Today I am sitting down with Mahesh Guruswamy.

Mahesh is a product development leader at Smartsheet where he manages teams across multiple sites that build customer facing features. Prior to that he was at Amazon working on initiatives that made Alexa smarter. He built and managed multiple engineering teams that worked on initiatives that helped make Alexa more human.

Mahesh has a very interesting career story working in various positions as a software engineer. He speaks about how he made the transition from India to the USA and how working at McDonalds for 2 years helped him in his life and career.

He has worked a lot with recent college graduates and has great advice to share with them. He encourages graduates to ask for help when its needed and pay it forward. He mentions the importance and benefits of not holding grudges in the workplace.

In the workplace you will get critical feedback and universities don’t always train students how to process critical feedback. Mahesh gives some advice on how to deal with harsh feedback and not take it personally.

LinkedIn profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahesh-guruswamy-84795b6/

TGAW website:

 www.thegraduateatwork.com