#170 | From Startup Garage to Microsoft MVP: How Continuous Learning Builds Unbreakable Tech Leaders w/ Amit Chandak, @ex-Oracle, @Kinerika

Welcome to the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. My name is Alexander Leaminskam. I'm a former violinist turned management engineer, turned organizational psychologist, speaker and PCM leadership mentor and facilitator. In this space, everyone is invited to the table where we have real, eye opening conversations about tech leadership.

Two keywords utility and real life implementation. Knowledge tools, frameworks, ways of working, dos and don'ts taken from my personal experiences as a leader in the experiences of others is what you are going to get from every single episode. This is the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. Okay, so let's go and take some action.

Hi everybody, and welcome in another episode of the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. Today I have very special guests. Am Chanak is with me here today. Hi, I am It.

Thank you for joining. Hi Alex, thanks thanks for inviting me. Thank you everych for joining this podcast. Yes, thank you everyone, because this is for you and as much as we enjoy the conversation always, this is for you.

So this listen up. It's going to be a great conversation full of concrete info, ways of working stories that am It is going to shore with us, so just crucial folves and listen up. So am it. As with all the guests that are joining me on the show, I always had the first question about their story, and after every single conversation with the guests, I have this feedback from the audience that this is a great story.

Thank you for inviting the guests. It wasn't maybe the most the most interesting story from the perspective of when I read about the person, but when I listen to the person, it was amazing. So I have a lot of those from the people who are listening. So I am going to start with you as well from the same things.

If you can share with all of us, especially with the people who now who doesn't know you yet, where your story started, when it comes to your career, what happened over the way, and where are you now? So thanks, thanks Alex, thanks for this question. So I think I'll tell you my journey has won a mantra which worked out always for me. Whatever I learned additionally has always worked for me in my entire journey.

Okay, so my journey, you could say the starting point was from a startup. Then I had an internship during my MCA days with one of the company. And in that company, I was doing something learning something basically on javascripting and Java, where I was trying to create some of those things. Now the tables turned around.

When I passed out my degree, I joined Oracle. Oracle. I joined in a business intelligence team, a lot of learning there. In Oracle, I grew into the Oracle as usual growth of cycle which we have.

You know, you joined as a developer, become senior developmer, then you become lead. In between that journey of becoming lead, there was an instance when we wanted to create something for you know, internal teams, for you know, status checking or reporting, just for the you know experiment. And I taken that knowledge which I learned at Ice, implemented it here and created something. Now while the final system did not have that, but that learning remade.

And at some stage, while doing with Oracle, working I and some of my like minded colleague, we thought, why can't we create a tool out of India. You know, we have very less tool companies and we have various ideas, you know, what we can create. But finally we thought, because we are from data analytics area, business teligiens area, why don't we create a BA tool from there and that's where the idea started for my startup, which founded by my colleague and then I joined him in two thousand and nine.

And again you know the learning which I've done, you know, doing that project again starting here because the tool which you are creating is a Java based tool, and I'm coming from a POSQL background, which is having no background of that, but technology which I was learning separately because I have interested in you know, creating all those things. And then again this is a different journey because there you were ajust becoming a lead. Here you are a co founder. You just have to look everything in the technology from the day one.

You're starting from a team of you know, two member people team you are just hiring, and then you have to you know, get it to the next level. And this is a really amazing learning journey which we had, you know, step by step we built the product how products are getting built. You know, we did started with Garrett, but we started this small apartment. So from there we started and you know, we've taken this company twenty nineteen till fifty people strong, and we did create a very good tool which cut a lot of appreciation from the people.

Yes, creating a tool in environment with the getting the cry right kind of funding and you know, in the price sensitive market is a little challenge which was learning during this duration, but the entire ten years which I spent with my own startup. Is basically a lot of learning. You know, how do you evolve as a person, how do you managed you know, smaller team to larger team to larger team, because it's keep on growing. Then you know, the technological challenge also keep on increasing.

You know, when the tool is wrong. You know you have certain set of features, you go to the customer, all of a sudden you require huge set of features coming up. Catching up on those now once it is in marketing market, catching up with the expectation of the customer and the product plans which you already have is something you have to manage now because we don't have too many leads there as a startup, I have to handle both delivery as well as the product development, and I have to do it for a long time.

We do have something leads who have taken that job in between, So managing between the delivery and the product development and keeping it and in between that we have this you know, entire big data coming in you know, how do we change a product to adapt to that. All those things have happened, so it's a long journey. It has, you know, we have taken it for ten years. We created the tool, got appreciated, got customer worldwide, and after that, at some stage I think we did decided that time to move on.

We had we wanted to do something which we have achieved, but I probably we did not make it to that level where we wanted to go. So I into it Trady nineteen, I moved and I joined Canerica. When I joined Canerica, Connerica is basically a services company. They do started with a product mindset and then they decided to continue with the services additionally, and that's where I joined it.

And primarily Connectica was a company which. Is more on aw as Google kinds of cloud uping all those core techology, and I am one coming from the data and a background, and that's where you know, I wanted, you know, pass to you know, get a head into the data analytics. And that's where I started learning some new techology again because for the last ten years I was you know, building my old technologies stag and doing that. Now time has come that I go to some of those technology which I was against selling against those So for me, the obvious choice was, you know, to learn Tableau or power Ba and that's where I started and somehow you can say I fall in love with POWERBI being a sequel or s QAL background person and from there I started excelling.

Now, one of the things which happened there is how do I know master that technology because previously I started from scratch when I was young. Here I'm at a stage where you know, I already crossed ten fifteen years, I can't go and you know, get a project ullless you know, company proves it strength there. So what I found is I want to find day. I went to POWERBA community and I found that is a good way to learn is basically solve whatever problems you're getting there.

And that's where I started a new part of the journey to solve every possible problem which is there on the power of bea a community and you know, learn as much as you can. And what that does is that basically I started mastering this technology very fast because on communities, you have real problems which people are facing and you try and solve those problems. You're learning the real time problem. I don't have any question what is the real time project?

Where's the customer project? Where's the customer problem? All the real problems are there in front of me, and I'm solving more and more and I'm finding it interesting. And during that time Krona also happened.

You can say blessing for me. The kind of scenario I was in, I have long spending hours, you know, from morning to evening. Because of that, you don't have to go out anywhere. Kids were at a stage where they can enjoy their study and play around.

My wife was also doing some cloud kitchen at that time, so it gives me a lot of time to you know, and on the technology as well as my work. And that's where you know, I emerge one of the. Super user who contributed a lot, and I think during those two three years I contributed more than ten thousand solutions. I ultimately till now, I think I have seventeen thousand solutions on the community on power ba a community which led me, you know, to immense learning.

So whenever now we are going for a project bidding of when we are discussing powerbea is something it always shows up in because of that, it always shows up. Because of that learning, I always have all the answers because what is going to work, what is not going to work? And serving community is something which teaches you you know what is not going to work. You know exactly what's not going to work.

And that's why it's more important when you go and talk to a customer and customers say is it going to work? We always have answered, yes, it is going to work. This thing in power bach is not going to work on power and then comes, you know, the next step. I was trying for a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, which is an war given for exceptional contribution to the community.

And my third time. In the month of April twenty twenty two and I of July twenty twenty two and I became Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for my contribution in POWERBI in October twenty twenty two and post that, in May twenty twenty three, Microsoft launched Microsoft Fabric again as an MVP, you want to learn the things quickly and you know, adapt to that. And that's where again it helped. And one thing which again helped in and when you say you know things fall in place, this is where things fall in place that we had a customer who wanted to go Azure decided to go Fabric and with the knowledge and background I have, the customer we have, it all falls in place and for us, the Fabric become the biggest blessing.

We became the featured partner. We continued that journey for next three years. And when we started this journey, we know from day one that Fabric as a platform is going to excel what we should do to make it work for you know, other customers who want to come to this platform. And that's where the idea came in that why don't we develop migration accalators from coming to other technology to this Again the new learning, new idea incorporated it and then you know, by the last Fabric conference, we became one of the leading partners having a lot of migration accealator for Fabric.

So this entire journey, what I see every time is that you know, something you learn, something you invest time in is always going to pay off. You know, somewhere or other. It's not going to be a day one. You know, you do the investment and you're going to have result tomorrow.

You need to consistently put those efforts and that is you know, going to result in what I left out in this one is amazing journey of YouTube which I had. And YouTube journey also started a little differently because I am one guy. You know, if you look at my tenure of entrepreneurship, you will not find many posts on my LinkedIn. I'm a social shy guy.

But I have been asked to share a view you and you know, I'm a person who don't know how to record a video. I have to find it out. And you know, I started my first recording with PowerPoint. Somebody told me, okay, in PowerPoint, you also have a recording button.

I don't know how to record the screen, how to pause it, how to edit it. So but somehow I recorded a five minute video and given it. That video did not solve the purpose who's asked for. But I posted it on YouTube and because I was contributing a lot on that time, people said, okay, good start keep on doing it.

And that's where I started. And in that journey, I started learning, you know, how to do editing with the base Microsoft tool, then going to clip Champ and then I can do it on a premium pro. Now. But again this is a different side of learning.

But that learning today helped me that you know, I can go edit my videos and share it on YouTube. I sometime, you know, I feel a few days that I'm you know, spending more time on editing the things, you know, creating the content. But it's all it's all learning, you know, which gives it. So I think if you want to summarize, you know, our learning always piece off in some manner or other, and you just need to keep on trying.

The results may not come at the same time, it will come a little later, but yes, you will see the results of all the hard work you've done in some point in time, or all the learning which you're done at some point in time. Yeah. And then when I when I talk about learning, I was I was smiling because you know, I'm a I'm a teacher or a person who is you know, doing learning and development. And it was my part, the huge part of my life from the very beginning to to until now.

And it's not getting to advertation and now when I think about what you said at the very beginning, that every single situation is an opportunity to learn, even if it's a lesson, even if it's painful, even it costs a lot, there's a great opportunity to learn if you look at the situation in that way, because you can. It is all about the lenses that you put on. Right, So this is this is always interesting when I talk to people and they say, hell, LIKEX, this is so, this is so bad, I failed it.

This client left as product sucks and all of those things. I don't have this, I don't have money enough, team enough. There's always going to be the scarcity. The question is where is your mindset and do you put your mind and your focus on the things that you don't have and doesn't and the things that don't work, or you focus on your energy, your money, your people, your resources, your focus, your energy on things that actually work.

This question I love. I just wrote it down. Is it going to work? Or is it not going to work?

So just just just tell me right, this is this is it you mentioned about your career and I would like to jump a little bit into that because a lot of people who are listening are thinking about different setups. So they're not sure go to startup, set up up smaller organization, just build something from scratch, or do you do a huge brands muted with Oracle, well known global corporate where there's a completely different, different setup, And I would love for you to share with us what did you learn what every single setup Because you went to the startup, then you weren't corporate, then come back to startup again.

Right now it's more about the services, but and not the corporate anymore. So my question to you is what have you learned in both environments, the startup environment and the corporate environment from the leadership perspective when you're thinking about leading, creating, leading, growing teams that you work with on a daily basis. So maybe two three things from both environments to compare. Yeah, so I think let's compare all the three environments because they're a little different.

So now I think in a larger organization, the process are really you know, laid down, so you know what you're supposed to do. There are job responsibilities. You can be innovative inside those, but you know what your role is how to handle You have those trainings, everything lined up, which is you know how you need to do. Now in a startup environment, it is all different.

You know you have to build it, you know it how to do it, but you have to build every process. And one of the very important thing is that in a startup where if you want to do a startup, basically when you bootstrap or whether you get a funding and you do it, you need to have that at some stage you need to have all the department working. You need to be company where you know rules are going to be set up. You know, you start with all chaos.

You start with you know where the decision makings is the hand of a couple of people. But when you grows and you know, my journey is really important because it ended in the last organization exactly at the same place I'm starting in this organization. So for me, you know how we grown and how this company was going to in that stage is almost saying. But post that, how we have made this company driven by processes?

How do we lay down every process? And now you know for everything, but you government go, we have a job description, we have a process for a char we have process for hiring, we have process for onboarding, a process for everything. So as an organization, when you grow from that zero to three hundred, or especially when you grow from fifty to one hundred and fifty to three hundred, you need to become a process organization. You need to put things in place because after fifty or one hundred, you cannot take decision for each and everything.

You cannot be one single point of failure. So to avoid those single point of failures, you need to create a team. Creating a team is really important and that is where it is more challenging than a bigger organization than a smaller organization, because how do you create a team? Because you are not a brand.

Most of the startups are not a brand. People come with passions, threashures, will come with passion and learning. Now those people who are coming to you are mostly really techy. Not only you have to grow as a leader, you have to convert them also into the lead.

And that's the learning which you get in the startup. How do you make yourself as a leader when you convert yourself from the individual achiever because prior to that, when you especially come from four to five year d experience, you are an individual contributor. You feel good about your achievement, your recognition, but it is no more about your own achievements. It's the achievement of the team.

It is the recognition of the team. How do you grow the people to take those responsibilities which they had to take little earlier than they would have in the large organization. People in the smaller organization may become manager at a very early stage in three years or five years, while they will not take eight to ten years in the bigger organization. So this entire thing from one to three hundred or one to five hundred.

Is where you know, from individual characteristic to a leader characteristic or to the lead characteristic, and from individual journey to the journey of leadership to the people journey. You know, you need to make people under you successful. You need to make a team which is doing greater job than what you individually can think about. Is the journey what we have to do.

So startup is a journey about making the collectively successful, while you know in a bigger organization you need to make sure that within those frameworks you make the complete team successful. And I love what you said about differentiation between I see and the leader mindset. I would say because as you mentioned, this is what I see in a lot of leaders that were a great subject what our experts greats, I see is in them they they've got to promote, to be promoted for team leads position most of the time leading their own team that were there.

There were I sees before and unfortunately a lot of them don't do the mindset shift. So they were rewarded for their expertise, and then their job is to, as you mentioned, to create an environment for the team to succeed, and they are not going to be rewarded for their individual contribution, but for what the system will bring connected with as you mentioned, processes, procedures, the team contract, skills that team have and the tools that they're using, the tech stack, all of the things that are connected with the environment in Troople for your people.

And this is something that I see. It's not happening a lot, and people are just struggling so much because there are still in this icy mode. But there are not ices anymore. Is it something that you see as well from your perspective and your experience.

Yes, And that is where you know, the leadership trainings are really important. In the last organization we were growing like you know, in the similar fashion we were, you know, there is a stage when you can start the leadership training. So like in current organization, we have, you know a lot of focus on those leadership trainings and they're being you know, again and again. So you know, every time I attend the training, maybe it's the same training, but everything I've learned something new and I say, oh, this is something which I'm not implementing it.

This is something which should I go back and you know put on the you know stuff. So as a when you grow as a leader something, what is you have to first thing you are to leave is the individual achievements. And that's difficult because as a tech person, we feel very proud when we write down a good piece of code. I still, you know, go ahead and write down you know code, and I feel good.

But it's not about me able to solve a problem. It's about a team which is able to solve the problem. And one of the things which I heard and I did listen to a tech talk after I'm shifting between the two companies, and one of the things they said that you don't need to be the best person in your key and you know, I keep on reminding myself whenever you know, I feel that achievement sense that I don't need to be the best person in my team, you know. And second thing, which you know, I got advice from my cro and C you at that time.

Bupinchopra is that you know. You. You don't expect everything, but you have from your key. You know you came from a startup background.

You will do a char you will do team management, you will do coding, you will do everything which is possibly there. You may even do the finance for the company. You can do everything. You can't expect that from your tea.

They are not here for interrepreneurship. They're here for their career, their growth and the career growth in a direction which is basically technology oriented. So we need to understand that what we are bringing in the people might not have an ambition to become entrepreneur. Here.

They are going into path and direction where they will slowly raise to the occasion and reach to a path maybe at sea level at someone fine day. But we don't expect them to do everything. So don't have to think, okay, I can do this in my junior will also be But no, no, that's not you to individually identified strength of each person and take them to the next level using that. But one thing which you are to always make sure that there are certain organizational standard which you have which you wanted to follow.

Don't let that go away. Don't be under pressure to create leaders which you know, I'm not going to fit for the role. They remain icy in the nature when they become leader, and they actually end up, you know, creating the blockage for the entire below leadership. It's duty or the top leadership that the leadership they are growing should also be the leadership who won't grow the next set of leadership.

They have to one fine day find their alternative to go to the next level. It's not the replacement you're going to raise. When you create a replacement at your level, go to the next level. Do something a little bigger than what you are doing in the count room.

And I always have a super high level of thought and awareness about what you said that I cannot demand on people to be me, or to have my priorities, or to get my skill set or my perspective. This is something that I've learned heres ago about the communication intelligence that we communicate most of the time as we like, as we prefer to be communicated too. So I've started to be more aware of how I communicate to others. And then I started to learn communication intelligence and everything myself, and every single day I cut myself in a moment where I am too tough on somebody, or I am to demanding or I am under pressure, and I just shot at people with something different, And this is exactly what you what you mean.

Some people will have a bigger entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship mindset though, but they're not hearing. They're not joining your startup to be They just want to build something with you. They are product oriented, they're tech oriented, they are AI oriented, and they just want to do things with you. But they are they don't want to lead the lead the company.

If they were, and they would create their own startup, right, So this is this is it, and I'm I'm all in in in teaching them about the context of the organization so they understand what we are creating where they understand who are our clients, what have that, what that kind of problems they have, what is the what is the financial situation of the organization, how we are doing So I'm all about educating them on that, but I'm not demanding on them that they are the same as me.

So thank you for emphasizing that. I think it's very important, especially for startup funders that want to build something great and they are frustrated because people that they recruit don't quote unquote do what they do. They are not as engaged as there of course, they are not going to be as engaged as you are as a founder because this is another company, right, So this is this is always something that is visible for me. So I'm I'm with you on that one you mentioned when you were talking about your journey.

You mentioned a few things about building products and functionalities and all of those different things that you yourself become. When I started to research you, and after putting your first and last name, there is a power via guy. So as you mentioned, this is something that the Internet actually recognizes you for serio tech guy, and then you grew into different roles. And I would love to ask you about how creating products in functionality is working with clients differs from your experience because you have lots of that internally and externally.

I mean internally for the internal clients. When you are in corporate, for example, you have your internal clients, they want something from you. You are there as a slash quote unquote back office from tech perspective to build them a POWERBI report for example, or something more complex. And when you work in startup and you have different portfolio of clients, different demands, different needs, different problems to solve.

There may be some pieces that are repetitive, but there are custom solutions, let's be honest about it. So because a lot of people are listening that have different experiences, but also sometimes they're fixed. Sometimes most of the time they think they were changing from corporate to startup and the other way around that as you did. So for the people who is product connected, how differs building a product internally or functionalities internally, working with clients internally and externally from the startup perspective.

Okay, I think one other things. When you're building internal products or the products where you have a limited set of functions, you are very clear what you are trying to achieve. You have a limited set of requirement. You can read drafted, you can you know, go back and you know, discuss it, finalize it, fine tune it.

You can put a frame. As a technical person, then you can put a framework. Then you could do okay, timelines around it and. Do it now.

That's where it typically happens when you are building an internal product where you have clearity of thoughts for at least for you know, some set of feature. Let's a version one, version two of that product. Then it goes and you will get very good success initial versions because the movement it lends, it fulfills what is needed for you know, that set of requirement. Because they were very clear.

It's the same happens with us when we do the project, because we have the requirement very clear from the customer even or from the intera stakeholders that I need this kind of power we report, or need this dashboard, or I need this tool which fulfills this kind of achievement. So easy to crack, easy to get the first success. Then it grows on the bigger a framework of you know, okay, can we do all these things. Let's say we wanted to build a you know, event which is a scrumb master agent, so which actually can take the scrub meeting.

So we have very clear cut requirement okay at the first stage, this agent should be able to talk, ask everyone a question, understand that, ask follow back questions and. Do all those things. Okay, So very very clear cut requirement and we can achieve those now on a bigger product scale when you are doing it for customers and then the customers is a vast set of people who's going to use it, Like. Building a bi tool.

You don't know which industry or will do it, and some of the industry may have very specific requirements, like you know, financial industry have a specific requirement of formatting of reports more than you know the content. These content need to. Come exactly same place, exactly the same place because it is needed by let's say the bank for filing their returns and everything. Now there could be other place is where you know, the data privacy is really important.

Okay, you can't show these things. The data analysis itself is you know, bigger part which is typically very similar in all of the organizations that I have actual data. And I'm going to analyze that. So now in such scenarios, you you know, look at the common things which are required across the industry.

You sit with initially with the set of you know, stakeholders, you internally have the product manager or may be your founders in brainstorm with based on your learning, you go to internet and search it because at that time we started it was not the claud or the chat gip. It is going to give you a lot of information, but you do research and do and then you decide. Now what happens when you go in product scenario, the moment you learn something to the customer, you will have thousand one thing which they are going to ask for, so why you are very happy what you achieved.

You will have thousand and one things which which is there to be supported, and then you are to prioritize. Okay, and some of them might not be falling at all in your path which you have planned for it because this is the real customer world, which is much different from your own world which you created. You said, okay, this is all. Going to be world, and irrespective of how much information you would have collected, definitely you can go for a design path only for desired set of feature, but to make that product work for customer.

Let's say these are the initial set of beta customer. You need to have some of those features for those beta customers which you got and immediately the tracks started, Okay, I need all these things. And that's where the bigger differentiation comes in because the movement you open it for the customers or the beta customer, it is the entire set of equirement is go to commit when they are going to adapt this to versus you know, when you're doing internally, they have the set of requirement for which they can adapt and you can grow.

Now you have to grow immediately. You have to turn around things faster to make it successful for those set of customer initial epend and then when you Google you have a next level and these things keep on changing. We are living in a dynamic world with the IVY. It would be even more dynamic when by the time you completed all those there could be altogether different world, different technology, or different things to catch upon.

And speaking of. The world that we're living in right now, we're ac curring this episode at the very end of May twenty twenty six, so we're in the middle of the transition, transformation, change after change. Things are having very fast and they're changing all the time every single day. There are many startups that are happening.

There are many tools that they are in new complus MVPs that are there for us to use. So this is something that is just our reality right now. So the question is how to build a team from your perspective as a CEO, as a project leader, as a person who has a lot of different experiences with different customers, different teams different organizations right now in this world that we live in, how to build great teams in tech taking into consideration all of the crazy that is happening that people are afraid, they're terrified about the market, what is happening to their jobs, that they don't believe that they are going to have a job maybe in three years or so, they sit on their hands and wait for better times.

So what are two three things from your perspective that you would advise for leader in technology that they should do two to build great tech team that succeeds. So I think one of the things is definitely when you're building tech team, definitely need to look at your technology and you need to find the right set of people. But one thing which I formally believed it try to get Google US is the pole the most successful people in my team is not who are expertising the technology.

Those are the PEO people who are going to make it done, whether they're going to research it and go to do it or want to make it happen because they know the technology in and out. So always try to have those people. And that is where the entire you know talk process of your interviews to you know, are to talk to the person you need to find out. Is it going to be you know, a person who's you know, just love coding or just can get the things done what he knows, or he is a go getter where he will try out if even if he doesn't know, it's going to.

Make it work. So always try to create a team and initial teams is always need to be about go getters. I will get it done. So that's where you know you can leave certain things too.

They are not person whom you give a task and do it. You don't need task achievers. You need go getters who understand, who want to add their own ideas, who are a little vocal about Okay, you said this thing, but I think this is going to be a little different. I think you are missing some scenarios.

Those who you know like to have. Involvement, those who go getters and understand technology. You cannot have a you know, really person who don't understand technology and asking to code, at least for coming a couple of years. Maybe after that.

You know AI can help that. You know, you know people to code that much, they don't need to understand the technology. But I still firmly believe that they need to understand, you know, the programming, the way programming happens. But get go getters people who understand technology whatever you are working on, and always ready to you know, participate in what you are doing.

Understand that and participate. And if they're you know, good. Technocrats who are not involving in that much, then you start telling them about what we are developing. Start talking to them, and then they will come out with new ideas.

So it's always not that you are will to get the team, which you always add to the value. You need to make them part of the system. You need to tell Okay, I'm developing this, this is the objective, this is the problem. It solves.

Do you related with some problems you're solved, you have solved, or you plan to solve, and then they will come out with idea. So as a leader, choosing the collect team and making them involved into what you're doing is also really important. And we were talking about the learning part a lot, and I would like to put another layer on what you just said about leading tech teams right now because there is a very thin line from my perspective. I'm super curious on your thousand this one between growing up life and learning muscle in value and learning and seeing what is here, being up to date, gathering more skills, more and more social skills, more tech skills, et cetera, and being in a constant pomo because the things are changing so fast and there is so high speed, high level of speed of a new tech stack, new functionality, new tool, new perspective, new framework.

That it is one of the from my research and understanding of this world that I may with you one of the biggest pieces that will bring people to burnout zone because they are under so much pressure external and internal one that they put on themselves that they need to be up to date all the time, and this is impossible because too many things are happening every single day. So from again your experience, your perspective, and as an educator as well as you mentioned before, you teach others as well how to approach learning process right now when you are a part of the tech team.

Really it doesn't matter right now if you're a leader or I see, how do you not go crazy when it comes to learning and keep the balance between being up to date and being a learner and the crazy person that's just under too much pressure going into the burnout zone. Keep blaming yourself that you're not up to date as much as you should be. How to how to find a balance, How to do it? Yeah, I think balance is needed.

And I did try, you know, that kind of a crazy person once, you know, I was learning X and I said, okay, why do can't I learned you know the U stuff and react and I at one stage I find it, you know, little pressurizing. I said, no, I'm good at back and I'm not now on lea out the front end. So one part, I've done frontending for a long time. But when it came to you know, real U, I eux person, I saw at one stage I decided, okay, this is not my cup of p I'm not able to in this time.

I'll make sure that you know, I have knowledge about it, but I'm not a going to do it because what happens if you try to learn too many things and because of the blast of the technology right now, you cannot cope with everything. We have a you know, limited time, we have you know, limited learning which we can do in that time. So we need to be really focused now as a new age double person, which is you know, whether you're a technocrat or whether you're a leader, you're to understand right now, more than technology, the basics are really important.

So let's say if I want to have a I want to have my development carreer. Okay, what are the basics of programming? Are you stick to that? It's okay, I want to go for a Java or for a Python.

I think it can help me getting that at the starting point because after that, with the. Experience, you learn. Okay, these are the dvances of this one how Java works better or how Python works better. And then you stick to that technology for some time.

You have to stick at one place for some time before you jump. You keep the knowledge, you keep up yourself updated, but stick you know, and market dynamics. While the things will keep on coming in the my ticket dynamics may take little time to shift. You know, we are talking for you know, no sequel.

For so many times, so many articles you might have seen in the last twenty years. Sequel is that it's equally dead. RA school is not dead. Maybe it's you're not writing it affront and but it's still working.

We will be reading you know x technology is dead or white technologies that don't you know, get just carried off. You just know about the new technology, what problem they can solve. And if you. See as a leader or as a you know, a techno credit that this can fit in solving my problem, then go ahead and take it up.

Don't delay that process. And also look at the stabilization of technology. Don't because if you are building up products which needs certain external technology, you need to make sure that, okay, this technology is also going to survive a little longer than that. And sometimes it is fine to build something which is a little older or more stable, because if you try to build in the what you call the components way smaller and smaller microservices architecture or somewhere we where you can change the technology, multiple technology can work together, you may have opportunity to change part of it in future.

So you need to create a scalable architecture. Then to you know, you know, put everything which is coming in now. Yes, always I always have you know, teams of you know, young people, fresh ares in terms where you know, I'll keep on giving that challenge. Okay, do this, do that, experiment with this technology, experiment with that.

So the experiments are always happening. But are we going to adapt that. We are going to take call based on Okay, this project, this thing seems good, Yes we can add this particular technology can add value, and let's take it up. And we think, okay, it has enough time in the market because we are consumer.

If we are not consumer, we are builder, then it's a different thing. We are consumer. So okay, this is enough time and now we can use it, we can productionize it, and we will be able to solve the problems if it comes in that technology. So being aware always helps.

And because of a blast, you will get so many things. Have experiment teams, you can have interns, you can have pressures who caming in they are really enthusiastic about doing it. Do that, but take a courtious called what you are doing as a product and project and process or that you okay, this is going to last so long, and then take it up so and then don't try to learn too many things at this stage. Just knowing is good, but don't try to invest in everything as a thing shifted Like you know, I was on power BA then fabric gaming.

So was I focusing on that time on price Park? Not maybe much. I just learned machine learning because of that I know sparked Python and ice park, but when fabric cames and it was the right opportunity to you know, from a power we developer, if you will be a very successful fabric developer, you need to have a little more hands on on pace. Pack up.

Let's sad this technology enough of you know, all other things which you are learning, Add one more, add one more, so right time, right opportunity. Add those but don't carried away with the blast of the technology. Just stick to the basics and make sure that you adopt them at right time. Ah It.

I think that is a good time playing in the consideration everything that we've talked about so far and everything that you shure that I'm grateful for for the lighting crowds. I have a few super short questions and answers for you right now. What is the worst leadership and advice that you ever gotten or heard of? I think sticking to the things that we formally believe.

Okay, continue to do work is working. And maybe you know, not marketing the things enough. Okay, it will work. Me b be a techno.

Credit the technology of the product. Books, it's yeah, it's what what says to the market? Books? What adopted by the customer works.

Yeah, this is one thing that I shared a lot. One sentence that I remember from one of my mentors. That's that I've heard years ago and it's still with me. Alex, you can be the smartest person in the world.

You can be great in what you're doing, you have you can have great products, but if nobody knows you, it doesn't make any sense because nobody is going to use it. So this is this is exactly what you What's came to my brain when you said it. What is the one thing that you wish you knew at the very beginning of real leadership journey? I think one of the things which I understood over a period of time.

The two things. One is basically having the correct composition in an organization when you group on a particular level, like you need to have all the possible teams like we call this spoke of the weis like TCH our team, marketing team, sales team, product team, support team, DevOps team, and all those functions. That's one thing. And second is nothing sells if you don't market, you need to market it.

I firmly believe that you know you as a market think person. You commit to something and you have to chase behind and achieve it. So if if you ask me, I think last six seven years is more about, you know. We properly marketing what we are doing and that works.

And what is something that you've read recently or listens to or watched maybe that's not you something that you can share with all of us that are listening. So I keep on attending these you know, leadership stuff and you know, they keep on picking different kinds of stuff. And one of the things, you know, I always think that, you know, I communicate enough with my people, but they've taken on a test and what are the outcome of the tests? A little surprised me that, you know, Okay, while I'm pretty open to listen to what my team is saying, I may not be doing enough communication back with the team or I'm not you know, interacting with the team because in going in my role in the last one and a half year, the team has gone enough big, so I may not be communicating enough back and that was visible when I filled that one.

So from that learning what I've decided that I'm going to go and speak with each one in my team across my entire organization and understand with them. And what that has given me is a broader perspective of individual aspirations of the team. So as a leader, sometimes you need to go ahead and you. Know, talk to the people what individual aspirations they are and what is going to make them do work.

So it's basically the advice is basically. How do you know? So how you find out yourself whether you are really communicating or you're only listening. So while I was thinking that I'm really communicating, I found that I'm more listening.

I'm good at what they're telling me, but maybe I'm not going to intact into them enough, sharing the vision, asking them, you know, what they need, and making sure that they achieve their objective. So I started doing that, and I think this is just a reminder because we keep on doing those kinds of. Things again and again. So that's what I think as a leader, you keep on reminding yourself, Okay, these are the basics of the leadership and you need to go and work upon on that.

That's true. And I think that we forget, we tend to forget what is a real role as leaders, you know, And this is something that I cut myself up with as well as a leader is actually my role? What is not my role? And what is not doesn't need to be or shouldn't be on a task list.

But the other hand, what actually I'm responsible for here? I think this is something that we need to remind ourselves over on over again because without that we are going to be lost, as people are in the four Amitz. I would love to thank you for joining me today. A bunch of notes from what you said, I'm going to take as a local my leadership as well, and so what I do with my teams and then the contractors I work with, corporate with in my in my organization.

But for all of those people who want to DM you check out on you just see what you're doing, maybe contact with you where they can find you in the internet. Tell us all the places. I think best way to connect me is on LinkedIn, uh so you can drop me a message on LinkedIn or I am also available on YouTube on my channel with the name of Chanda. You can drop me a message in any of the videos.

Comment you will be able to get a response on that. If you are one of the Connecticut customers and moon to connect Connecticut, you can drop me directly email there and iron blog whatsab group also be Once you are connected, you will become part of one of those worksup group and not only me, but like minded people do help out on all those mediings. Amazing. Thank you for sharing.

We're going to put everything in the show notes. And a community is super important, so you know a way to go for creating one all around the world. We need it. So for all of the listeners, just find your find your circle, find your people.

Just be involved, get get help, get support, get into conversation. Just don't be alone with everything that you are doing. That doesn't really matter if it's one new product, you're working on something, or you just want to meet slight minded people and just just just to be be together from time to time. It is always a good idea.

Amitz, thank you for today this conversation and being grateful that you found the time to do any Thanks. Thanks Eleganda for inviting me. And it was a pleasure speaking with you and those who are going to listen to this one. And I've would like to thank you and just wanted to add that you know, you know, learning and community, everything is all about you know, being patient, being continuously doing it.

Things may not turn around today, but whatever you learn, whatever you do, is going to give you results sooner or later. So believe, I believe in that, and keep on doing the good work. What you're doing is going to give you good outcome. On find it and I think it's a beautiful way too fit to end a conversation like that.

Thank you, Thank you all for joining us in this conversation. I hope it was helpful interesting, important for you to dig deeper into some pieces that i'm it mentioned. Maybe something changed in your brain while you were listening. So just keep going, keep doing things that you're doing.

Just learn all the time. As we spoke about during the whole conversation, the learning life and learning is a value, so just keep to that and shored episode to the conversation. If you found it's useful interesting, just share it with one person that's actually can use it. This is how we learned.

This is how create a community that THENT you mentioned a minute ago, and uh and this is this is what you can do to grow this show as well as part of the community of tech leaders all around the world. So thank you so much and I'll see you soon in another episode. Of the Lehman Tech Leadership Podcast by everybody. M m hmm.