2021 Noonies Nominee Interview with Sarrah Pitaliya

Hey Hackers! I’m Sarrah Pitaliya and I’m the tech-writer at Radixweb.

First of all, a huge thank you to the HackerNoon community and staff for nominating me for a 2021 Noonies award! I’ve been nominated in the following categories please do check out these award pages and vote:

HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - application

As someone in the software development industry, I believe that the most exciting technology of the present is DevOps because it encourages better application development and faster release of new or revised software products to customers. Learn more about my thoughts and opinions on DevOps technology and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below.

1. What do you do and why do you do it?

I play with words, shuffle them and arrange them in such an order that they become a sentence. Hence, every sentence I write becomes a story with relevant information. I tell stories in the form of literature to explain in an intuitive and native way.

In a nutshell, I make a complex text presentable and easy to understand. Being a tech-savvy person and a writer, I feel technical writing is my true calling.

As we know, the trends and developments of recent years suggest that the time has come for more and technologically & methodically more innovative documentation, particularly in the IT sector. So, being fascinated with technology, I always wished if someone could explain how a software worked in simpler terms or how a program could run. I have always been interested in the functions of tech products.

Since I have the ability to process information and present it in a clear, concise manner, I’ve been a great assistance to my custom software development company, Radixweb who deals with complex software for ordinary people with limited tech understanding. This profession allows me to do something useful and helpful through my writings.

2. Tell us more about the things you create / write / manage / build!

Being associated with Radixweb for the last eight years, I have been playing a major role when it comes to content writing and marketing. My writing is the art of providing detail-oriented instruction to help our customers understand a specific product or service.

As a proficient tech-writer, I have proven experience in a highly technical field, such as software development or computer science. I have obtained a deep understanding of products and services to translate our complex product information into simple, polished, and engaging content for customers.

I personally work closely with various departments to understand project requirements and create content in alternative media forms for maximum usability, with a consistent voice across all documentation.

3. How did you end up on your current career path? Do you like it?

From the day I stepped into the professional industry, I knew a career in technical writing would make self-development a lifelong process for me. I will have to acquire a unique set of skills such as research, the ability to interact with experts, analytical mind, and exploration skills.

When I tell people about my profession, I get that blank stare. They ask me why I do and what I do. Well, I completely love my job because technical writers are behind the scenes, helping people when they need it. When you’re setting up your coffee maker, a technical writer wrote those instructions. When you’re browsing the internet for the answer to a question and find some product FAQs or online help, a technical writer wrote that content.

So the next time you’re installing a new tool on your computer and encounter an error, or you can’t remember how to install a Node tool in your system or integrate a package into your application, you can search for the tutorials or articles. Someone writes that detailed and informative content, and we do it because we want people to make it understand easily, even if they don’t have prior knowledge.

4. What tech are you most excited or passionate about right now and why?

In today’s world, where so many essential business tasks have become digitized, IT teams must deal with constant change while ensuring zero downtime. DevOps is an attempt to scale technology with humans. DevOps has changed the way development, and operations teams collaborate together to produce and deploy new digital services, apps, features, and updates. So, DevOps is one of the most technology, which I am passionate about right now.

And if I consider another technology, apart from DevOps, that would be Blockchain. Blockchain seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days. While looking to the far future of blockchain is extremely exciting, new innovations are constantly entering the market, promising bigger and bolder uses of the technology.

While I’ve been aware of these major trends in tech development for a while, I’ve noticed that the impact of DevOps and blockchain is likely to have a greater impact on business and society than most people realize.

5. What tech are you most worried about right now and why?

If I have to consider one tech I am worried about right now, definitely, Artificial Intelligence – AI. If AI is transformative, then it has the power to be transformative both for good reasons as well as bad. Actually, people don’t like machines that get too smart, because we fear we can’t control them. The fear is generally surrounding the unknown that as AI systems are becoming more intelligent and human intelligence surrounding these systems is increasing, these two unknowns don’t really give us a clear direction for where things could go.

So, it’s just a situation where we have to wait and see what comes.

6. If we gave you 10 million dollars to invest in something today, what would you invest in and why?

Did I just say Cryptocurrency?

As we know, the crypto market has been booming in recent times. Therefore, I would like to secure some of the percentage of my wealth for better future growth.

A legendary investor Warren Buffett defines investing as "the process of laying out money now to receive more money in the future.”

So, I would not restrict myself to just the blockchain market. Rather, I would invest in other sectors, such as AI, ML and make my portfolio diversified.

What I feel is, holding onto one thing may take you the next step forward, but diversifying yourself will help you reach your goal.

7. What are you currently learning?

Learning is a never-ending process in the tech-driven industry. If I learn about some technology or tools today, I must upgrade myself to stay competitive. Because technology keeps changing and upgrading day by day. Hence, to remain alive and survive in the competition, I have to dive into it.

In fact, there are many untouched areas in the DevOps technology where an organization is yet to implement it. While digging out information, I have learned many terms such as ITOps, NoOps, CloudOps, AIOps, DevSecOps, and many more. These are the areas I am currently focusing on.

8. What’s the best advice you’ve ever given someone?

Success is generally measured by how efficiently, well, or inexpensively you solve someone’s (customer’s) problem.

9. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t write what you know. But write what people want to know or read.

10. Please give us the links to all your relevant social media profiles so we can use them to promote this interview! (Twitter and LinkedIn would be a huge plus)

https://twitter.com/sarrahpitaliya

11. Would you also be interested in joining us on the HackerNoon podcast? If so, what would you like to chat about?

Yes, of course!

I would like to talk about Blockchain, DevOps, and AI.

About HackerNoon’s 2021 Noonie Awards

The annual Noonie Awards celebrate the best and brightest of the tech industry, bringing together all who are making the Internet and the world of tech what it is today. Please be sure to check out our award categories, nominate, and vote for the people and companies who you think are making the biggest impact on the tech industry today.

The 2021 Noonies are sponsored by: bybit, Dottech Domains, and Avast. Thank you so much to these sponsors who are helping us celebrate the accomplishments of all our nominees.