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Sharing more perspectives on the core career principles taking the sequence from my previous blog forward: 3. Embrace Intrapreneurship : Despite all the attention that entrepreneurs gets, it is arguably not possible for all of us to become one. There could be myriad of reasons for this but many of us consciously find our calling in working for the organizations. If an entrepreneur creates a vision, it's the employees who make it a reality. So this choice is absolutely fine and legitimate. Source:  https://christopherwaldner.com/defining-intrapreneurship/ Being an employee doesn't mean that you cannot exercise the traits that make an entrepreneur. In my career journey, I discovered that one can embrace those traits anytime at work and create a dent in the universe surrounding your organization. Simply put, Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. I am reminded for a story that I had narrated in one of my previous blo...

In the Career Stories Panel Discussion at my organization last week , I was asked this question: "a couple of weeks back you mentioned about some core career principles that have worked for you" I thought it would be apt to articulate some of the principles I shared. Before I delve into the principles, it bears stating explicitly these principles are mostly a work of recollection based on the key phases/events of my career. Of course, I do have a  benefit of hindsight in sharing these but I do sincerely hope these helps you in navigating your career.  I will try and answer this in multi-part blogs. Below is the part-1 on this subject. 1. Learning ability vs Learning agility: When i started my career, I was told by my early managers, team leads that your growth in IT industry is directly proportional to your ability to quick learn and grasp new concepts. I recall we used to get measured on how quickly were we able to learning a new technology, or a work item and deliver on the...

Why do you write ? This was one of the questions put forward by the moderator during the  career stories panel discussion recently. To be honest, I didn't anticipate this question being asked. I did respond to it then but felt like I should elaborate on it by means of this blog. My reasons to write have evolved over the years. This blog has been in existence for more than 10 years now. I recall that when I started I was doing my bit towards sharing the experience I was gaining. At that time, it was focused mostly for sharing perspectives on software engineering. As I grew in my thinking, so did the list of topics I wrote about. I have to be honest in sharing that I didn't stop during this time to ponder 'Why do i really write ?'. Though the frequency of my blogs remained inconsistent, I did develop a sort of internal clock which periodically nudged me to consider writing. These internal nudges greatly contributed to the continuity of these blogs and my other writing end...

"Learning from failure is one thing, but how do I handle myself when i am experiencing failure ?" This was one of the questions put forward by one of the curious participants at the career stories panel discussion yesterday . I believe it is a very practical question as we are all used to doing retrospectives and extracting learnings from a failure event but often tend to ignore the aspect of handling ourselves when the failure is happening. Just providing a couple of perspectives (including the one i shared during the session + result of some additional thinking I did on the topic). #1. Build a defense mechanism against the effects of failure: Failure will happen when we try something new. This is almost as certain as sunset happening after sunrise. There's absolutely no debate here. But what happens when we encounter a failure ? Failures tend to demoralize us, put us on the backfoot, make us lose self-belief a bit, shakes our self-confidence and possibly impacts our cr...

It's an honour when you are invited to be among the panel on sharing your career stories. I recently got to experience this feeling when i was a part of such panel in my organization. Career stories panel discussion The panel comprised of an diverse mix of people in terms of experience, functions, gender and career paths. Apart from me, the panel members were Krishna Priya (Sr Cloud Ops Engineer), Subramanian Krishnan (Principal Software Engineer), Gagandeep Kaur (Senior Customer Success Manager), Komal Bharadwaj (Principal Product Manager), Neeraj Sharma (Services Relationship Manager) I went into the panel with two goals in mind: 1. To share whatever I could, to the best of my ability. 2. To learn from the fellow panelists everything I could, to the best of my ability. The session had the live audience in the room and the audience attending live via a webinar. In the end, it proved out to be quite an engaging session. How did i know it was an engaging one ? Firstly, while be...

In an interview after becoming Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella admitted that  the company made a big mistake , "If anything, one big mistake we made in our past was to think of the PC (personal computer) as the hub for everything for all time to come. And today, of course, the high volume device is the six-inch phone. I acknowledge that." This is quite an admission from the CEO of a company that during its heyday led the technology trends. It also raises the question: Is it possible for companies to always stay ahead of technological shifts? John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco, when discussing his experience, he said that  one of the key things he attributes his success to  is staying ahead of technology shifts. Chambers says that if the shift was seen early enough, they developed the technology in-house. If not, then they looked to acquire other companies. The last way, which Chambers referred to as  spin-in , was when group of engineers and developers were ass...

Though it got over just a month or so back, Cricket World cup 2019 seem like such a distant memory. Ashes series between England and Australia is grabbing all the attention these days. Going beyond the results, which often makes up for headlines, there are these seemingly small moments that make sport interesting, and memorable. Once such moment is captured in the video that i share here. Video source:  https://twitter.com/amitranjan/status/1162590921529024512 What Steve Smith is seen here do is making a trivial job of leaving the ball interesting. For those that have followed this sport, the act of leaving the ball helps a player to set his eyes in, but is also considered one of the boring aspect of the game.  There's nothing really to comment about, to be excited about by seeing the batsman leaving the ball. Not till Steve Smith came up with distinct ways to leave the ball and added a bit of spice to this aspect of the game.  What can us professionals learn from this ac...