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#56 Shira Krishna: From Engineer to Product Leader
Shira Krishnan charts her path from hands-on engineer to product leader at Fivetran, the global leader in data movement. Shira explains why she traded pull requests for product briefs, how she rewired her mindset from “how do we build it?” to “why does it matter?”, and the frameworks she now uses to make hard trade-offs between reliability, speed, and business impact. We dig into the nuts and bolts of “just-works” data pipelines, the chaos of changing SaaS APIs, and what it really takes to serve AI/ML, analytics, and operational workloads at enterprise scale. Shira also shares candid lessons from early PM missteps, the mentors who helped her navigate the transition, and how she keeps her technical edge sharp without living in the codebase. If you’re an engineer eyeing product, or a PM wrestling with deep technical products, this episode is your roadmap—plus a peek at how AI is reshaping both product work and software engineering careers.
About Shira Krishnan:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirakris/
About Federico Ramallo ✨👨💻🌎
🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers
- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/
- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io
- ✅ https://prevetted.ai
🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡
- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast
- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod
- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast
00:00 Intro — Who is Shira Krishnan
01:03 Starting out in engineering
02:03 Grad school & the leap to the U.S.
03:43 Cisco days and seeing a product scale to $1B
07:30 Missing the “why” — seeds of a PM transition
09:50 Founding a startup and chasing product–market fit
12:10 First official PM role & lessons learned
14:30 Joining Fivetran: pricing, buying, and infra
16:40 Balancing technical debt vs. business priorities
20:50 AI’s impact on PM and engineering workflows
23:35 A 10-year-old wins a hackathon — vibe coding in action
25:35 Opportunities and limits of AI-assisted building
28:10 Ethics, data quality, and responsible AI
30:05 Parenthood, learning, and fresh perspectives
33:00 Advice to engineers eyeing product management
36:10 Advice for moving countries and embracing new cultures
37:30 Wrap-up & where to learn more
View all episodes
By Federico RamalloShira Krishnan charts her path from hands-on engineer to product leader at Fivetran, the global leader in data movement. Shira explains why she traded pull requests for product briefs, how she rewired her mindset from “how do we build it?” to “why does it matter?”, and the frameworks she now uses to make hard trade-offs between reliability, speed, and business impact. We dig into the nuts and bolts of “just-works” data pipelines, the chaos of changing SaaS APIs, and what it really takes to serve AI/ML, analytics, and operational workloads at enterprise scale. Shira also shares candid lessons from early PM missteps, the mentors who helped her navigate the transition, and how she keeps her technical edge sharp without living in the codebase. If you’re an engineer eyeing product, or a PM wrestling with deep technical products, this episode is your roadmap—plus a peek at how AI is reshaping both product work and software engineering careers.
About Shira Krishnan:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirakris/
About Federico Ramallo ✨👨💻🌎
🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers
- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/
- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io
- ✅ https://prevetted.ai
🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡
- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast
- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod
- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast
00:00 Intro — Who is Shira Krishnan
01:03 Starting out in engineering
02:03 Grad school & the leap to the U.S.
03:43 Cisco days and seeing a product scale to $1B
07:30 Missing the “why” — seeds of a PM transition
09:50 Founding a startup and chasing product–market fit
12:10 First official PM role & lessons learned
14:30 Joining Fivetran: pricing, buying, and infra
16:40 Balancing technical debt vs. business priorities
20:50 AI’s impact on PM and engineering workflows
23:35 A 10-year-old wins a hackathon — vibe coding in action
25:35 Opportunities and limits of AI-assisted building
28:10 Ethics, data quality, and responsible AI
30:05 Parenthood, learning, and fresh perspectives
33:00 Advice to engineers eyeing product management
36:10 Advice for moving countries and embracing new cultures
37:30 Wrap-up & where to learn more