working on generative AI for two different products (Gboard and TalkBack) gave me some perspective on process of building and productionizing gen AI features in general. I was able to to define some general best practices and share them with others, and start projecting how the space is likely to evolve.

Though this was all pretty wild, it mostly wasn’t as stressful as I might have anticipated for this amount of change. I actually found the challenge, fast pace, and tough decisions to be really energizing. This helped me learn that I do enjoy working at the cutting edge of technology, even when it’s messy.

On the Google campus in Mountain View. With all the changes, spending time with my teams in person felt especially important.

Promotion? Nope

One disappointment this year was that I didn’t get promoted. In fact, I wasn’t even allowed to apply for it. I had thought I was going above and beyond, and my manager had seemed optimistic, but then I got a new manager and she said I wasn’t ready.

My goal wasn’t so much about the promotion as where I was hoping it would lead me. Early in my career, in my first few roles, I struggled to ramp up. During that time, I paid attention to how my well-meaning managers’ actions (and inactions) affected my motivation and confidence. I learned what a difference it makes in an employee’s ability to learn and thrive when a manager intentionally aligns tasks to their interests and scopes work to give some creative freedom but also enough guidance to succeed. For years I’ve wanted manage a team so I can pay this forward. But product managers at Google don’t typically manage people until they are quite senior (later in the career path than at other companies and in other roles at Google). I had been hoping to make progress on this path.

I shook off the initial disappointment and talked to my new manager to understand what specific gaps she was seeing. Getting clear feedback from her really helped me focus and grow through the second half of the year. I worked hard to go deeper on user narratives, connect clearly to business goals, and take a longer view on product strategy. I appreciate how this new manager challenged me to grow. Whether or not these changes lead to a promotion, I feel that the work I put in has set up my teams for success and that the process of building my skills in these areas has been valuable in its own right.

Personal

I wanted to keep this post focused on work, but a few personal highlights from 2024 felt worth including. For one, I went on a yoga retreat at Kripalu with my best friend from childhood. Going on vacation purely for myself (rather than a trip to visit family, an extended work trip, or parental leave) felt delightful and indulgent. I really appreciated the time to disconnect, focus inward, and breathe.

Another highlight has been playing guitar. I took up guitar at the end of 2023 and made a new year’s resolution to play it regularly (four times per week) in 2024. I did it! I’m no Jimi Hendrix, but I got skilled enough that I was able to lead several sing-alongs with friends and perform with my kids at a nursing home. I’m grateful to have found a new way to connect with people.

Not pictured but singing along were my kids and some relatives who were visiting from overseas. Singing together was a great way to reconnect.

I’m looking forward to what 2025 brings. Happy new year!
✨ 🫱🏾‍🫲🏼 ♿ 🦮 📱 🧘🏼‍♀ ️🎸 🎶 🎉