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Here are some of the realities of India's graduating students: India graduates 1.5 million engineers, less than 17% of these are employable in any IT firm, a much less percent are equipped to work in startups and product companies. Number of software engineering job, or IT professional job, is way less than this number. A … Continue reading Dear Software Engineer – Do you care about your career?
Career is a 40-year game. Does your career strategy resemble a game of Scrabble or a game of Bananagram? Both are word games, but the game structure and strategies that win the game couldn't be more different!
This is some general advice I give to budding product managers early in their career. This is also applicable to those who are in adjacent roles like program management, product marketing, product planning, technical project management, etc. who wish to get into product management. Of course, everything is contextual and so is this advice! If … Continue reading How do I build a good product management career?
Over last several months, I had several conversations with the mentees assigned to me by LinkedIn mentor program, as well as with engineers in my company. Interestingly, in most of the cases, I had same recommendation for them - have that conversation that you feel is too tough to handle. Now, it is possible that … Continue reading Difficult conversations are difficult!
Many of you would have had your performance review 1-1 recently, and most likely you are disappointed about how it went. There are many reasons why you would be disappointed right now, I talked about it in my post last year about this - Performance Review - The Day After. If you want to … Continue reading What do you focus on – activities or results?
This is the final post in the series I started a few years back when I left US and landed in India (see first part, second part and third part). It has been an inordinately long time since I wrote last in this series, and it must be attributed to my lack of perspective on things that … Continue reading My Independence – End of a beginning
R W Emerson said, "What you do is so loud in my ears that I can't hear what you say." This is an excellent adage to follow when dealing with senior leadership within your organization. This is a reality most people have to face in their organization.
Many organizations end up creating and fostering employees who perform well but have bad attitude. It is good to understand why these employees survive and thrive, and what you can do about it.
More often than not, you deal with incompetent leaders in your organization who get in your way rather than help you. It is important to understand this reality and work around it. And when you do find a good leader, you stay around them as much as you can because they are a rare breed.
It is important to distinguish between skill-based and experience-based competencies when deciding what to build your expertise in, otherwise you will quickly lose advantage at workplace.
Career Bloom 