Through The Corporate Glass

Going from being an engineer to a manager can be a big change in your career journey. How do you know you’re up for the challenge? How can you best prepare for the transition to management? Deepthi Kulkarni gives her candid take on these topics and more.

Deepthi is a Director of Technology at Afterpay, a payments platform that enables financial wellness for Gen Z and millennial shoppers. Before that she spent five years leading various teams at Redbubble, an online marketplace. She worked as an engineer at Flipkart during the company's high growth phase.

Deepthi's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepthikulkarni/

Episode webpage: https://www.throughthecorporateglass.com/post/34-the-ins-and-outs-of-becoming-an-engineering-manager

Mentioned in this episode:

1. Afterpay - https://www.afterpay.com/

2. Redbubble - https://www.redbubble.com/

3. The First 90 Days, a book by Michael Watkins - https://www.amazon.in/First-90-Days-Watkins/dp/1422188612

4. Manager README - https://managerreadme.com/

5. SBI (Situation, Behaviour, Impact) - https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/situation-behavior-impact-feedback.htm

6. RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix

Can graduate school be an option for those wanting to make a mark in the industry? To explore the professional masters program as a possible answer, we talk to Eric VandeVoorde & Karen Hull from Purdue University. Eric is the Director of Professional Engineering Master's Programs and Karen Hull is the Engineering Management Graduate Program Manager at Purdue.

We discuss the questions which arise while choosing a graduate program, the challenges that students face and stories of how students have shaped their careers through this program. Eric and Karen have a front row seat to the decision making process and provide great insights based on their interactions with a diverse group of students over the years.

Eric's Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericvandevoorde/

Karen's Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenhull93/

Master of Engineering Management, Purdue University: https://engineering.purdue.edu/EngineeringManagement

We have teachers to guide us through school &  professors to guide us through university. But when we enter the corporate world, do we seek out similar guides and mentors? We discuss the role of mentorship in career building and talk through practical aspects of identifying mentors with Deepa Vijayakumar, who has been both a mentor and a mentee. Deepa is a Technical Product Manager at GE Healthcare and has over 15 years of industry experience. Deepa's Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepa-vijayakumar-398b4825/

Are you approaching hiring correctly? Is a focus on resumes over practical skills costing you in this hot market for talent? And why is it so hard for us to let go of our existing approaches to hiring?

Krishnan's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nairkrishnan/

Episode webpage: https://www.throughthecorporateglass.com/post/31-developer-hiring-going-beyond-the-resume

Mentioned in this episode:

1. GeekTrust - https://www.geektrust.in/ 

2. Funding received by Indian startups in H1 2021 - https://yourstory.com/2021/07/yourstory-h1-2021-funding-report-indian-startups/amp

3. Gartner Report on IT Services growth - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/expert-view/2021-a-golden-year-for-it-services-companies-gartner/articleshow/83635069.cms

4. An article about attrition - https://analyticsindiamag.com/attrition-rate-in-indian-it-industry-is-at-an-all-time-high-why/

5. GeekTrust coding problem - https://www.geektrust.in/coding-problem/backend/mymoney

Have you ever wondered if there are roles at the intersection of business functions? Can you  bring a unique value proposition, carve a niche for yourself and in the process define an entirely new role? 

To talk about how she achieved all this in the context of her role in employer branding, we have with us Melissa Sheehan. Melissa is currently a Principal Program Manager for Employer Branding at Nutanix and has over 10 years of experience in the field of marketing.

Episode webpage: https://www.throughthecorporateglass.com/post/30-breaking-into-employer-branding

Melissa's Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissasheehan/

Mentioned in the episode

1. Great to Place to Work Survey: https://www.nutanix.com/blog/nutanix-earns-designation-as-a-great-place-to-work-certified-company

2. Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/index.htm

3. Sample Employee Profile Showcased: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nutanix_nutanix-lifeatnutanix-activity-6823678208152604672-tqh-

Human Resource Management (HR) is an integral part of an organization. In this episode, we trace its history, talk about focus areas like Performance Management and how one can pursue a career in HR.  

We talk to Sudipta Das. Associate Director-Performance Management, Flipkart. Sudipta has worked across multiple industries - Manufacturing, IT and Product. He is passionate about helping people as they reflect on their career and growth.

Episode webpage: https://www.throughthecorporateglass.com/post/29-demystifying-hr

Mentioned in the episode

What is Deep Work and what are its benefits? How can modern software companies organize themselves to enable employees to do Deep Work consistently? How does a culture of written communication fit into this?

Swanand Pagnis, CTO of CoLearn, explores different facets of this topic in a wide ranging conversation. Swanand has put Cal Newport's principles of deep work into practice over his many years of technical work. Swanand has worked as a Director of Engineering at Deserve and as a Principal Engineer at First.io. He conducts a workshop on PostgreSQL and runs the Ruby on Rails and PapersWeLove meetup groups in Bangalore.

Mentioned in this episode:

Becoming an entrepreneur is a difficult choice, one that opens the door to many opportunities as well as risks.  Have you wondered about the thought process that drives one to be a founder and the trade offs involved? To share his exciting journey, we have with us Rajan Bala, a senior manager at Amazon in Tornoto and the founder of Aravanai, a non profit organization helping entrepreneurs in underprivileged  communities. Previously, he was the Co-founder of Hiku labs, a Silicon Valley startup which made shopping frictionless.

Podcast Show Notes

Aravanai: https://www.aravanai.org/become-a-mentor

Hiku Labs: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/hiku-labs-hiku-review/2/

Rajan Bala: https://unitelsoft.wordpress.com/about/

Rajan’s Story on Yarl Stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8-mEWLFbN

What role does Data and Analytics play in Enterprise IT? What should one keep in mind when implementing analytics within enterprise systems? And what skills do you need to make analytics effective?

To share her learnings, we have with us Nisha Raghavan, Sr. Director (Data & Analytics), GE Healthcare. Nisha has over two decades of experience in this industry. She is passionate about data and has a ton of experience in dealing with its complexities.

Mentioned in this episode:

1. Nisha Raghavan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nisha-raghavan/ 

2. Master Data Management - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_data_management

3. OLTP vs OLAP - https://www.datawarehouse4u.info/OLTP-vs-OLAP.html

4. Data Lake vs Data Warehouse - https://www.talend.com/resources/data-lake-vs-data-warehouse/

How your company is perceived as an employer matters a great deal in today's competitive hiring landscape. We talk to Nisha J K to learn how employer brands are shaped, common misconceptions around it and how you can improve your company's branding.

Nisha is a Co-Founder and Director at GreenPepper Consulting, who have been helping companies scale their tech teams. Over the last decade, GreenPapper has worked with more than 400 companies and onboarded 2000+ candidates.

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