Software People Stories

In conversation with career Project Manager, Sankar V S, Regional Digital Services & Products leader in Arup he shares his journey starting from a part time trainer to IoT and analytics experiences with Gayatri From PM Power Consulting on

His start of journey with software as a trainer in C++

Considers himself as a self starter and staying a continuous learner

Difference in communication and unsaid patterns in HK China and that made him move to Project management/Business Analysis

Fearless in taking high risk immigration project and learnt lawsuits, coding, quick thinking and sensors

Leap towards IoT even before it got the name. Narrates a story of pattern recognition of cows vs human using lasers

As a creative director in Arup, he’s enabling construction projects use data in the center exploiting IoT and analytics

His view of technology has changed from using to increase commercial purposes (behavior analytics) to improve environment (plastics and landslide deduction) in the construction industry

He shares his experience of being a fulcrum of IoT innovations across the globe by creating an alliance and connecting various players

Collaboration is one skill he highly recommends to have as the team needs to sound like a symphony and not a single instrument solo 

Sankar can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sankarvs/

Gayatri can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaya3k/

In conversation with an Infrastructure Automation Expert, Ram Iyer, where he shares experiences with Chitra From PM Power Consulting on

How he became an automation engineer

Early career in Infrastructure guided, mentored and learned with the help of great managers and lead engineers

What it takes to understand an enterprise solution, from building reports to writing automation code

How the operations view is missing when applications and products are built.

Thoughts on design for scale and scale-out v/s scale

Infrastructure as code, collaboration and the philosophy of “no silos”

A DayIntheLifeOf an infrastructure automation engineer

Cross-Cultural learning

Lessons learned as a service help desk engineer very early on in his career

Why he believes in volunteering 

A millennials’ message for building a career in tech and software

Ram is an automation expert by profession who has spent about a decade in IT, an author of Powershell Core for Linux Administrators Cookbook (https://www.amazon.com/PowerShell-6-0-Linux-Administration-Cookbook/dp/1789137233#:~:text=Book%20Description&text=PowerShell%20Core%20enables%20automation%20on,to%20effectively%20administer%20your%20environment.) , a blogger, a typography enthusiast, a volunteer and an amateur podcaster. He likes to pick up issues that seem complex and break them down to digestible pieces—something he does at work, and tries to do on his blog.

He can be reached via RamIyer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/theramiyer/)

In this conversation with Mritunjay Singh (Munjay), SVP, Infosys and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Munjay’s journey

Started the journey with Tata Steel in their computing arena

Moved to software looking at the uptake in technology growth

Changed his perspective on scaling technology sourcing after a large deal

Belief in people can walk on water and having a cross functional skills has been a constant endeavor 

Speaking about modular sourcing, he shared how clients have contacted his team, as an advisory long after the ink had dried on the deal

Scaling an organization (Pune DC for Infosys) came in the back of community building and creating infrastructure outside the campus to ensure that entire ecosystem thrives and doesn’t suffer. That experience taught me that purpose beyond daily work moves mountains 

Creating a future knowledge org with physical location agnostic, self managed and gig economy based delivery

Turning point came in my initial days when I delivered a payment software in 2 weeks what was expected in 3 months with last minute change in specs

Created a safety net of mentors who can be consulted and used their learnings

As a CEO of Axicades, Munjay speaks about creating a playbook for the company in the form of culture. What are the parameters for decision making, customer relationships and acceptable behaviors.

Culture of the leader is like a large shadow and first being aware of oneself and making small changes to the thinking that aligns to the vision

All decisions are contextual and needs to be taken in the microcosm of that point in time and learn from the outcomes using feedback loops 

Munjay can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mritunjay-singh-68a7b23/

In this conversation with Rajaram Venkataraman, Convenor Technology panel FICCI and CEO of VelTech TBI, Founder of Navya Insights, President SPIN Chennai and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Rajaram’s journey

Rajaram talks about his passion in computers started with his peers in the family

He reminisces the Initial days of working in TCS with Lakshmi Narayanan(Vice Chairman of Cognizant) and Chandrashekar (Exec Director of TCS) in the same office in TCS

Being a liaison between Government and industry bodies. Creating networking opportunities for thousands of people and hundreds of companies through FICCI

Digital transformation has been accelerated during covid-19 with very specific examples and how technology has laid the foundation for working remotely

Thriving start-up community with a number of grants from the large corporates innovative

Innovation has spurred in different ways - an example with RoboChef firm providing delicious and safe food for corona warriors

Witness to the transformation from order takers to agenda setters

Potential to become Intellectual capital of the world with new services, ML, RPA

Using COVID as an opportunity generator in different industries, Indian software gurus can make a shift

Looking at possibilities in the changing world with a positive attitude and a learning mindset over doomsday attitude

You may contact Rajaram Venkaraman at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajaramv/

In this conversation, Nimisha Mukherjee, Engineering Manager at RedHat, shares her stories and experiences with Chitra Gurjar from PM Power Consulting about -

How she fell in love with computers in class 3

First lessons in user interaction design 

Tips on how to get users to change a habit or become familiar with a new design

Supporting the new age developer & development environments

The evolving role of a developer and developers as first customers

Blue sky opportunities for designing experiences 

Lessons for aspiring techies and designers

Nimisha Mukherjee is an Engineering Manager with Red Hat. Her team works on delivering a simplified developer experience for building cloud native application on Red Hat OpenShift. She has 18+ years of experience in delivering cutting edge web applications. She always enjoyed building user interfaces that provides a differential user experience. She was one of the design track chairs for GHCI (https://ghcindia.anitab.org/), 2016-2018.

She was curated the Devtools track for DevConf.IN 2019. She loves to explore new places and new cuisines.

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimishamukherjee/

In this conversation, Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting talks to Smita BS, Delivery Head at Torry Harris Integration Solutions. Smita shares her perspectives on:

The various roles she has played over the 17 years of her career across multiple industry verticals

Starting as a developer and creating frameworks for testing

How her mentors trusted her to take on new responsibilities and provided guidance

The advice she got from one of her mentors about not drawing self imposed boundaries

How getting a broader view would be very useful in future career roles

How she got an opportunity to experience a production issue related to code developed by her team earlier

How she consciously pays it forward to mentor her team members

Her transition to a leadership role, when, possibly overnight, some peers became members in her team

How she learnt the importance and art of delegation when one takes up increasing responsibilities

How she was able to not be stressed when taking on more responsibility and delegating

How she enabled learning from each other in her team

Finding the personal balance with work and two kids

About her spouse also being an IT professional in terms of conversations at home

Her advice for new entrants to the IT profession

Smita has been in the IT Industry for close to 17 years now with experience in various domains like telecom, healthcare, energy management, retail, banking. She started her journey as a developer and has had a fair share of varied roles throughout her career, as she moved onto testing, operational support, configuration management then onto technical team leadership and management roles as release management, migration projects and project & program management. Currently she is a delivery head in Torry Harris Integration Solutions for Integration and Digital projects for certain customer accounts.

On the personal front, she is an alumni of BMS College of Engineering, the batch of 2003. She is passionate about art, and a doting mother of two boys and loves baking.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/smita-bs-70a79717

In this conversation Nalini Krishnan, Head of Competency Management at TCS for the Salesforce business shares her views on her career with Chitra from PM Power consulting on -

- How much of our making is our own thinking and doing

- How much of the past we carry as baggage or bias

- Picking up all kinds of challenges and getting out of one's comfort zone

-Various ways of looking at problems

- her 3-dimensional approach to addressing technical debt

- experience managing customers & clients relationships.

- Having different personas at work and at home

- What the Grace Hopper Platform has meant to her personal growth

- a message for women wishing to take up a career in IT

Nalini currently heads Competency Management for the Salesforce.com practice in TCS, within Enterprise Application Systems group. Strategic focus on growth initiatives, Center growth & sourcing strategy, talent transformation initiatives etc. are some of her many focus areas

Nalini has held many senior positons in IT Delivery, Transformational program managemet and Client Engagement, across various verticals in TCS. Prior to TCS she been a part of companies like Thomson Reuters, Symphony Services & Zensar Technologies, and has held positions of responsibilities across development, QA, release management and business strategy.

A technologist, and a customer & business focused leader with more than 20 years of experience in the Industry, she is self driven, optimistic & result oriented professional with experience in building and sustaining a motivated & skilled team, and driving performance in a complex, global environment.

Nalini is passionate about technology and business transformation, that helps organizations translate strategy into action with solid planning and execution. She is active in external forums such as GHC India (https://ghcindia.anitab.org/) (Part of advisory committee in 2016, committee chair, member and speaker in previous years, chair for TechTalk track in 2018) and IEEE –WIE Internalional Leadership conference (http://wie.ieee.org/ieeewieilsgoa2017/) (speaker 2015 & 2017).

In this conversation with Santhana Krishnan (SK), coach from PM Power Consulting and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore SK’s journey

Fascinated by computers through the eyes of the Tamil writer Sujatha 

Started as a tech entrepreneur setting up ERP for a spinning mill  

Worked closely with different persona of users and ensuring usability  for tech agnostic members. Learnt true sense of agility by continuous integration, deployment and feedback

While building India market for ThoughtWorks creating a trusted relationships as an important construct and that starts with genuine understanding of the risks and sharing with the customer to gain trust on the capabilities 

Key metrics for agility - concept to cash, ability to recover from failure

Agility in the Education field is a passion - look at adaptable syllabus and emerging models to use during crisis such as lockdown, floods

Using concept maps, knowledge graphs to trace the learning curves of students and create a personalized learning experience

Learning and Keeping beginners mindset to see convergence of AI/ML with concept maps and knowledge graphs

SK can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/santhana-krishnan-ganapthy-01815b4/

In this conversation with Meera Chari from IEEE and Gayatri from PM Power Consulting explore Meera’s journey

Started as a computer engineer with curiosity and need to learn 

Meera spoke about entering the electronic commerce world as a product engineer 

Learnt from a mistake made during prod deployment made her acutely aware of software development need to be supported by disciplined infra management

Layers of software along with security, latency, firewalls’ importance in problem solving

Understanding big picture moved Meera from software engineer to an application architect and enterprise architect

Disaster aware and fail tolerant application architecture based on a disaster that struck in the US East coach

Sharing her experience in creating company’s IT roadmap and decisions and parameters behind them

Cloud migration experience on critical business process that are deep rooted in enterprise applications

Entire Economy moving towards API dynamics powered by SaaS solutions

Cloud maturity is constantly changing by way of continual progression. This is leading to creation of new roles that are enabling cloud maturity and migration

Key takeaways for listeners - Listen to your customer, keep an eye on big picture and being curious about technology user or an innovator

In this conversation, colleagues Srinivasan Sundararajan (Srini) and Chitra from PM Power Consulting are talking about Srini’s experiences and stories around -

- A product of circumstances

- Education at IIT Madras in Mechanical engineer, introduction to computing and problem solving by working across departments at IIT

- Developing backup software in a manufacturing company and early lessons 

- Examining data above and beyond

- Risk taking, evaluating and owning your decisions

- Transition from corporate (helping with solving a problem) to being an agile coach (helping people discover the solution)

- Being a coach, facilitator & enabler & managing deliverables

- Owning one's decisions