Software People Stories

In this conversation, S Srinivasa Raghavan better known as SS or Raghavan, shares his experience and perspectives on

• How we mutually influenced each other in choosing our careers in hardware and software
• Being strong in English grammar, that helped him though the came from a tamil medium education
• Getting to know the power of  programmability in a calculator and being inducted into FORTRAN
• Developing an interest in software as a way to solve problems more than writing programs
• About campus selection, tests and interviews - and how he got into a hardware role for his first job
• Leading a team developing a disk controller and wanting to start something on his own with a friend
• Wanting to do hardware, but put more software into it
• Helping one of Infosys clients solve a very difficult problem with their mainframe, in the area of connectivity using a hardware solution for data transfer
• Based on the success of that assignment, getting an offer to form and lead a group working on hardware projects
• Having control over his time
• An expectation from the younger generation to get deeper understanding of the core and related technologies they work on
• Where he gets ideas for innovation
• His answer to the question: Can a software professional switch to hardware?
• Some stories of challenges in making rain gauges
• His views on the level of discipline comparing hardware and software engineers
• His views and tips on aspirants to the hardware discipline as a career and whether software engineers should dabble in hardware

S.S. Raghavan, Founder & Managing Director Spatika Information Technologies, is a successful entrepreneur with a career spanning 40+ years. Spatika, under his able guidance, has developed products like Telemetric Rain Gauges and Telemetric Weather Stations which are currently installed in over 5000 Gram panchayat across various States in India. The team at Spatika also developed a VoIP phone as early as 1997 for Satyam Computers. 

As Vice President at Infosys, he made significant contributions by developing many indigenous telecommunication products that were first in India.  During his stint at Infosys, he was the main architect in developing the Bilingual Electronic Keyboard. He was also responsible for automating Rural Telegraphy in 7 states through the development of store and forward message switching system.  

Prior to Infosys, he worked with HCL where he was responsible for designing and developing the entire Disk Sub System for the indigenous 16-bit computer.

He holds a BE degree from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore

In this conversation, Jayaraman Raghuraman - known as Raghu - SVP – Digital Engineering and Tech.Debt, Schneider Electric shares his experience and perspectives on

• How he became a software developer.. And likes to all himself a software developer
• About his aptitude to solve problems in math or trivia etc.
• How he was lucky to be at the right time for this industry
• Though interested in computers, he had to choose an elective in electronics and instrumentation
• Taking a gap year, joining a part time post graduate management program
• Getting an opportunity to be formally trained in BASIC after clearing a tough test
• His experience with his first boss, as task master and expecting high standards of performance from his team
• The ‘perks’ or working late or overnight!
• Focusing his first decade of profession to learn languages, technology etc
• Why he considers himself as a second generation IT professional in India
• The motivators for him to change roles and jobs
• Crediting his managers for the learning and growth opportunities and guidance in his career
• The importance of being open with your weaknesses with your team
• About his style of getting things done
• The power of 1-on-1s
• Virtual coffee hour
• That the emotional needs of global teams vary with the location
• How he interacts with other ‘Raghus’ in his team
• The four key questions to ask oneself
• What am I good at
• What am i not good at
• What do i like doing
• What do i not like to do
• The future of careers in IT, requiring the understanding of applications of IT 

Raghu, short for Jayaraman Raghuraman is a Software professional, with a passion for software, IT and Technology. Raghu has spent his 30+ year of his career in the technology industry, mainly focus on strong execution and operational leadership in software product development and working closely with global customers. He spent the first 16 years of his career in India and the last 20 years in the USA, but lived in several countries, as well as led teams across China, Mexico, Brazil, France, USA and India. Established track record of leadership in providing vision, direction, organization and execution of technical strategy to achieve organization and business objectives, on time and with high quality. Achievements include years of delivering on IT and Technology transformation goals while managing budgets between $100 - 500 MM in Fortune 500 organizations

Raghu’s passions include working with people globally and developing young talent, as well as spending time watching a lot of movies, cricket and any sport. Currently, a new passion for Raghu has been to listen to murder mystery and police novels by the author, Michael Connelly.

Social handles :

Twitter: @jraghu

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/jraghuraman

Can be contacted at : [email protected]

In this conversation, Raminder Rathore, a senior DevOps specialist,  shares her experience and perspectives on

• How her getting into IT was destined, based on her father’s foresight
• If you learn something, it is always good to share it with others [and teaching is a good option]
• Her first career transition from a teacher to a developer
• Taking on other roles such as a tester and business analyst
• Getting a break to be a consultant - a problem solver and liking it
• Becoming a tools consultant and discovering the importance of processes that go with the tools
• The significance of parents sharing their vision for their kids, with the children
• About the many options that kids of today have ahead of them
• Her exposure and experience with different locations / regions / countries
• Her personal philosophy of empathy and emphasis on listening
• The art of saying No
• The importance of training in personal development
• Certifications, sharing and learning, using case studies as an approach for learning
• The importance of communication - particularly when the teams are mostly remote and distributed
• Her concept of one team that she promotes, particularly with organizations on a DevOps adoption journey
• DevOps is more than automated CI/CD
• The answer to one questions that was waiting for fourteen years to be asked
• Her advice to people considering a career in IT as well as those who would like to switch to DevOps roles after some years of experience

Raminder Rathore is a DevOps practitioner; currently employed with HCL Technologies for 14 + years and in the IT industry for about 20 years. 

She started her career as a trainer then progressed to become a developer and then gradually moved across different product lifecycle phases; first becoming a tools consultant and then graduated to become a DevOps practitioner. 

She leads the DevOps COE at HCL that works with different customers across the globe on people, process and tools areas.

This conversation between Mohan Panchapikesan, CEO and Director at Medexpert Software Solutions, shares his stories about - 

• Mohan started his career after completing his engineering in Anna University and IIT Kharagpur and talks about being a self made person but stays as a small town boy from Trichy 
• Mohan shares being inherently curious and how his firm looks at not only the hospital management software but also the Ecosystem that drives it including insurance, pharma and the equipment sourcing and the entire supply chain
• Mohan talks about the growth and fixed mindset and its application being the CEO. Being in a position of authority, having an understanding of people’s fears and ambiguity enables in bringing cohesion towards the goals of the firm by motivation
• Mohan talks about Elon Musks’ motivation of moving to Mars due to the explosion of population and take that as an opportunity 
• He refers Ford, Starbucks, McDonalds and Microsoft stories to talk about being bigger is better and democratising everything you do
• Talking about evolution and democratising the reach of services between the 1990s and 2020s has expanded the voice of individuals & takes the example of this podcast being in existence because of the forces that are in play
• Staying curious is the only way to sustain your learnings 
• Perform or perish in corporate world has seeped into the personal world as Adopt or Die 
• Discoverability is the key in the age of plethora of choices and technologists become the match makers of the world. Best match makers are those that have the horoscopes of all the open source software out there
• From interoperability to intelligently make those inter connections
• Intelligence in integration and ecosystem is evolving. Unless we as mankind evolve with it, we will become artificial or redundant in the ecosystem
• One has to be attuned with what is happening around us social or technology wise 

Mohan started his career in software in SA Software working as an RDBMS specialist. He later honed his data and software skills working in Walmart as a program manager. 

Mohan worked in Cognizant in various leadership roles by scaling people, technology and solutions to provide the right type of integration to the clients. 

Mohan became an entrepreneur serendipitously through a mutual friend. He’s now CEO of Medexpert software solutions that’s focused on reducing inefficiencies in the Medical ecosystem and driving innovations.

Mohan can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpjaya/

Sanjay Jayakumar CEO and Founder of Ignitarium shares his stories about - 

• Facing uncertainties from very early on, being good in math and physics
• Joining the WIPRO factory from campus in 1991, and being with WIPRO for 21 years
• Phases in WIPRO of roughly 3 years each across various functions
• Early career in engineering, as the interface between design and production of computers
• Moving to the hardware design team and then onto chip design as part of outsourced R&D
• Setting up an SOC for Texas Instruments
• Getting an opportunity to setup an engineering centre at Kochi and scaling it to a 2000 person operation
• The lead into starting Ignitarium
• Underlying common principles when working across cultures in Japan and the US
• Laying the foundation for scaling the engineering centre at Kochi with excellent support at Wipro
• The transition to becoming an entrepreneur, starting with making peace within himself with the decision
• The long road, 200 calls and the first 3 customers, getting the team through personal and professional networks, the genesis of Ignitarium
• Adding value to customers and being key enablers in a product development ecosystem through their expertise in system on chips & signal processing intensive design to create a software enabled platform
• A Future forward thinking approach to continuous evolution of products and solutions
• Culture of Innovation, continuous learning and growth opportunities 
• Creating partnerships and contributing to ecosystems
• Messages for aspiring engineers in today's world of content at your fingertips

Founder and CEO of Ignitarium, Sanjay Jayakumar proudly leads a cross-functional team of close to 300 professionals and has been responsible for defining Ignitarium’s core values, which encompass the organisation’s approach towards clients, partners and internal stakeholders, and in establishing an innovation and value-driven organisational culture. Largely admired for his charisma and humility, he has gained a reputation for inspiring people through his strategic vision and team building capabilities.

Prior to founding Ignitarium in 2012, Sanjay spent the initial 22 years of his career with the VLSI and Systems Business unit at Wipro Technologies. In his formative years, Sanjay worked in diverse engineering roles in Electronic hardware design, ASIC design and custom library development. Sanjay later handled a flagship – multi-million dollar, 600-engineer strong – Semiconductor & Embedded account owning complete Delivery and Business responsibility.

Contact him @ Linkdin/Sanjay Jaykumar

 Bhuvan Anandakrishnan, Director of Engineering Caterpillar Inc talks about -

• His starting days in the training as a fresh graduate in Satyam when he realised the power of computing and seeing the results come in
• He found the joy in software by creating something where nothing was there and could get a sense of accomplishment
• Eye for quality by way of working in embedded software and getting feedback from a career tester. He also understood what it means to get a quality product from the eyes of the customer
• Bhuvan talks about complexities of embedded software and the limitations and considerations one has to give when one builds. It’s detrimental for organisations to recall due to faulty software. 
• He shares about the quality considerations that Japanese give and ensure that the product is released in Japan prior to releasing in other countries
• Realised that it’s not about the software but the entire product that the customer can touch and feel that value has been delivered 
• He speaks about the journey of unlearning of being software developer and becoming a product engineer, leader and business leader
• Bhuvan talks about his life changing decision to move to India to lead Cat and how that satisfied his Star, Heart and Dollar. Similar to Ikigai thinking model.
• Bhuvan also shares how that he believed Brahma and Vishnu (creation and sustenance) way to make some of his critical decisions (this is based on Vijay Govindarajan’s three box solution)
• He also shares his passion towards creating large teams and seeing them flourish in his mentorship and coaching
• Bhuvan’s view is that one should think of the daily life to be part of a large infinite model and take each day with the same deliberate attempt to win instead of resting on your past laurels

Bhuvan Anandakrishnan, experienced Director with a demonstrated history of working in the machinery industry. Skilled in Embedded Software, Value Stream Mapping, Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS), Embedded Systems, and Agile Methodologies.

He started his career in Satyam Computers working in Embedded systems and firmware products. Found the complexities of programming in product and embedded system interesting and impactful.

Bhuvan made the jump to becoming a product engineer and product leader developing number fo products for Caterpillar. Bhuvan uses various product lifecycle methodologies to give the most value for the end customer and increases their delight.

He has graduated in Great Lakes Institute with a PGXPM and MBA from Bradley University

Bhuvan can be contacted @

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhuvan-anandakrishnan-a1518013/

In this conversation, Hendrik Esser, a senior leader at Ericsson, shares his thoughts related to

• His love to construct stuff, even as a kid, to make stuff that others can use
• Starting to play games with his friend and then writing games
• Preferring electrical engineering, as the feeling was that computer science is just programming and he already knew that!
• Then, learning communication protocols and getting closer to software
• His understanding of software work as art and the importance of craftsmanship
• The need to develop one’s talent into mastery
• And how with mastery you can be an engineer
• And one more level is to become an artist, when you transcend what you have learnt and move to express yourself creatively
• How he would like to use his artistry to make the world a better place
• How he got interested in the people aspects of software development, as work happens in teams
• Applying for a group manager position, when had about 1.5 years of experience and the career advice he got, that he considers as one of the best he has received
• The transition from game development to telecom software
• About programming by indirect observation
• How understanding the purpose of a program gives him the motivation to solve
• From working on standalone machines where one has full visibility and control over everything that happens to working in teams and cloud based environments where most things are only indirectly felt
• From team sport, software development has become a societal sport
• How, working in a multicultural team has helped understand that people are the same across the world
• How to treat a disturbance as an invitation for learning
• Using curiosity to understand and explore other cultures
• How a cross-national team worked on a very tricky technical problem and cracked it in 2 days
• The effectiveness of getting everyone into one room for richer interactions and the impact of the forced dispersal mode His interest in actively participating in communities and what he derives from such interactions and contributions
• How to reconcile the need for experimentation and progressive evolution approaches inspired by agile principles and the corporate expectations to be very predictable from the beginning
• How to predict in an unpredictable world
• Using ranges, rather than precise dates, as leading indicators to track projects
• His career advice - develop social skills in addition to technical skills

Hendrik Esser is a senior transformation expert, coach, driver and catalyst with more than 20 years of leadership experience at Ericsson. He is also internationally active in communities advancing business agility across industries.

Hendrik is continuously exploring new ways to create better results and greater organizations.

That journey started when he joined Ericsson in Germany in 1994 as a SW developer. Soon his passion brought him to a leadership career from being a Technical Coordinator through project management, project office management, portfolio- and technology management towards being the "COO" of one of Ericsson's large, internationally distributed development units with over 8000 people. In 2008 he was a key driver to the agile transition of a large organization. Through this engagement he became a recognized and sought expert not only in the Ericsson enterprise transformation, but also a strong contributor to the international agile community, exchanging and expanding knowledge and spreading agile mindset and ideas across industries. Part of his time he also works as a trainer for leadership programs within Ericsson.

In parallel to his work at Ericsson, he is - as a volunteer - Program Director of the Agile Alliance's initiative "Supporting Agile Adoption". He has worked together with ICAgile on Learning Roadmaps for agile Finance. Also, he is an internationally active speaker at numerous conferences and company events on agile product development, HR and project management.

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/hendrik-esser

In this episode Madhavi Nadig, a seasoned professional with experience solving challenging problems using technology shares her stories with Chitra on 

• Choosing to do engineering as she couldn't become a vet
• Getting a bachelors and then a masters in computer science
• Working in 3 different industries via companies like EMC, Jumptap (online advertising) and then Spotify (music)
• Being known as an 'optimizer' and learning how not to over-optimize
• Applying data driven decisions at work and deciding on feature stickiness
• Means of getting data and using it, instrumentation, user flows, user interviews and using proxies - some of the Spotify story in India
• Making a habit of talking to users
• User insights and developing algorithms for an audience of music
• Working across time zones and cultures, ensuring people have information at hand
• Assimilating new joinees in a remote working environment
• The 100 stories project
• A short simple message for aspirants who want to be developers

Madhavi Nadig, earned her B.E. in Information Science from PESIT, Bengaluru and an M.S. in Computer Science from SUNY University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY.

Madhavi firmly believes problem-solving requires the right mix of creative thinking, technology usage and organizational hacking. Driven by this philosophy, she has successfully led geographically distributed teams of technical and non-technical groups, delivered high quality software solutions and streamlined organizational processes. Her career spans across the entertainment, mobile advertising and computer storage industries. She worked in the US for 10 years with companies such as Spotify, Verizon and EMC as well as small startups. Currently she works with startups in Bengaluru as a freelancer.

Reach her at : Linkdin/Madhavi Nadig

In this episode, Ramesh Shastri, software engineer to business head shares his long journey of 38 years in professional career with Shiv, In this conversation he talks about-

• Gravitated to IT like peers, as that was the well paying sector
• Starting as an individual contributor growing to become a business unit leader
• From systems programming to business applications
• How his roles changed over the decades of the 80s, 90s and 2000+
• How he has enjoyed the roller coaster ride of 38 years
• Being associated with some of the early product development initiatives in India
• Working with partner organizations to create full solutions
• The importance of listening to customers
• His work with an NGO called MAYA on livelihood initiatives for the Channapatna toymakers over the last 5 years
• How he finds the toy industry situation somewhat similar to the IT industry situation in the initial stages, before export revenues started to grow significantly
• A quick overview of toy making in Channapatna
• How they are going about bringing in structure, process and product quality in the industry, by setting up a producer company
• Whether some of the approaches used to help the artisans can be relevant or applied to the software industry
• Some aspects that the IT sector [people] can learn from the artisan sector, particularly, pride of creation or ownership of what they create
• His view on opportunities in the social sector for people in IT, looking for a change

Ramesh Shastri’s professional career in Information Technology has been a long journey of 38 years; He has held positions from software engineer to business head. He has lived and worked in India and the United States while also covering a lot of ground in between.

For the past 5 years he moved from the leading edge of the technology sector to the trailing edge of the social sector. He is now focused on creating sustainable livelihoods in the handicrafts sector.

Reach him at : Linkdin/Ramesh Shastri

In this conversation, Madhurima Agarwal, Director of Engineering Programs and Leader at NetApp Accelerator shares are career journey with Chitra. She talks about -

• Her love for technology starting when she believed in grade 8 that she was the best programmer in the world
• Being an entrepreneur during her college days with her father as mentor and angel investor, building a product to automate member directory for the chambers of commerce and industry at Ranchi
• Learning empathy, self-discipline and confidence through her venture
• Understanding what entrepreneurs go through in early days from personal experience enabled her while mentoring entrepreneurs today and facing bias as a young entrepreneur
• Tech world a fair space where your work speaks for itself and need for women to speak about what they have done
• Finding the right product market fit, her rules of thumb

- Knowing the domain or asking experts

- Understanding pain points of customers

•  Developing an experimental mindset, encouraging and accepting failure, having a mentor
• Changing tracks and feeling confident to do so Support and communities between investors and entrepreneurs to build great products and encourage entrepreneurship
• Her 3 messages for technology and entrepreneurial aspirants

- Be the best at what you do;

-Don't be afraid of failing;

 -Be Optimistic

Madhurima Agarwal works as the Director for Engineering Program with global responsibility for leading NetApp’s startup program called NetApp Excellerator – startup.netapp.in. She also plays a key role in driving enhanced collaboration between engineering and market-facing functions across NetApp India and acts as the touch point for all external partnerships. She brings with her over 17yrs of experience spanning domains across the globe with leading financial firms. She’s been an entrepreneur and currently dons the hats of a mentor and advisor to startups.

An alumna of IIM, Ahmedabad, Madhurima enjoys driving innovation and taming the power of technology to achieve organizational growth.

She’s an avid reader and enjoys writing on topics around entrepreneurship. Madhurima is an advisor to the WIT (Women in Technology) group at NetApp and focuses on professional development of women in the workplace.

Reach her at :linkedin.com/in/madhurimaagarwal

Twitter : @MadhurimaAg