Ritu Dagar

Just finished recording a great podcast with Ankit Jain on his #HangerDX podcast. We chatted a lot about engineering metrics, their value, and how you should/shouldn't use them to drive change across your organization. It should be released soon, so make sure to check it out! #softwareengineeringinsights #engineeringmetrics #developerexperience

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Thanks, Amnic team, for hosting me on your podcast. I enjoyed the conversation with Sathya narayanan Nagarajan. We have many things in common from our learnings from working on CD-based products where perfection was the expectation in the first iteration to today, when Amnic and Mindtickle are taking big bets on GenAI and Cloud to delight our customers. In this podcast, I shared my experiences of more than twenty years of building and deploying large-scale systems at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Mindtickle. The podcast also covers my learnings from moving from large enterprises to a relatively smaller company where being agile and nimble is paramount. #Microsoft, #Meta, #Google #Mindtickle.

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AI Appreciation Day is here and I am thrilled to share the excitement it brings us as we reflect on the transformative impact AI has on our daily lives and work. AI for us, is not just a buzzword—it's the heartbeat of innovation, driving us to new heights and redefining possibilities. At Smytten Pulse, we leverage AI to understand our consumers better, personalize experiences, and deliver insights that fuel informed decisions. What excites me most about AI is its ability to learn and evolve. It’s like having a team member that never stops growing! With every interaction and data point, our AI systems become smarter, more intuitive, and more aligned with our goals. This dynamic capability empowers us to stay ahead of trends and continuously improve our offerings. 🚀 One of the most rewarding aspects of my role is witnessing the synergy between our talented engineers and AI. The collaboration fosters creativity, problem-solving, and a relentless pursuit of excellence. Together, we are not just building technology; we are shaping the future. On this AI Appreciation Day, I want to extend my gratitude to our team at Smytten Pulse and the incredible AI community. Let’s continue to push boundaries, embrace challenges, and unlock the full potential of AI. Here’s to a future where AI and human ingenuity go hand in hand! 🙌 https://pulse.smytten.com/ Smytten Pulse #AIAppreciationDay #AIInnovation #EngineeringExcellence #SmyttenPulse #FutureForward

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From Astrologer's Whispers to Real Connections: Reclaiming Belonging in a Lonely Age Have you ever consulted an astrologer, their predictions swirling in your head, only to feel empty when your day takes a different turn? The emptiness might not be about the details themselves, but about seeking outside approval for your happiness. This same feeling can creep in even when you achieve success. Remember climbing the career ladder, landing that dream apartment, only to find yourself lost in a quiet emptiness? In India's bustling cities, it's a familiar, painful emotion. We're surrounded by people, yet there's a little loneliness at the edges of our lives. Thinking back to Mrs. Deshmukh, your friendly neighbour with the legendary Til Gur Barfi's, who brought the whole neighbourhood together with tea and friendly chats. Those evenings of shared stories and laughter, a web woven by simple human connection, feel like a distant memory in our super-connected yet broken world. We chase success with thumbs glued to screens, building online bridges that leave us feeling more alone than ever. The pressure to create a perfect online self-drowns out the whispers of our own desires. But here's the real deal, that shiny designation and fancy car can't fill the hole left by genuine connection. There's hope, though! We can rewrite this story. Let's ditch the small talk and chase deeper connections. Share your fears and worries, break free from feeling isolated in this sea of ambition. Remember the warmth of family gatherings, the joy of shared childhood games? Revive those small traditions. Pick up the phone for a real heart-to-heart conversation rather than What's Apping. Every act of connection, no matter how ordinary, how small, builds a more satisfying life. Imagine hearing back from an old friend, reliving an old laugh, and being surrounded by people who truly see us, where we belong. Isn't that what life is all about? Together, one conversation, one meal, and one act of kindness at a time, we can tear down the walls of loneliness. We can rewrite the narrative of modern society, where connection becomes the foundation of a life well lived. It's not too late, or is it? #HumanConnections #BelongingMatters #OvercomeLoneliness #RealConversations #MeaningfulRelationships #CommunityOverConnectivity #AuthenticLiving #SocialWellbeing #RedefiningSuccess #TraditionsRewoven #FightIsolation #VulnerableAndReal #KindnessRevolution #SmallActsBigImpact #ReconnectingHumanity #IndianSociety #UrbanLoneliness #DigitalDetox #QualityOverQuantity #ConnectionCures Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

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Tune into this episode of Amnic Cast, where Aankur Khare explores simple yet effective principles for managing cloud costs.

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The scale we deal with, the complexity it brings in and the impact we create for millions of customers across the globe, are defining moments for our teams at Amazon India. Every day, our tech teams invent and deliver things that were never thought as possible! #HearFromBuilders at Amazon on how they solve real-world problems with technology. #NationalTechDay #ItsStillDay1 #AmazonIndia #TechAtAmazon

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What’s your builder story? In my role volunteering as the community lead for Shreyas Doshi’s Product Club, I get the amazing opportunity to ask some of the world’s best PMs this question on a weekly basis. A couple of weeks back I got to host a community event with Suhel Parekh (Principal PM at Microsoft), where we explored his amazing ~decade at Microsoft building workplace search and chat products for enterprises. Suhel’s been with this product portfolio from its first enterprise user all the way to millions of MAUs today. His journey is full of deep and actionable learnings. The full event recording is for Product Club members only (we keep it closed so folks can be more candid), but here are my top takeaways: (1) For an enterprise product, partnering with sales and helping them succeed is everything! Suhel built unusually deep relationships with sales and customer success teams over the years, and they in-turn went above and beyond to bat for his product - often doing more than they were being 'officially' incentivized to do. (2) What helped the workplace search product gather traction initially and take off was a demo in an industry conference for CIOs. Old-school channels like trade shows and conferences are not often top-of-mind. But guess what? CXOs go to these as speakers/award winners all the time and come back with networking-generated action items for their teams. (3) Launching with a white gloved program that worked closely with customers initially and nurtured relationships over the years helped shape up a lot of Microsoft's enterprise success story for search and chat. Finally, a bonus takeaway: No surprises here, but AI in the workplace is here to stay! LinkedIn and Microsoft have some some great data showing that 75% of global knowledge workers already use it (even though half are still reluctant to admit they do!). Three-quarters of leaders are saying “they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them”. Dig in here - https://lnkd.in/g_eTv76z Thank you Suhel for sharing your story with us! And more power to you ✨ If you’re interested in learning about the concept of a “builder story”, I highly recommend Nikhyl Singhal’s Skip podcast and newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/gPismNpn Folks interested in Product Club, currently the only way to get in is by doing the Shreyas's PM career course: https://lnkd.in/gWns7rYh I did it last year and it’s truly been a game-changer for me. Hit me up with any questions! 

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A powerful team is never just a collection of individuals. There is extraordinary value in connections and relationships that are built over time. But how do you quantify these nuanced and dynamic traits? Here are some ideas: ✨ DORA Metrics: While primarily leveraged for assessing software delivery performance, DORA Metrics can offer insights into team efficiency and collaboration. Metrics like deployment frequency and lead time for changes are indirect indicators of how well a team operates together. 🌟 Net Promoter Score (NPS): Going beyond customer satisfaction, internally, NPS can be adapted to gauge team members' satisfaction and willingness to recommend their team to others. It captures engagement, morale, and overall sentiment within the team. ♻️ Feedback loops: How often is the team giving feedback to others? Tracking data points like these over time, and especially showing how changing the team impacts the data can tell a compelling story. It might give a clear voice to a nuanced understanding of the impact of changing the team when there are concerns for doing so. As a leader what metrics do you track to help you understand how change impacts a team?

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In today's remote work environment, building a supportive and engaging culture is essential But how do you do that when you are miles apart? This article provides practical tips on how BlaBlaCar is fostering a strong collaboration culture by creating comfort zone, allowing staff members to get feedback and support in a very assertive way ! Thank you Kineret Kimhi, Yannick Hoffsess and Maxime Fouilleul for this great article :)

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The transition from individual contributor to manager can be both exciting and challenging. It requires a significant shift in focus and skillset. While reading an article, I remembered my own transition and the initial challenge of shifting my mindset and delegating more while trusting my team. Learning never ends, and talking to professionals like Mahesh M. Thakur, High Tech Executive Advisor and Coach gives me new perspectives on leadership. #leadership #management #professionaldevelopment

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My post on joining #Karat as a Strategic Advisor got over 40K impressions – thanks for your support/interest. Several of you asked me the same question. Why #Karat? Reflecting on my 25+ years of building and scaling high performance engineering teams in US/India at #Microsoft, #CA, #Broadcom, and #HighRadius, my number one challenge always was consistently hiring the best quality talent at scale, without it being a huge drain on TA and engineering teams. Hiring challenges in India are even more acute, with a very significant signal to noise ratio, and repeated no-show candidates. We often had over 200 resumes for every single position, and even after the initial screen, on average we conducted 15-20 interviews to fill every position. Trying to fill 400 open positions, with different skills and experience levels, greatly magnified the complexity. At #Karat, this is the exact problem being addressed. By redefining how companies hire engineers, #Karat ensures that teams can remain focused on innovation and growth, rather than getting bogged down in the inefficiencies of the traditional recruitment process. At the top of the funnel, Karat Qualify is a 15-minute adaptive quiz for effortlessly assessing technical knowledge and comprehension across the entire application pool – allowing you to sift through the irrelevant and/or non-serious candidates. One you have the validated pool of candidates, Karat Interview is a live, human-led, technical interview for accurately assessing developer talent and generating a predictive, calibrated hiring signal that can be used in subsequent interviews. Not only does this process scale seamlessly (the interviewers are available 24x7 across all time zones), it allows for a consistent and non-biased evaluation of the technical skills (without getting prejudiced by prior work experience or education background). A majority of all interviews can be scheduled same day. The interviewers are experienced individuals with at least 8+ years of SWE experience. There is a rigorous whetting process in selecting them, and they are regularly trained and mentored by a team of professionals. And the interviews are recorded and indexed and can be easily referenced later. I can only imagine the productivity gains that I could have achieved as an engineering leader using #Karat. Imagine being able to conduct 400+ technical interviews in a day, across multiple domains, and have the results available immediately, not just as a “hire/no-hire”, but with detailed performance benchmarking and role-specific calibration and scoring on weighted skills that matter most to you. #Karat is an absolute game changer. We’ve done over 400K interviews, with over 1000+ trained interviewers across the world. #EngineeringLeaders #HiringLeaders #CTOs If you’re facing similar challenges or want to learn more about how #Karat is transforming the #hiring landscape, look us up at www.karat.com!

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Own outcomes rather than systems, as systems are fungible, whereas outcomes are sustained and progressive. The biggest mistake we make is creating ownership around systems and establishing teams; this is what causes SPOFs and continuous defense for dated systems. Define frameworks to guard the system and never put a team or a human as the gatekeepers. If we do that, we make systems costly and limit human growth.

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Humans have an inherent friction to change, be it city, house, job, role, team—almost anything. Interestingly, in my whole career, I have hardly found anyone who recently joined a team and wholeheartedly appreciates the things the team has done in the past or is currently doing. Most Engineers and PMs have their existing biases towards how things should be done, best practices, etc. They have their anecdotes to prove their points. I do appreciate people from diverse backgrounds, as that helps figure out solutions to tough problems sometimes. However, things become less productive when it results in ego clashes. Especially when interacting with some of the young engineers, they are very enthusiastic about new technologies, programming languages, cool frameworks, tools, and whatnot. They feel disconnected when they find none of these things are that relevant to most organizations doing real business. I know that's not cool, but that's how most businesses are built. Things at well-established businesses can't be changed at the pace at which technologies are evolving. Of course, corrective actions need to be taken at certain intervals. How to solve it: Develop empathy. Context is king, trust that the decisions that a team or company has taken in the past must have had a legit context then. A decision that seems stupid now might have been the best possible decision back then, depending on factors like cost, tech capabilities, resources, time to market, and probably many more. #empathy #context #business

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After many years in product I finally decided to take my first, and probably last, "PM course": Shreyas Doshi's Product Sense course: https://lnkd.in/g6Gm9YzU Why my last? I don't think I'll ever need to take another course after this. He asked our honest take, so here's mine: The premise of a PM course always felt ironic to me because doing product in theory is never *remotely close* to doing product in practice. Well, this is finally the course that is built for, and built by, product in practice. Name a product concept that you've banged your head against the wall trying to put into practice (I'll name a few: Product Sense, Product Strategy, Product Vision). You've already read 5 books, 10 medium articles, and listened to 12 podcasts, and still feel like doing it yourself is like grabbing water. Every one of those concepts (and more) has finally been decomposed, distilled, and packaged into something that can compare to working directly with a world-class product leader yourself. Do yourself a favor and take this course, there is nothing remotely close to it that I'm aware of in existence. Also: you will laugh - guarantee you'll experience at least 1 moment of catharsis as Shreyas Doshi skewers some aspect of the tech industry and our experience as product people within it.

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Insightful session on how AI can bring benefits throughout different stages of the SDLC, including code explanation, generation, testing, code reviews, and monitoring in the production environment

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𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗼𝗳𝗳𝘀 With all the negative news and the potential #layoffs, it is more important than ever to focus on #mentalhealth. Shashi Jain this post is in response to your question. Here are some valuable resources to help maintain mental well-being during these challenging times: 1. 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿: This app offers lots of free meditations. I have a few available here. https://lnkd.in/gbgwsJh 2. 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿: GGIA Berkeley provides numerous evidence-based practices, including nature walks, that can help improve mental health. https://ggia.berkeley.edu/ 3. 𝗬𝗼𝗴𝗮: There are both free and paid resources for Yoga. Paid ones like Habuild https://habuild.in/ or others can offer structured programs, but there are also many free options available online. Additionally, here are some more resources to explore: 1. Headspace: A popular meditation app offering a variety of guided sessions for stress relief, sleep improvement, and mindfulness. Free for Intel employees 2. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR): Look for local or online MBSR programs, which teach mindfulness practices to reduce stress and improve mental health. 3. Exercise and Physical Activity: Regular physical activity is known to boost mood and reduce anxiety. Even a simple daily walk can make a significant difference. Walk with your dog or a friends. 4. Community Support: Engage with community groups or online forums where you can share experiences and support each other. Please prioritize your mental health and support each other through these uncertain times. If anyone needs to talk or seeks guidance, feel free to DM me. #MentalHealth #Support #Wellbeing #Meditation #Yoga #Intel

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For anyone looking to learn about Canvas and React, Aakansha Doshi is such a pro and this should be a valuable workshop!

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I had read about the Zeigarnik effect and its application in products. However, it only recently dawned on me that it very well explains the calm and joy writing posts on my blog has given me over the years. Many professional and personal gurus have advocated writing to bust stress and drive clarity. This psychological explanation helps reinforce it. So, I wrote a blog post about it. What else? Check out link in the comments.

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I am excited to share the latest blog, co-authored by myself, Junhwi Kim and Vyas Sekar, detailing how we managed to successfully localized and improved LLM by combining Fine-Tuning and RAG. https://lnkd.in/gKDkgGPq

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