#15: A Meta VP's Advice on Career Transitions, AI, and Leadership That Isn't Taught in School

Speaker A: The first mainframe that we worked on that was powering Tata Motors center payroll is less powerful than my iPhone.

Speaker B: Today you made this transition from program management into engineering and data engineering.

Speaker A: Looking back at that decision, it made me a completely different person.

Speaker B: What inspired you to make that transition? Sometimes people get stuck into like, oh, I have invested so much in this technology and I find the same with career.

Speaker A: If you are defensive about, you are missing out, uh, on a huge opportunity. Prasad Bhandarkar is the Vice President of Reality Labs AR VR Engineering. He has been leading 300 team across six locations. He has also been the Director of Digital Commerce at Adobe.

Speaker B: You may not always have all the information. How do you navigate decision making?

Speaker A: I actually signed up for it allows you to spot body language. It allows you to ask questions. That's my personal experience in this.

Speaker B: Hello, welcome to the Priyanka Shinde Podcast where we dive into the art and science of strategy, execution and leadership. I'm your host, Priyanka Shinde, author of the Art of Strategic Execution and a consultant for tech leaders. In this podcast, I bring you candid conversations with top executives, startup founders and industry experts who are driving innovation, delivering results and staying ahead in today's competitive landscape. We will break down what it takes to tap into founder mode and turn vision into action. If you are serious about elevating your leadership and execution skills, make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or YouTube. It helps the podcast and ensures you never miss an episode. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Priyanka Shinde Podcast. Today's guest is Prasad Bhandarkar. He's a Vice President of Data Engineering at Meta, where he leads the analytics and machine learning across the Metaverse augmented and virtual reality teams driving technology insights and growth at scale. With over three decades of experience, Prasad is a seasoned analytics leader known for applying AI and data driven solutions to to complex business problems. He's passionate about setting bold visions, executing with intellectual curiosity and developing high performing teams. Beyond tech, Prasad is also a classically trained musician. He began learning Hindustani music at the age of 8 and has studied under the legendary Padma Vibhushan Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia. He performs regularly on flute, both in solo classical concerts and as an accompanist in light music concerts. Prasad is also a certified executive coach, helping engineers, product leaders and data professionals unlock their potential. Welcome to the show, Prasad. Very excited to have you.

Speaker A: Thanks Priyanka. I'm so glad I'm here. Uh, thanks for that flattering introduction. It was kind of nice to hear my professional Introduction and music introduction intermingled together. That hasn't happened before. Glad to be here. Uh, before we start the conversation I just wanted to call out that I'm here in my personal capacity and um, um, you know, we are not going to talk about my uh, work at uh, Meta in any great detail. So I'm glad to be here.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really excited for our conversation. I've heard a lot about you from you know, uh, close friends and family that know you and I've heard a lot about your leadership uh, as well. And so you know, there are some of those things that I want to talk to you about. And so we have so much to talk about besides you know, where you work at. You have had a remarkable career arc. Can you walk us uh, through some of your defining moments?

Speaker A: Oh wow. Uh, looking back I uh, would say there were quite a few and I'll walk you through those. But there are also a few lessons that I learned that uh, maybe I could teach uh myself 30 years ago. It would have been much uh, more useful. But like uh, my move into uh, uh, technology was little bit uh, accidental. My first job was at Tata Motors out of engineering in Pune. And when I was interviewing with them they said that wow, you have good aptitude for math and so on, which I'm sure all engineers have. But then they had this uh, completely new stream, uh, for basically transforming their old COBOL mainframe based systems into UNIXC and Oracle. So they said why don't you kind of uh, take the aptitude test for computing. And I had taken some courses on computing in my engineering college, uh, a few programming languages like C and um, operating system Unix and so on. So I said you know what, let me try this out. Um, it was not like a very conscious decision but boy, looking back at that, if that hadn't happened, God knows where my career direction would be. The second one was like at you know, two years into that job I was loving it so much. Imagine like uh, in the hot climate of India you get to sit in uh, you know, air conditioned rooms and just like work on the hottest things. At that time I told my parents that I'm done with my education and so on. But like uh, uh, to my mother's credit she pestered me to write uh, MBA entrance exams for IIMs in India. And as it turned out like my IIM Lucknow admission and uh, uh, visa to come to us through Tata Motors almost came simultaneously. And uh, at that time going from Pune to Lucknow was uh, what, uh, 18 hours by train and probably coming to us is 18 hours by flight. So. So in spite of my conviction of like staying in computing, uh, I did decide to uh do my MBA and uh, went to IIM Lucknow. And looking back at that decision was also very pivotal. It made me a completely different person. I stayed with technology after I did my mba which was also another non conventional things to do at that time because like the general rat race used to be in the direction of marketing, uh and finance. Uh those jobs used to pay great and people generally did not have an idea on what information technology major might be. But I did that. I did my second major in finance and that second major helped uh tremendously with personal finance and that sort of stuff. Uh I stayed with uh, the other uh uh uh the point came in uh was uh, when I was in us um a few years later that by that time my major competency was in SAP and uh, moving from SAP, production planning, mrp, those kind of exciting things into what I thought was its next um evolution which is uh constraint based planning. And I won't get into the details of that but uh, jumping to that technology at the top of my game on SAP when like SAP consulting rates were like astronomical and so on, that was another key decision that I made. Fast forward I can like talk later about like getting out of program management. That was a key decision. And uh getting out of Adobe at the time when I thought like my work there was done and like uh, uh you know the circumstances uh were such that I thought I should get out of there and explore other things. That was a key decision. So much so that like actually people had, my friends had come to home to convince me not to do that without having another job in hand. But I really needed a break at that point. So that was a key decision. So some of the lessons that I've learned out of these uh, uh decisions. In fact another key decision is after joining Meta, uh like I was first for two and a half years I was in Facebook, the blue app and I wanted to do something radically different. And uh Reality Labs was uh, much smaller setup, um, my team size uh would have probably halved or like actually gone to 1/4 uh compared to the other opportunities that I had. But making the bet on Reality Labs because I had a lot of interest on where things were going was timely and another pivotal moment. And last five years have been really great. So my uh lessons learned out of that were number one, uh, I have always prioritized learning uh uh over anything else. My firm belief is if you prioritize learning, then money and other things will follow. If you chase money, you'll get neither. So that's one definite lesson. Ah, the other uh, lesson learned was like often inaction, feel safe doing nothing and just continuing in your current job. But often that presents actually the higher risk in long term than taking action and making some hard calls. Uh, uh, when you make those hard calls, listen to your inner voice, listen to your heart and like um, um, you know, just make those calls. Otherwise like you kind of stay in the rut. Uh, and I've done that mistake as well. And then uh, the third lesson learned, especially if you are in tech, when to make the transition to uh, the technologies go in waves and uh, typically you are uh, in the previous wave at the top of your game. You're doing very well, you are getting paid well for uh, doing well. But that technology might saturate and plateau or even decline and therefore making the call at the right time to just give up on all that and get jump into the next new stuff, even though it feels very uncomfortable at that time. I think that is another lesson that I have uh, I have learned and uh, um, it's an important lesson for people in tech.

Speaker B: Wow, that's so great. And this is so different from most of the time when I start talking to folks. We start about career and like a lot of the lessons come towards the end of the episode and this is, we are just kicking off with amazing lessons. So thank you so much for that. And I think each of the points you mentioned is so valuable because a lot of times you talk, you're talking about making sometimes a theme that I notice is like you have to sometimes make unconventional choices. Some things that sometimes people would, like you said, try to convince you against doing. But sometimes you have to follow your instinct and your gut and believe in like what you truly think aligns with maybe your strengths, things that you might want to do and those can still be the right things and take you, you will make something out of it, uh, because those are the things that you chose to do. And I really like that you're, you're talking about like either choosing the MBA over coming to the US or choos to do something focused on tech within your mba. Even if you chose finance as your second major, otherwise most people would do finance or marketing. And I have an MBA too and I did similar, I did product innovation and not marketing or finance in MBA either, uh, similar to what you're saying. And then same thing with the team size getting half or even I wanted to actually ask you about program management because you may or may not know, but I also have a program management background. For many years I'd been in the technical program management space. And so even today a lot of people come to me and I uh, get this question a lot which is what does my career look like in technical program management? That's a very constant question and especially a lot of changes have happened over the past many years and I obviously tell them like don't look at that as like one way of thinking about your career. And especially today you made this transition from program management into engineering and data engineering many many years ago. So I would love to, for you to share a little bit more about how made that transition and what inspired you to make that transition.

Speaker A: So first of all like I was, I did not start as program manager, right? I, as I said in Tata Motors my job was very technical and stayed technical for next I think at least a decade program move to program management uh was more of uh, shall we say I was not following my own lessons, partly driven by circumstances of the time, my green card was underway and so on. So there was limits to what I could do in terms of uh, career change but partly inertia and not changing anything or like not thinking deeply about what I really passionately feel about and therefore let the sort of career drift into program manage. That happened when I was at uh, uh intel and like my first job in Adobe was uh, in program management. And uh, just to be clear, I mean I have nothing against program management. I actually I did my uh certification in PMP and all, all that stuff. So like uh, I used to manage very massive projects at Adobe. Like one of them was like 120530 people, transformative project but as they say that you should put yourself in the center of the 3 uh circle, overlapping circles, right? What you are uh good at, what you're passionate about and what pays well. And I think with program management I was good at that but I was definitely not passionate about it. And this is again personal. Uh, I know so many people in my uh personal life who are uh so much better organized uh than I am uh starting with my wife to begin with but that's not who I was. So that internal dissonance kept uh, on presenting itself. Uh the external dissonance also eventually started uh presenting because like uh, I think um, the recognition that I was getting at that time in spite of managing complex programs and so on wasn't as much as I would have expected. And I was frustrated about that. I was venting about that to a friend, uh, uh, on how they don't recognize execution and how it is important. And I remember he giving me a cold stare and saying hey Prasad, let me tell you, uh, uh, some fun thing. People pay basically for thought leadership and the world doesn't pay as much for just execution, right? So where is your thought leadership? And that statement was almost like uh, you know I could have rationalized that because program management also has a lot of thought leadership to land programs on the, you know, uh, uh, on right time under budget and so on. But that statement was like somebody throwing a glass of cold water on my face. And I made the choice at that time. I uh, went and told my manager at that time that this is the last program that I'm managing. It was still six months away from its uh, uh, fruition. He was a little bit shocked but to his credit and I consider him a friend now, I still meet him, he allowed me to do that. And I um, got into a role at the end of that that basically had no execution component and only thought leadership component. My thinking was my brand at that time in Adobe was oh, this guy manages big programs, uh, probably not a lot of thought leadership but execution is wonderful. So I said you know what, let me just transform that. And I uh, as part of that role I got myself into one of the pricing strategy program that uh, VP of FEA at that time was running. And uh, we found so many things that were broken about Adobe's pricing at that time and that got visibility all the way to the CEO and CEO staff level. And that eventually changed my internal brand in Adobe completely. And uh, so subsequent to that when Adobe started moving into cloud subscriptions business, the need for analytics uh, sort of came up and uh, I had this background but within Adobe that was a very well kept secret. So I just decided to sign up for that. And then like I remember telling my eventually boss at that time, the VP of the group, uh, that I want to do that because I, you know that I can execute, you know, I have a thought leadership. If I do both in that then that's what takes people to director. And I still remember when I told her that her body language, uh, like it was conversation in one of the Fridays in uh, Adobe San Francisco office and you could see that little bit of a cringe, uh, right, like what does this guy think? And uh, uh, you know what of himself. But believe it or not like uh, literally three years or less from that point she was the one who promoted me to director. And uh, my point there is like, uh, being mindful about like who you are, what drives you, what you're passionate about, what your strengths are, very well aware of what weaknesses are. And of course taking that feedback that my friend, uh, gave, not defensively but like something to think deeply about really helped me in, in that case, in navigating my career back to area, back to the three center of those three concentric circles that I mentioned.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think it's so important. You kind of took what somebody had shared with you and really kind of looked deeply and said, how do I take this information and do something about it? Because I also find sometime. And it goes back to the point you were making about transitions in tech, right? Like sometimes you say tech is changing so fast, but you kind of, sometimes people get stuck into like, oh, I've invested so much in this technology, why should I give this up? Why should I shift and transition and move over to something else? And I find the same with career, like if somebody has invested, say in becoming a program management, I mean like you said you did certifications, you gave a pmp, uh, and everything. For many people that could be. It's like, I've invested so much, why should I change and move into something else? I don't even know what this strategy or thought leadership might become. And so what advice would you offer someone who is maybe in that position that you were in, venting or thinking about, what do I do now? I want to, I don't know what to do.

Speaker A: I think it's uh, it's very simple. So first of all, when people come and tell you that you are not on the right path or like your thinking is needs to be fundamentally different, if you are defensive about hearing that out, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Because first of all, not a lot of people will come and tell you that the world is full of people who will tell you what you want to hear, especially when they know, uh, that this is radically different and I might get a backlash. Uh, if people are not open to feedback and have tendency to create that backlash, they don't get feedback and uh, therefore they miss out on some of these uh, signals. Believe it or not, when I got promoted to vp, uh, in meta, one of the things that I did was talk to the guy who actually told me that back in the days, this was like almost a decade and a half ago, and I'm sure he had forgotten about that M conversation completely. But that conversation Was uh, transformative for me and my mindset change. So when people give you feedback, listen to it very carefully. Even if you disagree with that in the moment, process it. You may eventually disagree with that for the right reasons. And at that time it's okay to discard that because ultimately it's your life. But like uh, discard feedback thoughtfully or like uh, process it thoughtfully before discarding that. That's my, my personal experience in this.

Speaker B: Well that's, that's very well said. And I will talk a lot, a little bit more about feedback. Because you have been leading teams and organizations, you have scaled teams from dozens to a hundreds and leadership is very complicated. You have firsthand experience with this. What according to you is one leadership skill that doesn't scale easily?

Speaker A: That's a great question. And uh, I think my experiences, uh, leadership, first of all leadership, uh, growth is almost like immunization. Like you. I've written about this a little bit, it must be on LinkedIn somewhere. Mistakes I have made as first line manager and mistakes I have made as manager of managers. And I can tell you mistakes I have made as director and VP or whatever that is. But um, the first mistake people typically make, and I certainly did, was typically ICs who are high performing, uh, invited to become managers. And um, when you are ic, you have complete control on your success, uh, or mostly complete control on your success. You work hard, you are technically smart and like uh, that gives you recognition when you become manager, your team is what makes you successful. And initially I made a mistake of actually trying to do the job for the entire team, three, four people team that I had. And uh, I generally used to be frustrated that they're not doing X and Y and Z and whatever. Therefore let me just make it. And uh, couple of months down the line I had uh, one on one with my manager at the time and I was like venting about the team and this and that. And again like another good advice that still stayed with me at this time, probably 21 years uh, later is uh, he said that like uh, how are you feeling? He said, I told him I'm feeling exhausted and tired and whatever said you know why uh, you're feeling that way? Because you're like basically pulling together whole team's work yourself. And that's not the job description. The job description is like how are you going to grow those people into their full potential and therefore maximize team's uh, performance. Right. And one of the great advice that I got from him was especially as you become manager of managers, and like start managing much bigger teams. Your job is to basically maximize the product, the probability of success of that team, knowing fully well that that probability will never reach 100%. And depending on the, the nature of the team, the team that you might have inherited, the team where you actually made mistakes, or sometimes the team where uh, the people you trusted to make the right decisions, Mistakes, right, uh, those kind of factors uh, drive the team's performance below the 100%. It's never going to be 100%. The question is what are you doing? What few things, actions, uh, that you are taking at any given point in time to take a team's performance to the, to the next level. And I think that was a great advice uh, that I got. And uh, coming back to your question, the leadership skill that doesn't scale easily, it's that growth that one has to go through uh, at every stage as a first line manager, as manager of managers, as like a um, director of a sizable team and so on and so forth. Like how do you make peace with that fact? Which is like how are you maximizing the performance of your team while making a piece with the fact that uh, it's not going to be 100% all the time. And then you will actually develop a lot of empathy, compassion for people in your team and uh, you know, a little bit of forgiveness for mistakes that anyone makes and coach them, spend time on coaching uh, and uh, you know, put them to the optimal level.

Speaker B: There is. You talk about like you know often going from IC to manager. You, you think about control as the first thing that, that is the first lesson you learn because that's the biggest difference uh, when you go from being an IC to a manager and you have also seen these things going from manager to managers of managers and then to a director and a vp. So what has been surprising to those sort of those next step ups that you have had, stepping into executive role, getting into director and then vp. Like what changes there or what has been surprising at that level, uh, when now you're not managing ICs anymore, you're managing very senior people, very senior leaders in their own right who can really operate independently. And now you have such a bigger organization than before.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the surprises that you get, especially at the stage that I am in my career are number one upside surprises. The kind of problems that the teams uh, are and can solve. Like uh, I can probably go on another occasion about uh, like the pushing the boundaries with AI, uh, that my team has been working on, on various problems and uh, it is absolutely fascinating to see how quickly they learn that. And uh, uh, you know, uh, come up with ideas to uh, uh, do that, uh, in some ways that they are way smarter than uh, I am. Right. On the other hand, the same people who I think are so brilliant, I see they occasionally make mistakes that make me wonder how the heck did I, did he or she make that mistake? Like they're so brilliant. And uh, it almost reminds me of when I started teaching my son uh, how to drive. Right. He's a very careful driver and he would drive probably uh, 99% of the time really well. And then suddenly he would make mistake. What the heck just happened, like, and it will shake me up, right? I think, uh, those kind of surprises you start getting, uh, occasionally. And uh, those surprises. And then like I occasionally, you know, when I get that surprise after the initial shock, I also smile that okay, I myself must have made those kind of mistakes at some point, must have learned, I must have been coached by my manager and therefore I am who I am, uh, who I am. And I can now spot those mistakes and they are still learning. So that's I think um, an interesting experience, uh, going through uh, this process.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's really like you're looking at it from a different angle now.

Speaker A: In some ways it gives me a comfort that like in spite of having so many smart people who are exponentially smarter than I am, I still have a role. There's a role to play here.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And I think uh, I mean there's always this question like, you know, as leaders, what is it that leaders are doing? And there is so much to do and at an executive level there's a lot of purview you have and there's so much context that you need. How do you build that context and how do you maintain that context?

Speaker A: I think uh, uh, that's another uh, great uh, uh, question. I think that context, uh, I mean I'm blessed uh, to be at Meta and the internal culture is actually very sharing. Actually we have our internal tools where that context is broadly shared. There are frequent employee meetings, uh, not just uh, like company wide, but also at every level. So you get a lot of context. Even if you are a, uh, junior most ic, you will get much broader context than most other companies that have. In fact all other companies that I've worked for. The advantage that that opens up is that since you have that broader context even as a, like university, higher junior IC have ability to connect the dots and make that big impact that like uh, if it was just a top down context sharing uh, you would not get. So I guess uh, maybe this is a non scalable answer or non replicable but I wish every company was that way because uh, if you share more context that there's more of that amplification effect uh, or multiplier effect, there's a book on this, right? And then like more people can solve bigger problems and it lifts the whole place place up. And then conversely like uh I in my role also I'm responsible uh for providing that context. So like writing internal posts or like uh team meetings and so on. Like it has to be a very thoughtful communication exercise.

Speaker B: Yeah, we talk about like context and then there is a lot of information. I was like sometimes depending on what uh conversation is going on and without getting into specifics like there are so many decisions that any leader has to make. You may not always have all the information. So you may, might have some context but you may not always have all the information about something. How do you navigate decision making when you don't have all the information but

Speaker A: you never have all the information in any context. Like even if like I can go back to some of the examples that I uh gave right? Like uh going to IIM Lucknow versus just picking up a random example versus coming to. Did I have all the context uh about what an MBA education can do to a person? No. Did I have all the context on what uh it would have meant coming to us in early 90s when like the Internet boom was uh taking off? Certainly not. But then you make decisions based on the subset of contexts that you have. But you also make the decision based on the value system that you uh, you, you follow and um, I think generally you land in a good place. But like there's never a way to know. Like who knows? Like if I had come in in early 90s and made some right investments, uh maybe I would have wrote that uh Internet boom and would have been somebody. But like uh, that's not the path that I chose. And by the way to make the right decisions then on financial investment I did not have tools either so maybe that outcome may not have happened. So like life is full of these forks and uh chances and uh decision making uh based on imperfect information and you just have to apply your whatever you have uh information have in your front, make the decision based on your value system and not look back as to what if, what if, what if.

Speaker B: I think that's, that's very um, I mean without even thinking about being at an executive level or Being in a leadership role, I think giving the example of the MBA thing that you shared is like decisions are there at every uh, correct.

Speaker A: And just like I said earlier, like sometimes there's a cost to not making a decision. In fact, often there is a big cost to not making a decision that you don't perceive. People always forget that because the inertia gives false sense of uh, comfort. And that is true with the, with career decisions, but that's true with any uh, decision whether personal life decisions or like work related decisions or like professional decisions you make at work.

Speaker B: I think there's sometimes there I hear a lot about like either there is a analysis paralysis going on so people are trying to like get a lot of information and then there's either too much information that they're trying to parse or they're just afraid that there is not enough information so they just get stuck into not making a decision.

Speaker A: Like you're saying like since I'm in analytics I can tell you like uh, team culture A and team culture B or company culture A and company culture B like without getting into a lot of specifics in one situation, actually I should say team culture because it's not like across the board but like um, in one situation if anything is imperfect with data, those executives uh, like uh, created a lot of noise, pressure. And um, we used to have a situation where if anything is broken, like everyone drops their uh, work they're doing and just focuses on micromanaging whatever data pipelines and so on. And uh, uh compared to that, especially after coming to meta, uh, I realized how much peace there is in terms of making decision based on incomplete or imperfect data. Because lot of time that what you need for your decision making is only directional data rather than like pinpoint accurate data. And then with reflection a lot of times people make issue out of getting pinpoint accurate data because they're not comfortable making decision in first place no matter what. It has nothing to do with data. Right. So I think uh, getting comfortable to uh, make decisions based on directional, imperfect data is part of the job. Whether it's like at work or like uh, personal decisions.

Speaker B: This is great. I love it coming from a person in data and analytics. I think you don't necessarily need all the data, you just need like directional data is probably good enough. And I think it's your comfort with being able to make decisions. I think that's more important than data probably. Um, yeah. Thank you, thank you for sharing that. I wanted to touch back on something that you had mentioned earlier about Feedback, uh, about you know, not all the people are there to give you real feedback. And this happens more and more as you sort of go up, up the chain or so to say or you know, uh, up, uh, in, in leadership levels. And you always hear this term like that it's lonely at the top. So have you ever felt that loneliness at the top? And if so how do you build that support and resilience in those moments?

Speaker A: I think first of all uh, giving and receiving feedback is not as hard as most people think it is. What is hard is most people are defensive about it and that makes it harder. But like if uh, you have uh, the right circumstances, getting and receiving feedback is a very natural, uh, uh, natural thing. And I think I'll just call out one caveat in your question. Lonely at the top. I'll give you an example. Even when I was uh, in the process of making that journey into, out of program management into something else at Adobe, uh, uh, at that time I had hired an executive coach at my own time and I wasn't particularly rich at that time to spend I think $5,000 or something out of my own pocket was material amount of my uh, post tax annual income. And uh, I saw the power of feedback and questioning and so on and what, what it can bring because uh, this gentleman who was my executive coach at that time, former PWC partner and uh, sort of doing this as a retirement uh, gig probably. But uh, he started, I gave him some charter, like hey I want to think about product management or something. Right. To his credit he did not take at the face value you, he started probing me on multiple directions. So one of the things that he probed me was like why do you want to be in Bay Area? Like if you go to Sacramento or like even other areas like your cost footprint simply drops and that gives you a lot more flexibility. So we went through that mental journey and I found myself uh, you know I had very strong reasons to be in Bay Area, like uh, least of which are like social reasons. Uh, you know, I was actively performing music and, and so on and so forth. But the good thing is that we talk through that very rationally as opposed to hey, this is not my why I hired you. Let's talk about something else. The next thing he did was like if you want to do something different from program management, let's say product strategy or something like that, why don't you like think of you yourself as a brand and your music as the product. And at that time my YouTube channel already had like a Good number of, of viewers and so on. It was early days for YouTube and um, so people were watching my videos and uh, whatnot. But just walking through that uh, conversation and again obviously I did not take that path but getting to a clarifying position where why I'm not taking that path and uh, I am actually at peace with that. Uh, right. That was a very, very good thing. I think what worked in that process is that if I were to keep his charter too narrow and say, just focus on these few things and I don't think the kind of mental clarity I got on many of these other issues I would have got. So coming back to your main uh, question though. The main uh, thing in Feedback is the relationship. And uh, the relationship between uh, like if you create the environment of, if you're a receiver of feedback, right. If you create environment of comfort and um, uh, gratitude for receiving feedback, then people giving you feedback will open up much more as opposed to uh, being worried about their own relationship with you and therefore not telling you things that you need to hear. Now in professional context, uh, some companies uh, do this very well. In Meta there's a big uh, feedback culture, a big part of Meta's, uh, own culture. But uh, focusing on those relationships first and creating the zone of comfort, especially with trusted people, that is extremely important. It does get lonely at the top, uh, sometimes because organizational hierarchy brings uh, you a lot of perceived power, whether you wield it or not, uh, that can create a culture of psycho fancy. People will tell you whatever you want they think you want to hear and so on. So how do you not create that culture? And also how do you bring uh, your ecosystem of uh, uh, mentors, whether it's your peers or like uh, some neutral uh, folks in your organization who are not directly involved in your work or like people outside uh, your company journey. That is an extremely important thing to do. And um, you know, I have been blessed with, with a few. So uh, that has been very useful.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. I think there is so much about the culture that you can create around Feedback and there is a lot you can do on your own in terms of how you look at feedback, how you receive it and how you give it. And that is then there is only so much you can do in terms of how unlike another person reacts to the feedback. And definitely uh, having been at Meta and having been part of that culture, I think Meta does it really well. I can definitely say that as well. And I totally agree with you and I've seen it outside, not being done. Uh, and I'm sure uh, as somebody who also coaches uh, other folks and um, I too as a coach I hear a lot of time from people that the culture of feedback isn't as prevalent in other places as we hope it would be. And so I'm sure like you have these conversations with a lot of you know, other people. Either it's coaches or even friends and family, right? Uh, around feedback or around psychological safety really. And even as you think about your teams, psychological safety becomes so important. And so how do you create that? How do you make like what does it really look like inside a high performing team? If other leaders had to think about that and think about how to incorporate that in their own teams, what should they be?

Speaker A: Again the first principle in that is like relationships first, uh, feedback next, right? Because without that zone of comfort that feedback is not going to go anywhere. So you might as well not waste your time. But once that is established, uh, I'll give you an example, uh, there's somebody that I had to tell that you need to improve your executive presence. Now I've got that feedback as well at some point in time in my career and so on. That's a very abstract uh, feedback. I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to tell this person that they need to improve their executive presence. What does that even mean to them? Right? So I actually took some extra steps to actually ask that question to you know, AI Chatbot. And the answer came amazingly detailed in terms of like what specific actions that they can take. First of all what uh, does executive coaching, executive presence means? What action they can uh, take and in what sequence they can go about taking those uh, those actions that had like, like tangible specific um, actions like uh, hey, you need to kind of take 5 minutes of preparation or 10 minutes of preparation for your key meetings, read the pre reads and like have a uh, you know, well informed point of view on what uh, you are going to bring up in those uh, meetings as part of the reactions. Now some of that stuff over period of time becomes second uh nature but some of that stuff uh, has to be practiced like any other skill. And uh, giving that sort of uh, tangible feedback I'm sure was appreciated by making that extra effort uh, in that uh. The second part in this is I'm a huge believer in executive coaching as you can imagine because after that coaching experience that I described, I actually signed up for executive coaching 10 day Internet experience uh at UC Berkeley and became executive coach myself. Not so much to actually become a coach practitioner, uh or maybe I'll become at some point in time eventually. But like uh, I thought executive coaching taught me skills that uh, can uh actually help me with my day job whether it was at Adobe or here in uh in Meta because uh it allows you to spot body language, it allows you to ask questions in a way that are open ended probing and yet uh non judgmental. It allows you to maintain little bit of emotional disconnect versus going all in to preach to somebody on how they should approach their problems because everyone is different. So lots of interesting skills ah learnt in a, in a very interesting way and that has been of tremendous help to me uh as a result by the way like even if I'm not coaching somebody I often use executive coaches for my team and actually I've used for myself as well various points uh even after that first experience I mean

Speaker B: I think that's so great. I think one just having those coaching skills irrespective of if you like professionally are a coach or not so important as a leader because it just gives you a whole different set of tools and there is this whole uh, I think manager, manager behavior. I think that's like be more coach like or something like that which is you know it just helps you especially um as a senior leader when you're also you have m many other senior leaders on your team. Your conversations are not necessarily about like day to day things. Your conversations are very different almost where you, you are really really probing or you're kind of trying to brainstorm. And so having those like conversations like you said observing at a deeper level can really help and those coaching skills are really great and I think it's great that you're providing those like um executive coaching for your team as well because like you saw the benefits. I think an executive coach is so much like in your corner. They are like helping you think outside the box a lot of times or like really challenge yourself sometimes. And I really kind of I think as you as uh I really wanted to also go in further on like as you are also and you're developing a lot of you work with a lot of senior developer uh senior uh leaders you're helping them develop. When you are looking to hire senior leaders or say promote someone internally uh to become an executive, to become a director, what is it that you look for beyond their resume or the results that they have produced?

Speaker A: I think one of the things that is extremely important to me and I've learned the hard way is like I, I tried to get a sense of uh their motivation and value system. Like uh, over the years especially when for example my team was like uh, fast growing in meta right on the way you see people looking at oh wow, these people are growing and like let me join them because like I'll be able to manage a large team and that sort of thing and those kind of motivation signals I tend to really uh, detests. Like what I like is you know, problem focused people who are uh, motivated by uh, the products that we are building or the impact that they are creating and not so much by the size of their organization or size of their cost center and any of those other very detrimental values because like if you uh, bring in uh, these kind of people it's, it destroys your team. So that is actually I've actively abandoned people who are like that. The other thing that I look for is uh, how much of they are team player and how much of they are like uh, individual brilliant. And no matter how brilliant people are individually, I generally bias towards uh getting team player because like my job is to optimize the performance of the team and uh, if getting a one and I actually observed this in one of one particular team situation that this particular person used to present a very professional view on the team and so on. And I therefore I obviously always used to go and like and uh, to talk to this person and some situation caused this person to move out of the team and I saw the positive impact that that created on the rest of the team. It was a relief for them. And, and like I noted that I'm not ever going to make that mistake again. No individual brilliant uh people who sort of try to hog for limelight.

Speaker B: That is so true. And some of these things you have to really I think assess closely and I think this is where again going back to the coaching skills and the observation can really continue to help. And yeah, ah, this is not something you can like look for in a resume. That being said, is there like a underrated leadership skill that, that something that few people prioritize but all successful leaders always master uh, I don't know whether

Speaker A: uh even all successful people master uh, I can say think uh of so many examples of our industry leaders where obviously they haven't mastered that. But uh, I think uh, as I mentioned earlier like, like as you grow in the organization hierarchy there's always a chance of you not getting any contrarian or critical opinions around you and just like get yes men or yes women uh around you and making sure that you are not getting sucked into echo chamber and having processes to or like having team structure to have as well as the comfort level for people to, to tell you what might be going wrong with the team or what you're doing wrong and that sort. I think I put a lot of premium on that, tried to do that uh, consciously. I don't know how successful I've been but like uh, nonetheless that that's one place where I've seen like a lot of people trip.

Speaker B: It can be hard right to sort of distinguish. Is this really, you know, are they really saying it for the sake of saying it or.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean you can, you can make out sometimes like if you, you are consciously looking for those kind of signals, you can make out like who's giving you information that you want to hear versus you need to hear.

Speaker B: And I'm sure with experience and the

Speaker A: more with experience as well as with mistakes on the way you learn that. Uh, sometimes the hard way, but yes.

Speaker B: Right. Well I want to switch gears a little bit um, from people. I want to talk about technology. You are at the intersection of three very exciting technologies. AI, uh, ar, VR and data. What excites you the most?

Speaker A: They're all related aren't they? Uh, uh, data is uh, basically lifeblood or oxygen for AI. And lot of AR VR experiences are also super powered by AI. So they're sort of of um, uh, uh related. So I wouldn't necessarily say there are three different things in my world. They are sort of convergent one package. In fact we are increasingly living in a era where data, AI and AI plus. So for example robotics or like, I'm sure some of the listeners are ah, driving Teslas or like uh, self driving cars and so on like, or have even Roomba at their home for vacuuming and so on. So AI plus Robotics is another big uh, place or AI plus genomics for like cancer cure and those kind. So that's the era that we are living in I think. Um, so like I wouldn't necessarily answer your question as like uh, those are the three things. Now personally what excites me about them is getting my hands dirty on the technology in general. You know, whether it's new devices or new uh, software tech and uh, that sort that's what drove me to technology in first place and especially being in here in Silicon Valley in the middle of uh, things most of the time that is the exciting uh, world of it. Uh, I'll give you an example. Uh, before LLMs became a thing, in fact like my first exposure to AI was actually, actually in my business school. Uh there was a course in our last quarter called Expert Systems and that had all the theoretical backing of AI neural networks and so on. Obviously the compute at that time was so weak that uh, in fact the first uh, mainframe that we worked on or like whatever the UNIX computer that we worked on that was powering uh Tata Motors center payroll is probably less powerful than my uh iPhone today. Right. But then fast forward like uh, when I was in transition between Adobe and Meta, one of the things that I wanted to do is actually uh get my hands dirty on some of the technologies that I always wanted to as well as they were making a buzz. Now LLMs were not a thing at that time but I took a problem actually from my music work world and simplified it uh, uh enough to kind of uh. This is basically a problem about uh tabla improvisation or percussion, Indian percussion improvisation. And my theory was like if I feed enough training data to uh recurrent neural network can it generate like its own improvisation. And I actually have, have that on GitHub somewhere. If uh, go to GitHub and search for my name you'll actually get that experiment. My point is, I mean it was not like it was a model that was running on my Mac. So it was not like out of the world brilliant uh model like some of the models that are there today. But I learned a tremendous number of things out of that, that experience. So yeah, like uh, I think what personally excites me is like uh, if I get time to fiddle with some of these technologies personally which unfortunately uh, you know happens less and less of late it. But uh, there's always the intent.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's, but that's great. Like you're you know especially like something to do with music and you're being able to like put, pull it into and like apply AI to it and you know play around with it. I think that's the thing because we think about these things right? Like there are all these technologies and then there is everyday uh. How, how does our everyday life gets shaped by these technologies? And you, you mentioned some of these things around AI plus things with the self driving cars and the RO products or the roombas and things like that. And there is so much that now AI ah has and now everything has. I uh mean all the tools we use have AI in it but. Yep, but there is. And even, even with like some of the AR VR things, I mean it's been there and, and slowly things will sort of, you know they will start becoming mainstream. As you see the applications happen as well. And I Uh, I know there's some of these like the Ray Ban stuff is also happening, like the glasses are coming out with more things and uh, which is exciting I think uh, there's so much potential and at the same time like building AI driven solutions, there's always that balance that one has to um, maintain between technical innovation and uh business pragmatism. Um, and I'm sure you face that too. How do you look at it?

Speaker A: Actually I look at it slightly differently. Uh, the way you described technical innovation and uh, no balance between that and business pragmatism. I don't think that as like either or a type of a problem. Like I can uh, on some other occasion can tell you 10 different things that uh my team is working on that is actually using technical innovation to drive business impact. So I think the right way to think uh, that the most difficult part of that is coming up with ideas of marrying those innovation to create business impact. As a matter of fact uh, again this should be there on my LinkedIn profile post. We recently posted UH blog entry on Metablog about UH an example of that technical innovation like using AI and uh, ML classification techniques to uh, prioritize uh, you know what customer experience friction we should uh, solve. So I, I think those two are not orthogonal vectors but then combining them is a difficult task. I can, I can get it. But then that's when the art of our job happens and everyone is not an artist or everyone is not a gifted artist.

Speaker B: Let's say this is where like the nuances of leadership, uh slash understanding of the business and the technology and all of those factors come into play.

Speaker A: But in art is also about inspir. So as a leader you have to create an environment in your team where there is a cross pollination of those inspirations and like ideas so that like people create their own ideas and like that's how the impact out of uh, these two vectors multiplied.

Speaker B: Yeah, actually that's such a great point because like so many things um, a lot of the products we use uh today uh, a lot of them have come out of like like some team has gone on and like innovated on some technology and they just figured it out or did something and it was because somebody inspired them to do it. I know like there are so many of these similar opportunities right with AI and all of these innovations and we talk a lot about this within the Bay Area, within Silicon Valley. But when we sort of step outside of it, where do you see the most uh, underserved opportunities for AI and machine Learning today outside of, of Silicon Valley.

Speaker A: I think the AI and machine learning uh, world is today is what Internet was in the early 90s. The promising technology is there but its full impact is yet to be realized. So even in Silicon Valley I would uh, argue the tiniest fraction of AI's impact has been realized and uh, it's going to transform the way we engage with technology, engage with our work, go about our day to day life in a way that we haven't even begun to imagine. I think I'll give you a parallel example. I talked about Internet, but like think about where things were when like first iPhone was launched. It did not have App store so it has whatever limited things that itself was powerful enough. Like because you had like mobile browser and like uh, Internet on, on that which hadn't happened before. But as soon as like the uh, third party app started being created from the second generation of iPhone, like I don't think when Steve Jobs opened that up, as you know famously, he changed his opinion about having third party SDKs on iPhones somewhere between the first year and second year to his credit. But I don't think they would have imagined what App Store and the number of things that you could do with apps would have happened. It's the same story with AI. Like people haven't even begun to imagine um, what they can do with AI. Ah, the potential is just amazing in all sorts of fields. So it's hard to say that this particular area is underserved or that it's pretty much the whole world is significantly underserved because we really at the cusp of the, that revolution.

Speaker B: There's so much more I feel like, I mean I um, know I ask you this and yet at the same time um, even here that we are still trying to understand how this all works and what are its true capabilities and what are its true limitations. And you know, how do we get past these things? And sometimes we know more and then we realize something else. And sometimes there are also places or you know, people where they may not understand some things fully. And so then there can be either concerns where, you know, because when you don't understand something fully there is more fear around it. And there is a growing concern and you um, there have been a lot of posts and uh, memos that have come out recently from you know, a few different CEOs and so there's growing concern about AI displacing jobs. What's your take on it? And you know, have people come up to you and ask this question and what Would you tell, you know, maybe those teams or peers if they're anxious about the impact of AI?

Speaker A: I'm one of those people who actually agrees that there's a big threat of replacing a lot of jobs. And I don't think we as a society as uh, uh, economic management units, uh, in every country we have figured out how we are going to change economic structure in, in this world. Let me give you a small example. Like uh, in early 19 uh 90s there was a big uh push for globalization and obviously Internet, uh, and eventually mobile computing accelerated some of that. Now that globalization, arguably purely based on macroeconomic parameters, uh made things better. It grew world's economy much faster, uh, it probably made things much cheaper. But I mean did it apply its benefits to everyone uniformly? Like certainly you and I probably benefited but there's a large number of people who were left behind and um, we see that backlash coming from that in, through political systems all over the world. Right. And um, so my point is uh, like it's a legitimate concern and I actually happen to believe that uh, backlash is legitimate because people who were championing for that system, they should have thought through like what are they going to do with uh, like the society as a whole. You cannot, especially in democratic setup, you cannot leave, create winners and losers in a uh, in such a stark way where a group of people are left behind and the rest of the society doesn't care and they just kind of keep preaching to them. You need to retrain themselves. It is not possible, especially like people who are in my stage of life right now with AI. My concern is that that is going to happen at a uh, much bigger scale that we haven't even imagined. And there are lots of open questions and I don't pretend that I have uh, answers to that. But I just hope that we as a society don't make uh, the same mistake that we made with the last wave of revolution which is like uh, how do you that incremental productivity, it's not even incremental exponential productivity that AI will bring in. How do you use that to benefit of the entire society and not create these haves and have nots and like then few people benefit uh based on the corporations that actually harness that productivity and the whole bunch of people lose their job and they don't know what to do next and so on. That's not healthy. It's a huge topic. I believe that it is not explored. Uh, I wish I, you know I had both. Like I certainly have intention to explore it myself but I You uh, know, probably should partner with somebody who has much deeper expertise in microeconomics, uh, than me. And I think the related part of that is like what is capitalism's way to respond to this uh, this challenge as opposed to hey, like we are going to create this government based uh, systems and so on because there are appetite for various systems in various uh, societies. And like uh, that change management to that new world is also going to be a big problem. This is a huge issue that people are not talking about. One of the uh, people that I know they were asking about, about whether AI should be regulated or not. And I'm sure there is a right answer to that. But uh, I said more than regulated or not. This is a bigger question that no one is thinking about because whether it's regulated or not, it's only going to delay a little bit of this uh, transformation. Uh, uh, it's not going to, we can't just wish away that this is not going to happen.

Speaker B: You do bring up a very big point because the more you think about it, it is highly complex, high convoluted problem. Like to start off you can think about just within the tech thing, right? We talk about is it displacing engineers jobs or is it displacing sales or content creators and things like that. But beyond that there is so much more that can happen. I mean just last week I was having this conversation about like, does AI widen the healthcare gap? Because if you put AI into healthcare devices, but like in, in places where rural places have less healthcare access, but if, if AI can do more healthcare related stuff, but then, and that still doesn't help those places because AI technology will be more expensive and those places cannot afford it. So there is a lot of inequality that can come about as well. And so now it starts getting into like every vertical might need to look at it in a different way. And so now it almost feels like a Pandora's box.

Speaker A: Yes, but that box needs to be opened and dealt with. Otherwise we cannot just uh, pretend that it doesn't exist.

Speaker B: I know, I know. Um, well, I mean again we could keep talking about it, but I think we probably need more people in that conversation and it definitely needs to happen at a broader scale. I did want to kind of talk to you about something very special to you and this episode would not be complete without it, which is me. Music. You are a musician. What role does music play in your life? You have been doing it since you were eight. Um, and what if uh, any influence has it had on your Professional life. I know you said you used it to tinker around with LLMs.

Speaker A: Um, I don't think that's the right way to think about it. But I think music has been a big part of my, my life. And uh, on one side it's hobby. Like it keeps your learning going at a very basic level. Like some of the things that I'm working on at this stage in my life, like after playing flute for, I don't know, 40 years or whatever, uh, uh, years I've been playing that for. You often find like some teenager who barely has explored that. Suddenly they get that naturally. And uh, uh. So like these small things, you kind of say uh, okay, I'm stalled here and I, I need to uh, unblock myself. The beauty of uh. M. Music is uh, it's very right brain learning. Like you learn like engineering or MBA or most of the learnings that in stem that happens is left brain learning. You like take a problem statement, you break it down down to individual manageable pieces and then assemble that together to come up with a solution. Here you can do that. But like most people who are really creative and like accomplished, I've seen them approach that problem as a whole. And it's a very different way of uh, learning. And like I have tried my uh, hand at teaching um, in Beijing. And uh, especially people who come from engineering background professionals here and they're trying to learn uh, flute from me, they always get trapped with that, you know, left brain learning and becomes too unwieldy. Uh, so in some ways to a small extent. And suddenly I'm not any great musician here, but like it sort of frees up your right brain. There's enough research that I read about it where like if that happens, like your creativity overall in all domains of life, uh, increases. I don't know whether that's uh, true or not. But the other thing about it is like uh, both music and particularly flute because it has so much to do with breathing. It's a natural way of uh, meditation. If you have had a really bad day and like something did not go right at work, you can just sit in the corner and just play one note a long way. And like uh, if you just do that for three, four minutes, suddenly you find your breathing is aligned, goes deeper and like that's a huge de. Stressor. Right. I remember uh, I have a friend of mine who plays uh, tabla, which is an Indian uh, drum. And uh, this is from the times when both of us used to live in apartments. So getting up early in the morning and practicing that was not a luxury that I thought I had. But uh, he was so dedicated about it that he said that he actually used to put a thick piece of cloth on tabla and plays it so that it doesn't make loud noise. But whatever he's playing, he can understand. And fingers actually develop more power when he's playing without that uh, uh, piece of cloth. So like that was very inspiring. And his way of framing it is, is like, oh, if I play this from 5 to 7 and then go to work, nothing sticks. Like my whole work day is Zen. And there's absolute truth to that because I tried, tried that uh, for many years and like, uh, that there is absolute truth to that.

Speaker B: That's amazing. I think you talk about left brain, right brain, and one of the things I was going to ask you is like data and analytics is so much different than music and creative.

Speaker A: I mean engineering in general. Actually. When I started learning from uh, Padma Vibhush and Pandith Hari Prasacha Rasiya, like, uh, I was studying uh, my electrical engineering in Mumbai and uh, I never had this notion that I will do music full time. Even though most of the my fellow students are now accomplished musicians, uh, by themselves. One of them has uh, multiple Grammy awards and so on. But I always thought that like those two journeys in parallel sort of made me whole. Maybe that was my way of like having that left brain, right brain balance even before I realized there was such a thing. Uh, but uh, has been a lot of fun.

Speaker B: Was it hard? Like, how did you sort of overcome that, you know, what you see in your stories now?

Speaker A: Unfortunately, I, I started learning this when like, uh, you know, early enough in my career where my brain was not necessarily, uh, set in stone or whatever. Bad, bad metaphor. But you know what I mean.

Speaker B: Does music influence, uh, your leadership, uh, style or approach to your work or anything like that?

Speaker A: I don't know. It's difficult for me to answer. Maybe. I mean there is uh, difficult to make an AB test on this. Right. The Prasad before music and prasad after music and they are they different? But maybe uh, there is another AB test. Maybe some of my team members you can probably talk to, uh, if they compare maybe me to their other bosses and they perceive something different for hopefully better, there might be something there. I don't know.

Speaker B: Well that's great. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing about your musical journey. I think it is so great. I feel like one of the things, and this is something we do with our, Our son is to help him like play some musical instru. Because I don't know how to play one and neither, uh, does my spouse. And, uh, it's so important to, uh, be able to play something. I think there is, uh. Like you said, I think there is something meditational, um, about it. You sit. You know, there is, like, very much a focus required.

Speaker A: And it's, uh, another thing though, like. Sorry to interrupt, but like, uh, uh, it doesn't have to be music. It can be any hobby. So I'll give you my version of this as well. So other than music, I am a big fan of, uh, exotic cooking, experimental exotic cooking, like Michelin Starich. Uh, and, uh, whenever I do that, like, my friends would vouch they are sitting right around the kitchen and I get into zone. And that is extremely meditative as well. Well, it is as meditative as, uh, uh, playing flute. It's a completely different experience. So my take on this is. It's not just music. It. Everyone needs to have some hobby interest, whatever that might be. You know, if you talk to my wife, she. She's into bird photography and that sort of thing. That won't resonate with me, but it does resonate with her. So, like, this is very personal and everyone can have their own version of it. I. I just don't know what.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Yeah, I. I think. Yeah, I mean, definitely. I think the music does, like. It's so much like you. We may be into music, but, like, playing something, I think it's a different thing. It's a skill, it's an art. It's so much. I think, like, cooking is for you. I think baking is for me. I think that measuring things puts me into focus.

Speaker A: Yeah. By the way, uh, I'm exactly opposite of that. My mother is a PhD in organic chemistry. And she gets a, uh, heart attack when she sees me putting things without measuring. And turns out good.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, there you go. But, yeah, that's what we do with cooking. Um, but yeah, this is so fun. Like, we've kind of like, gone from, like, you know, not having to think about, like, the complex things that can happen with AI to like, ending on a high note, pun intended here. Last question here. What belief about leadership did you once hold that you have since changed your mind about?

Speaker A: I remember this as if it happened yesterday. We had a. A course at IIM Lucknow called. We used to call it Spider Self Development and Interpersonal Relationships. And, um, that professor was great. And one of the, like, the main project in that course is you write, uh, your autobiography. Till that point I was what, 24, 25 years old. Right. And then he, he would read that and he would give you feedback on your personality. Right. Little bit of putting mirror in front of, of you. And I remember what he told me, uh, I said, prasad, you look at the world in black and white and really the world is shades of gray. I didn't know what, what he meant, uh, at that point. And right, I would say, I would argue back like right is right, wrong is wrong, and there's no nothing in the middle. And uh, obviously over the years life has made me a, uh, little, uh, wiser. Maybe that, that thing is a left brain thing and maybe the right brain kicked in enough over a period of time. Uh, I think I certainly don't see things in a, ah, in a black and white anymore. So that's the biggest change. I don't know whether as a leader, but as a person, certainly that has happened over the years.

Speaker B: That's a great story. Thank you so much. This has been amazing conversation. I really appreciate it, um, so much, so much appreciated.

Speaker A: Well, I, uh, really enjoyed our conversation. I hope your viewers do too. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker B: Thank you. If today's conversation sparked new ideas or challenged your perspective, I'd love to hear from you. I work with tech leaders and founders to tackle complex challenges, whether it's scaling teams, making high stakes decisions, or turning ambitious ideas into reality. If that sounds like something you are navigating, let's connect. Reach out via my website, thepriyankashinde.com or find me on LinkedIn.