Senior to Principal Engineer in Big Tech - Interview With Bhavana Hindupur

Communication is critical in software engineering and it comes up in so many different facets of the job. Whether that's working with customers, your own teammates, or even other teams or stakeholders, you need to be able to communicate effectively. Hi, my name is Nick Cantino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft. In this video, I was joined by Bavana Hindapur and we got to talk about her journey as a software engineer, whether that was at big financial institutions or big tech companies now at Microsoft, and how communication really affected her role. In this interview, Bavana talked about how at Amazon, it was really encouraged for the engineers to be interacting and working with the customers. She also shared some of her struggles with how she was kind of stuck around that mid level and was able to push forward towards principle. As with all of these interviews, there's so much valuable information to be able to extract. So, I highly encourage you to sit back, enjoy, and try to take in everything that you can. Let me know what you think about this in the comments below. Thanks, and I'll see you next time. >> How much time was spent at financial institutions versus kind of like moving on to like big tech companies? >> I think it's almost equal at this point. Uh the first about six or seven years was at financial institutions and about the same time yeah seven yearsish at big tech. >> Cool. And I'm assuming that no no regrets moving into big tech from the big financial institutions or are there things you miss about it? >> Um I actually that that's a really good question. I haven't really thought about it like that. I don't think there's anything I miss at big tech that that I had at financial institutions. But at the same time, I wouldn't say that u it was all bad at um >> yeah, the banks. I did some really cool stuff. Met some really smart people. >> Um >> I I definitely enjoy owning technology and owning the product end to end a bit more. So maybe I feel like if if you ask me now, I feel like I'm suited to big tech a bit bit more, but I think I I I don't regret maybe on on the flip side, I don't regret spending the first few years of my career at financial >> and I think to your point too, like probably based on some of the projects or the exposure that you had at those previous companies, it sounds like you you did not have the feeling of and I'm I'm generalizing a little bit, but not as much feeling of ownership over the the products that you were working on maybe. >> Yeah, I think there's a regulatory requirement at every bank uh every investment bank at least that developers aren't allowed to um tinker with uh production. So I I I I think that's a legal requirement um because uh production has actual effects on the financial functioning of the banks. Uh so what what that translates to to your in in your day-to-day work as as an engineer at banks is that >> when there are production issues, you get on calls with at least back then you get on calls with uh these operational support people and then you're giving them instructions, you know, type this command, press this button, etc., etc. And that wasn't as fun as just owning everything yourself. And that that is that is the first part. The second part is that when you're building products uh at big tech I found that engineers have more autonomy um on what business problems to solve. >> Whereas at banks um that bit came from the business. So we had autonomy over how we would solve the problems but not the what. um I uh built a lot more business knowledge and the the the whole what problems do we solve uh from uh my time at big tech. >> That's very interesting and I should ask this too because I was talking with Jade Wilson recently because she's at Microsoft and we have very different like experiences in terms of the product space as we're in. So in big tech, have you done more like userfacing products and services or more like platform kind of technology? >> At um actually at both Amazon and Google I think I was working on userf facing products and services. Yeah. >> Uh at Amazon it was more like the other users not not the people who are buying. Um I I was working for the Amazon retail business rather than AWS. So the people who are selling I uh I was uh helping build products for the PE for for the selling partners of Amazon. >> Got it. >> Uh >> okay interesting. >> Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. >> I was uh No, it's okay. At Google I was working in the cloud space um in the compute uh team at at Microsoft which I'm very new to. I'm I'm actually working in the same exact space that Jade Wilson is working in. It's a really small world. >> Yeah. So whatever she said applies to me as well. >> Awesome. No, that's very cool. Well, no, that's that's actually really good background. So, um the reason I wanted to inquire about that was because you had mentioned that you feel like not only like autonomy on the like on different aspects as as an engineer, right? So I was thinking that like for me I work I've been working at Microsoft for just under four years now but on platform teams and as a result of that it feels like they're they're almost exclusively like engineering driven right we are doing engineering work to help the other engineers do their engineering work >> and uh it's like we do have uh like PMs and stuff that that obviously contribute a great deal but it seems like you know the one team I had prior was Like in the beginning especially it was almost all engineering like PMs were and I I'm not I don't want to say this to like trivialize the role because it was certainly impactful but they would help a lot with coordinating and on the second team I'm on the PMs are a lot more uh you know collaborating with engineers on on what we're going to build. So like the the product ownership side feels kind of shared but I was curious like if you are doing more you know userf facing stuff you know how much more kind of say you have as an engineer or if that kind of gets taken away from say more product style roles that do more interfacing with customers but >> yeah yeah yeah that's that's interesting I think um every team I've worked in so far in every company has had some kind of a product manager, >> right? >> I don't think I've ever really worked directly with customers. Uh that said, u the the the role that I'm in right now at Microsoft has that potential. I just haven't been through a real customer engagement yet. Um got it. So we will be working with customers directly. But um I think every company has various uh degrees of how much they want engineers to get involved >> with with users directly. I think the most I was uh involved with customers was at Amazon. When they say they're customer obsessed, they want everybody to be customer obsessed. Um and I I really enjoyed that because even though we had um a product manager and really good product manager at that every engineer especially uh the ones who want to be senior or the ones that are already at a senior level are expected to question every decision that was made. Um come up with business problems that they want to solve. um go talk to users if if you want like you're not supposed to go through the uh product manager. It's just that the product manager just specializes in that role and is the expert in that role. >> And I think that every engineer absolutely needs to build that muscle of being able to speak with customers directly and and finding out what their problems are. That's a very very important skill to have because tech skills they they take you up to a certain point but beyond that if you want to become u the type of engineer with an impact that um uh spans multiple teams an organization if you want to become a CTO someday etc etc you really need to understand the business and if you don't have if your company doesn't give you the opportunity to do that then they're really restricting your role. >> Interesting. And I mean this is a great segue, right? Because we were chatting before about like soft skills versus technical skills. And I think you really started to introduce it perfectly. Like >> obviously as software engineers like technical skills are important. I don't think that anyone looks at software engineering and says, "Oh, you don't really need to be technical." >> Yeah. Like you do. Um, but I I almost feel like there's an overemphasis on like I'm only going to focus on technical skills, become an expert in some technology, some some space. And I think to your point like you were getting to this point where in your career if you're like, hey, like I only have technical skills, how do you kind of break through? So maybe a a question for you like given this Amazon experience where you're saying engineers kind of were able to maybe perhaps encouraged to interact with customers >> what like what did that look like in terms of skill sets like did you see people struggling to do that because they hadn't been exposed to it or like how did they get to be comfortable doing that? I think that when we speak about soft skills for engineers, just like tech skills, there's a wide range of soft skills, right? >> Um and as engineers, you don't have to be experts in every single one of them. >> You could you could build some um like like the T-shaped engineer for tech skills. I think it makes sense to think of your soft skills also as a T. >> Okay. Yeah. Some engineers might be really good at speaking with uh customers um just by what their personality type is >> and some might and I absolutely believe that you can learn soft skills like you can learn tech skills >> and um >> a lot of my soft skills I learned by observing uh some senior engineers that I admired. some soft skills I was born with um like conflict resolution u running meetings um and and then just if if I see that there's a disagreement just just mo moderating that trying to make sense of what everyone is saying and then bringing bringing the team to a conclusion etc that's stuff I'm really strong at and I didn't have to learn it but I see that some people do have to learn that >> um there's yeah there's also being able to lead a team um so you need confidence you need assertiveness that I was lacking that I had to learn as well. That was actually that part was the toughest for me to learn. >> So, uh going back to your question about how do people how did people find um interacting with customers. I don't think that every engineer learned that really well. Some people were already good at it. Some people were u maybe shadowing uh uh calls with uh customers with a product manager and they had the opportunity to kind of build those skills. Some people said I'm not that interested in it but because they were at Amazon they had to do a little bit of that be involved in that a little bit and then they improved that just by a tiny bit. It depends on what they wanted to do with their soft skills. But yeah, we we didn't I I I don't think that any senior engineer gets to say that I'm only going to focus on tech skills and I'm not going to focus on anything else. You don't get very far with that. That's really uh really interesting too that like um you know like people having this opportunity at least right so and you I want to go back to this but you were kind of saying there's >> we can think about uh soft skills like a T a T-shaped developer on the tech side right so >> when we were just chatting through this we're really talking about soft skills for interacting with customers right and your your introduction even about your own skills was you know say conflict resolution and stuff these are also different sets of skills. But something that I find interesting is that at least in the case that you're describing, Amazon gave the opportunity to engineers like without the opportunity to be able to practice that would be extremely difficult. >> Um I think >> back to some of my experiences like I was at startups before Microsoft, not my own, but um that felt like there was a lot more opportunity to be closer with customers. It doesn't mean that every day we were chatting with customers, but the the proximity felt so much closer. So almost as a result, you felt more connected to the customer. Uh I could I mean I got to talk to customers in some situations, but I could almost imagine like if they brought in a customer that I could I would know how to have a conversation by virtue of proximity. So that's cool that that opportunity was there. Um do you have a feel for I don't know. I'm assuming you don't have like statistics on it, but do you have a feel for like if it was a majority of people that really liked leaning into that or was it more the opposite where people were like, "Ah, this is kind of not like I'm a little uncomfortable. I don't want to." >> That's an interesting question. Um, I I think again going back to what I said before, there there was a there was a varying degree of interest in these types of activities. There were definitely people who hated we we hear engineers say this all the time that they just hate meetings in general, >> right? Yeah. >> I don't hate meetings in general. I hate meetings that are wasteful. >> I also hate technical work that's wasteful. >> But there are people who just hate meetings in general and they just want to write code or they just want to maybe architect a system. Um so so similarly there there there were people who hated maybe customer interactions or anything that took them away from uh technology. But again it depends on the culture about um if if you know that you're not going to get rewarded well if you're not getting involved with customers and at least understanding what they want and building questioning decisions etc. showing that that that kind of skill uh if if you're not getting rewarded for behavior like that, it gets corrected very easily. Actually, I also want to address a point that that you mentioned before about startups. I've only ever worked for large corporates. That's my entire range. I I know that I'm missing that startup experience. So, what I'm saying about Amazon and having the opportunity to speak with customers, take it with a pinch of salt because it's all relative. >> Okay. Uh maybe when I uh ever you know in the future if I if I ever join a startup I'm going to be like okay I had nothing at Amazon. This is this is where the real customer interaction is. No, it's uh I think that's a very valid point especially for viewers, right? Like I think uh I try to as much as possible like recognize bias and stuff like that because we're we're talking about experiences and we have to acknowledge that like just because we have an experience it doesn't mean it's a universal fact kind of thing. So, thank you for for bringing that up. And um yeah, like and I guess in addition to that, right, like my experience at startups compared to big tech, like I don't have any customer interactions in big tech. I've in the past four years, >> the the closest thing to a customer interaction is kind of like supporting other internal teams. And right, >> yes, one could argue like they are your direct customers. And I get it like I've worked I've worked in situations like serving the customer so I can recognize that but um there there is a big difference because when they are internal like that I think that you you're afforded a lot more opportunities because um yeah >> I don't know just by proximity you're working in similar tech stacks like I don't know it just feels like it's almost like a bit of a cheat code to say like oh like they're the customer. It's like, yeah, but like, you know, you're you you have the same like BP or something, right? Like it's it's not really quite the same. So, anyway, I thank you for sharing that uh that bit because I think that's important to recognize. Um I wanted to to touch a little bit more on like some of the other soft skills, right? So, we're kind of been chatting about like the customer interaction side, which by the way, I think is like a tremendously valuable thing that even when I talk about soft skills, I don't even talk about this part and I probably should more often. You mentioned business value and things like that. I think that that's one of the best ways that you can start to try and connect those dots. But what other like what other soft skills like if we're kind of taking a step back from interacting with customers? If we're thinking about say engineers that are watching this and they're trying to get a little bit further in their career, maybe they're closer to like the junior working towards senior. From your perspective, what types of like soft skills do you have you seen really kind of shine and make people stand out? So I I think that there are two types of well this is this is a bit reductionist but let's say just just for the sake of condensing this into a you know a short answer there are two types of um um personalities that I see in tech that based on my experience one side which which was me uh I grew up in a culture where hierarchy was really respected and then age is really important, designation, seniority etc is really important and I had to really learn the skills to uh at Amazon we called it uh have backbone. So it means I mean it means what it says. It means that you need to be okay with disagreeing with anyone in the room even if that is your director, your VP, whoever. Um definitely your peers and and and your manager. I had to really build that skill. So for me it was very very hard to say no uh or I don't agree with that to someone who was senior to me or someone even like older to me in age. And then there's also the complexity of like gender and and race etc etc. So all of those things um kind of made it very hard for me to to say no or u just bring in a different point of view. So so disagreeing uh when it matters and then being assertive when it matters as well. So you you cannot be seen as a leader. Say you're leading a project and if if there are um sometimes you have to put your foot down and say no this this is the right direction we need to take this project in or this is this is too much analysis let's just you know buy us for action and let's just let's just get this thing done or the other way around maybe we're hurrying and we need to take a step back and think. So these are all things that you need a level of assertiveness to say and to enforce and that that was something that I really needed to learn to be seen as a leader. So I had the skills to kind of um find the data and scope out the right solution and and then um give if you gave me a team of I don't know yesmen that I could just you know uh tell them something and they'll just do it. um maybe I'd have multiple successful projects, but that's not the reality. Um people people uh come and they have very different personalities and and you need to be a strong leader. You need to be able to uh bring everyone in the same direction and and get get some work done. So um that that is something that that that is one aspect. So that is one one extreme, right? And on the other extreme, we have a different type of personality where they're very comfortable expressing themselves. So, so, so that that problem is solved for them, >> right? Um but the the place that they struggle is to to put their ideas across in a um in a in a calm uh in in a uh respectful manner. So that you know you don't want to put people off when you're trying to lead a team because you want to bring everybody and and bring bring them on the journey together. um be because you want everybody to be working in in the same direction. So if if you have some ideas and you you think that your way is a is is a little bit better than what someone else is suggesting, the worst thing you can do is say, "Oh, your your suggestion is complete nonsense, >> right? >> Because that you you're not going to win their trust that way." So uh being able to communicate those things respectfully uh being able to actually focus on the data and then we also have people who uh are so attached to their work or so attached to certain technologies that they aren't able or their their decisions or their ideas that they aren't able to kind of listen to the other side and then uh and then be comfortable in saying okay I made a mistake I think you're right let's go with your uh decision and then stick with that decision once they commit to it. So, so these are the two I think extremes that we need to kind of bring to the middle and and make make a place where everybody is uh bold enough to disagree with each other but then also we do it in a in a in a respectful manner. I think the these the this that is the essence of uh the other side of soft skills apart from you know customer empathy there's also empathy for each other >> right well no it's very interesting the second set of individuals you described I mean at even the extreme of of that side um I think that's probably what we would classify there's different terms for this but like intelligent jerks right like there's other more um colorful words that we can use for individuals like that but >> um they like th those types of individuals can completely bring down teams. They can be extremely toxic. Um and when you have more junior people that are seeing this kind of behavior, um they can feel like they're completely shut down. They don't have opportunities for growth. Um we talk about building, you know, safe environments for people to, you know, to fail and it's okay. And now these people are like afraid to have ideas, afraid to take any risks. And it's like just the growth opportunity. So um fine. So I just wanted to mention that about like the the intelligent jerks on that one side. something you said that I thought was really interesting and I hadn't thought about this before and this is going to be from you know my own sort of cultural bias and upbringing but I hadn't thought about the fact and correct me if I'm wrong on this but it sound like you were saying like from your own culture from your own background and and upbringing that some of these factors were like you found them very limiting because with respect to your own culture it's very different like what you would expect in the workplace. Okay. Interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the first time I uh I visited the US. Uh this was when I was with Goldman Sachs and I had the opportunity to uh visit my team in New York. And we had a meeting with a boss's boss. So naturally, I was really quiet cuz this was my boss's boss, >> right? >> And I was a junior engineer. And there was another um engineer in the room uh who was actually an intern I think at that time and she was so confident and she asked so many questions. She disagreed with our boss's boss and I thought she was amazing. I thought, "Oh my god, this girl has so much confidence." But then also I thought, "Well, she didn't get in trouble." The our our boss's boss wasn't like he he wasn't angry. He he he didn't even seem upset. He was really happy that she raised all these questions and that got me thinking that I really need to build these skills. But that that was just, you know, the beginning of having that idea. There's a very big gap between knowing that that that behavior is correct versus actually being comfortable displaying those behaviors. >> Right. Well, no, that's like a I just I thank you so much for sharing that because it's a that's perspective like I I would not have ever got on my own unless I had heard, you know, others talking about that. So hopefully for, you know, for viewers, right? Like I'm sure there's many people that are in a similar situation because whether it's, you know, a same cultural background or they they have a different cultural background, but there's different characteristics where they're seeing the workplace not line up with like, hey, like that's really maybe not how I was raised or how we do things in my country or whatever it happens to be. and being able to recognize those things and go, okay, well, do I have to shift my paradigm a little bit because that's not that's not an easy thing to do. That's yet one more barrier to trying to make progress in your career. So, very very interesting. >> Yeah. Another thing that I'd like to mention is that there is there is a very severe lack of role models um in some demographics. Um I I I really struggle to find um me mentors who are senior IC women. Mhm. >> Um and and it's it's really hard to find them and and and even harder to find senior IC women of color. So um that that is definitely one uh one one factor that kind of slowed my growth I think because I I couldn't really put the put my finger on what I was missing. The people that I was talking to, the mentors that I did have were extremely helpful, but they couldn't figure out this problem either because they didn't know that someone could be thinking this way or someone could be so uncomfortable with doing something so simple. Like I disagree with someone in the room. What's the worst that's going to happen? But I was so scared of doing it. >> Yeah. It's like it's how do you um you know as someone who's mentoring and trying to help and provide guidance, how do you how do you offer such guidance if you're not aware of such a challenge, right? Like how would you know to how to navigate it? So >> yeah, that's that's really fascinating. So I mean like I said, thank you for sharing that. Um I'm also curious. So we talked about this a little bit before as well. I've been kind of going through some different soft skill uh patterns, but you were also talking about kind of in your career kind of reaching a point where you I don't know if you'd call it mid to senior, but like getting beyond that, right, which is like an interesting >> uh I don't know the background, but like how long of a plateau that felt like and >> do you think that that's related to some of these things that or or did did you overcome some of these soft skills that we were just going through? Did you overcome that to get to sort of that first plateau? I'm just kind of curious to see like how your career broke through that. >> Yeah, I I think it was a combination of um missing soft skills and tech skills, which which is which is the case with almost everyone, right? You need to build both to be able to get to the next level. So, uh, one of the things that that, uh, caused the the big plateau was, um, um, I I made a lateral move when I went from JP Morgan to Amazon and it it was definitely a the right decision for me because I I built so many skills that I wouldn't have otherwise built. Uh, the scale that I had at Amazon, I don't think I'm going to be able to have that sort of experience anywhere else. But um in in terms of I was just it it looked like I would uh had I stayed back I could have gotten promoted in the previous place. So So I I just wanted uh you know your viewers to to consider and and understand and be really careful while thinking about a lateral move and and always think about what what is it going to give you? uh because it could really set you back quite a few years in terms of getting to that getting recognized at that next level, >> right? >> I I landed at Amazon and I saw that the caliber was I was here and the caliber of everyone was about here uh in terms of tech skills. So, um it took me a little while to build those skills, right? Um but often tech building tech skills is just oh you just work on these projects which Amazon had many and um and then you read books or whatever your um preferred way of learning new tech skills is for me it's it's always been reading books. So you read these books, you you apply these skills uh through these projects, you you build that tech um uh abilities and then um and then came the the soft skills, right? I think the thing that held me back for a really really really long time uh was being seen as a leader. I really couldn't I really couldn't uh demonstrate that um that. And then there was also there's so many things you need to navigate to get a promotion. Um that that and also I never really um thought about getting a promotion as something that you need to own and champion yourself. >> I just thought I think this is also a cultural thing. I I don't know but um you know when you're in school you do your you do your job correctly. you you you study, you you listen in class, you do all your assignments, you do your exams, etc. Everybody is asked to do all these things explicitly and you do these things well and you get your reward at the end of the year. You get your grades and um back in India you also are ranked and I used to love that. I know it's not the best but but I used to really enjoy that. Anyway, so back back to like um the whole promotion situation. I thought that if I did an amazing job, everything would just come to me. >> Um but that did not happen. So it was it was also promotion processes. I don't know how I feel about them, you know, in the corporate world. They're so so so complicated. And um I don't think I agree with how how much difference there is between getting promoted internally and then getting hired at the next level in in a new company. So it's like >> that drives me nuts. Yeah. >> Right. So there's years of work and then you need to you you you need like X Y and Zed to kind of sign off on your uh promotion versus when you're interviewing you just it's one day of effort. fine, you need to prepare and stuff, but but still the you're only demonstrating your skills for a few hours and then they make a decision. Anyway, so um just just getting wrapping my head around that process and then just really putting myself out there and and then advocating for myself, etc. That that all of these things really contributed to um moving from mid-level to senior. >> That's very interesting. Right. And you you talked about the leadership part, but you you mentioned that a little bit earlier, right, about having to like assertiveness and being able to say like, you know, we're going to take a bias for a particular whether it's action or even, you know, we're maybe moving too fast. I've actually like in the past couple of weeks, I've had multiple things like this come up where and I'm I'm relatively new to my team, so a few months in on this team and I'm I'm finding myself in situations where I'm like, look, I have to I have to make a decision here. So I need to be able to as a manager relay to my team like this is the business requirement. Like we have technical challenges. There's a million different ways we could solve this. But like if we have a business requirement, what is it short-term, medium-term, long-term? Can we do things in a way that unblock us now? They're not like, you know, tons and tons of rework for later. Like what's the right balance? And um it's great because the conversations with the engineers, there's so many ideas coming up and I want that to happen. I want I have lots of new people on my team. I want them to speak up and it's great because they are that's I'm finding that's a rare thing now, but they are speaking up and um then with all of these ideas now I kind of have a bit of the responsibility along with the tech leads to be able to say cool >> let's kind of bring this back in and kind of get some focus so we can start taking some action. So, I've I've absolutely had that come up recently where I've had to be a little bit assertive and it's not I'm not totally comfortable with it because it feels it like I don't want to dismiss people. So, people are still like, "Hey, I have more ideas." I'm like, "That's great. Like, please share them, but I need you to also know that like there's a business. Like, we have to keep moving." So, yeah, it feels awkward, but have to kind of do it. Um the other I'm kind of I'm losing my train of thought but I wanted to come back to this other part that you mentioned. Oh about um you had said I think uh the curiosity was around is it a cultural thing for kind of pushing for your own career progression and my so I've what you've stated I've observed a ton for other engineers like trying to move forward in the career. I think you explained it so well that like going through school and stuff, it's kind of like here's all the stuff you have to go do, it's handed to you and as long as you go do it, you know, you will get the rewards for it. It's just not how it works in, you know, in a corporate environment. Um, I don't I don't know if it's cultural, and I say that only because I've seen a wide variety. Maybe there is a cultural undertone that I haven't picked up on, but um I've seen it across so many different engineers and it's quite rare, >> especially for more junior folks where they come on and they're like, I'm very motivated about career progression. Tell me like like what do I got to do? Like >> they're very driven. They just don't know the steps to take. So, uh it's it's definitely interesting. So, it's very cool to hear that you identified this for yourself and you were able to start kind of uh pushing on some action. Maybe a a final question for you on that is like what do you recall what that process was like when you're like starting to realize it? Did you have steps that you took where you were like you had an aha moment and you're like, "Okay, I have to start doing certain things to kind of uh more formally push your career progression." like was it more conversations or I don't know bringing visibility in certain ways? >> It was it was almost everything. I was really desperate. Um I don't know if you know this uh this this little tale about you know um a frog that was that was you know stuck in a jar of milk and he was two frogs. Okay. There was two frogs and they were stuck in a jar of milk. And there was one frog and that that said that, you know, we're doomed. There's no way we're getting out. Um there's no way we can get out of this jar. And the other frog was like, I don't care. I'm going to keep trying and and it keeps like um moving its legs and and it tries to kind of get out swim to the top. It couldn't swim to the top on its own, but because it it kept moving, it caused the milk to it churned the milk and it turned the milk to kind of semiolid and then it kind of had had some support to kind of get out of the jar. I think I was that second frog. And I tried everything. I was so frustrated. I I'd speak to my mentors. I'd speak to my sister. I'd speak to my husband about this stuff. Everybody had different types of advice. And um when I spoke to so many people, I I then started forming patterns of okay, maybe this is what I was missing. Um, and after a failed promotion attempt, I'd then go to my mentor and say, "This is, you know, this this is completely unacceptable. Why did this happen to me?" And so unfair and stuff. And my mentor was like, "Did you know this process beforehand? like I sent you this link like >> maybe last year about this this was the promotion process you knew that you need you needed x y and zed and I was like nope I didn't read that and then some some of some of some of that you know it it was it was a lot of different things um that that happened and then I followed people on LinkedIn um I I followed advice uh I I read I read a lot of books actually I read a lot of books that um actually that ranged from changing my personality uh to like I I I think let let me mention some some uh favorite ones. I think >> the disease to please uh help helped me then um nice girls don't get the corner office helped me such a corny name but it's a really good book. Um and then and then load lo loads of uh technical books as well to build the tech skills. So um I I've read a lot of books. So I did so many different things and and then and then finally I was able to find you know like the solution to the puzzle. >> It's interesting like I mean probably one of the big you know takeaways from just that part alone was this bias for action right? So you had a realization where you were like, "Okay, something has to change." Like like things if I keep doing what I'm doing, like it seems like there is at least I don't want to say no progress, that's not fair at all to say, but it's not the progress you want to see. So >> you either keep doing the same things and keep kind of feeling disappointed by it or find something that works. And it sounds like you kind of went really hard into like I need to find the thing that works. So, I'm going to try as many different things as I can to try getting, you know, something that's going to kind of latch on and work. So, that's I think that's awesome. Um I it's always difficult having conversations with people about like, you know, what's the best way to to kind of work forward and get promotions. Everyone has different opinions on this on the internet. Obviously, you kind of said experiences with all the information collecting you were doing and >> yeah, >> I think a lot of it comes down to like everyone has different personalities. Um, your situation with your own manager or the company you're at, like all of these can look very different. So, there's no cookie cutter like just follow these three simple steps and it works. But the, you know, the main point there is you're in the driver's seat. You need to be the one trying to drive the progress in your career, not just kind of waiting for it to to be handed to you. So >> yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and everybody's starting point is different as well. So there that's why there cannot be a cookie cutter solution. >> Yeah. And it's like it I mean I it's a I feel like it's a human thing. I don't know if I'm allowed to just kind of generalize that way, but I think we we're all kind of looking for for shortcuts, right? We want shortcuts. And um no, every time this kind of comes up in different aspects of my life when I'm talking about people want shortcuts. The the ultimate shortcut ends up being like accepting there just aren't universal shortcuts like >> Yeah, >> that's the shortcut. Understand that sooner and you can start making progress. >> Yeah, absolutely. I love that. >> So, no, that's that's very cool. I wanted to say like so not only was that a really big takeaway for me was like that that kind of um your experience is is certainly aligned with I got a bias for action about my career progression but I want to go back to just briefly to say like something you mentioned earlier about like cultural backgrounds can absolutely have a big influence in how you're navigating things. Um, I don't know for for other viewers, I hope that resonates with them. And I wanted to say like as an engineering manager, that's absolutely something I want to take more um to heart and try to make sure I'm paying more attention to. So, thank you for sharing that with me. Um, I I wanted to close off by making sure that if you had an opportunity to share socials and stuff, of course, I'll follow up with you offline to make sure I can get the links and stuff proper. But, uh, if people want to find you and connect with you and engage with you, what's the the best way to do that? >> LinkedIn. >> Just Yeah, just just follow me on LinkedIn. Uh, send me messages. Um, I might not be able to connect with you immediately, but I will get to you. And um I also write u on Substack. So um you you will find the link uh in my LinkedIn bio as well. >> Perfect. Okay. Well, like I said, I'll get both of those from you. I'll put them in the the comments and the description of this. So um I just wanted to say thank you so much. Like I love conversations like this. Um I got to learn a lot and I hope that means viewers got to learn a lot too. >> I I really enjoyed it as well. Thank you for the opportunity, Nick. >> Cool. Of course. Well, thanks again and yeah, for folks that are watching, make sure you check out the links and uh yeah, lots more to learn. So, thanks and uh we'll see you next time. Bye.