Professional Career

This might be my last post for quite sometime as we all leave for a looong vacation, which my kids will refer to sometime in the future as the 'Summer our parents went crazy'... Anyway, I have been pondering about this for sometime now... what makes some people successful in their career? Though we easily say 'right time and right place', lucky, and whatever else we usually attribute growth in the job... I wanted to look a little deeper to see if there is anything else Recently, I was talking to my husband on what is non-negotiable when it comes to our kids - respect to elders, kind human beings were 2 things we could agree to! Srinivas wanted to add discipline to the list but somehow for me that is like brushing teeth, something that needs to be inculcated as a habit... However, at work I think the little sister of discipline - work ethics or integrity is a very important. I remember from the very first days at Dell, there were some people from my same "gang"...

After decades of working in a corporate setting, honestly startup atmosphere was a shock! And the smallest company I had worked was a family owned food business with branches in over 2 states in the US... and boasting of a customer base across 10 states in US! (Anyway that is for another blog) However, I would like to talk about GenAI first and there is only one word to describe it - Magical. Of course, much before the startup stint I had started using chatGPT. I have used it for any email and even my farewell emails... It showed more empathy and sympathy than I ever could. When I joined Alltius and started using chatGPT "officially", I was amazed what little changes with prompt engineering basic skills you could accomplish in GenAI... I could never tire of the constant back and forth, experimentation to get chatGPT to "behave" :)  Alltius boasts of high accuracy and zero hallucination, thanks to our dogged testing and determination to provide the correct answers ba...

First day I joined Intuit, I was asked to meet with all the leaders by the then director Milind. It was a great experience interacting with all the leaders of Intuit, and I would summarize it in one word - Welcoming! Fast forward 2 years and I got a chance to move teams - my then manager, Venky did not bat an eyelid while saying this was great opportunity and I should pursue it... Not even ask me, why I was leaving his team, etc... In fact, he even went out of his way met the current manager to make sure I was headed to the right team and leader! And finally when I decided to leave Intuit to join a startup, I am amazed by the care and affection received from all corners. My previous manager's bosses - Saradhi and Pratik (previous startup founders!) reached out to me asking where I was going? which domain and what is my role? Etc. I was so touched that they were interested in even financials of the startup to ensure that I was taking the right discussion. As I was leaving Intuit, I ...

I have worked with a lot of designers, but during my stint at Walmart I managed to launch products going through extensive cycles of design with ease like I was writing the PRD with my right hand and designs were generated by my left? With a nod to all the designers I have worked in my career, I need to talk about a designer who refused to listen to the Product folks, who needed no validation, no direction and most importantly had a vision for the user experience! Varsha Patil was my office soul mate who I first met during a call for designing reports for Walmart's Auto Care center. Our entire career of great collaboration was online, thanks to COVID. I remember Varsha waiting on my zoom, and I would apologize for making her wait. Her simple response was if we were working in Walmart office, I would be sitting on your desk waiting for you! Sometimes I wonder if it was this attitude that helped me with the launch of soo many products at my short stint at Walmart. Another instance th...

 I first spoke to Mala over phone from US. I got introduced through a common friend saying she is a great leader and this was soon proven beyond doubt.. Leading up to a quick interview with Dell, after we decided to move out of US for good was an offer from Dell. As we were in a hurry to move to India for personal reasons, I had back to back interviews. Mala was my hiring manager and she helped me quickly close the process as well. When Mala called me to inform that I had been selected for that position, I had a much bigger update awaiting her. I had just visited my doctor as I was losing weight to be told I was pregnant with my second child. When I interviewed, I had no idea and while still trying to wrap my head around shifting continents during pregnancy - I decided honesty was the best policy. I haltingly told Mala that I did not want to hide anything and that I was 6 or 8 weeks, a time usually no one gets informed about pregnancy! At the same time, Mala was hiring me from over...

  I came running from my first day of B-school claiming I wanted to have a career in Operations! All it took was watching a BMW video on the big screen? Or was it Amazon fulfillment center? I do not remember, it was just spectacular watching something being built and the engineer in me was howling...  The next day was apparently consulting, and somewhere I settled on marketing or to be more specific - Brand Management... Like love, it is hard to pin point when it exactly happened :) So this is what I wished for being Brand Manager in the food industry (being the big foodie that I was, somehow it seemed a perfect fit). I started working diligently towards it... I started my toil from the career services, Sophia in her usual direct style told me - You are as international as it gets, this quest for getting into the CPG industry is not going to be easy... and for some reason that only strengthened my resolve to pursue brand. I networked aggressively, reaching out to every Tepper ...