Manjunatha Rao

Smoking Cloud May Cause Cancerous Growth = I recently came to know that one of my acquaintances in India discovered large tumor growth. That person was worried about not being able to control weight and on further checking large tumor was discovered. I hope and pray that the person survives the large weight reduction surgery. Many companies do not. The reason is: The Cancerous Tumor Known As Amazon Web Services (AWS) In the rest of the post I will tell the story of a company which survived after a large surgery to remove huge AWS cancerous growth. = When Tony Stubblebine became CEO of Medium in 2022, he was tasked with making the online publishing platform profitable for the first time in the company's decade long history. Stubblebine expects Medium to hit that milestone sometime this year, thanks in part to a somewhat unexpected strategy — scrutinizing the company's budget for cloud storage and services. Stubblebine's mandate to cut costs across the company began when he joined two years ago. He soon realized that cloud computing was the most bloated part of Medium's budget. "What's ended up happening is that probably about half of our path to profitability came from cost-cutting and a quarter of that is in cloud costs," Stubblebine told BI. When he initially directed teams to examine their cloud spending, Stubblebine expected to find instances of inefficient usage that might require the advice of an outside expert before shutting down. Instead, employees found lots of space the company simply wasn't using, and that no one had bothered to check. "These weren't hard costs for the existing team to cut," said Stubblebine. "As soon as we gave them permission to go looking, then they found a ton of stuff immediately and they could fix all of it." It's not just Stubblebine who plans to continue cutting cloud costs. A Barclays survey found that 83% of CIOs plan to "repatriate" or remove certain workloads from the cloud in the first half of 2024, up from 43% four years ago. In Medium's case, the most bloat came from the biggest providers. That's meant cutting back significantly on Amazon Web Services and Snowflake. Savings on AWS, Stubblebine said, is "trending north of $500,000 a month" — nearly half of what Medium used to spend. But Stubblebine thinks that cloud optimization is part of a broader mentality shift sweeping the pre-IPO startup world. With investor money harder to come by, he said, companies are focused on profit — and cost-cutting is part of that. Cutting cloud spend has also allowed Medium to move faster. "To have less is better for development," said Stubblebine. "And that's why people call it tech debt. It's not just a financial cost, it's a cognitive load for the product teams." Amazon Web Services (AWS) took the revenge on a large number of employees by laying them off due to large cuts from millions of medium companies like Medium. Cloud smoking causes cancer - that is the warning from Industry Surgeon General.

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Rohit is spot on in identifying how self-management directly impacts our success at home and work. When we harness self-management skills, we enhance our professional lives and create a ripple effect that touches every aspect of our personal lives. 🌟 Consider the daily chaos we navigate. From endless meetings to juggling family responsibilities, feeling overwhelmed is easy. However, mastering self-management can transform this chaos into a well-orchestrated symphony. Setting priorities, managing time effectively, and maintaining emotional stability create space for both productivity and peace. 🧘‍♂️ When I practice self-management, my days are more organized, my stress levels are manageable, and my interactions are more meaningful. This doesn't mean eliminating challenges but learning to navigate them with resilience and purpose. It's about making conscious choices that align with our values and goals professionally and personally. 🎯 By integrating self-management strategies into our daily routines, we demonstrate professionalism, reliability, and a proactive mindset. This earns us respect from colleagues and fosters a healthier work-life balance, preventing burnout. 🌱 As we continue to grow and adapt in our careers, let's remember that the foundation of our success starts with managing ourselves effectively. Embrace these strategies to unlock your potential and create a fulfilling career and life. #SelfManagement #CareerGrowth #WorkLifeBalance #Productivity #Axlebot Related: https://smpl.is/95m9r

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This is an interesting read from HBR on self-introspection at the midpoint of our careers. I was quite taken with the question, "What do I want my days to look like?" If we can't imagine our days a few years down the road any different from how they currently unfold, this suggests one of two things: either we're genuinely content with our current work routines and are happy doing them for the rest of our career lives, or we're afraid to dream boldly, dreading disappointment... 🤔 #sharadayeluriblogs #junipernetworks #leadership #career #hbr #careergoals

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A super clear, straight forward example of how to do cost effective RAG using LangChain for your document pipeline and Groq for compute resources. The code demonstrates how to speed up RAG and reduce costs using quantized embeddings (reducing 32 bit values to 8) Nice job Sahibpreet Singh! https://lnkd.in/gf5QMCKK

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Ever wonder why some companies can ship software at lightning speeds while others seem stuck in the mud? 🚀⏳ . . . . . . . . . Daksh Gupta of Greptile collected real-world insights from engineers at many of the world's largest tech companies, unpacking the intricacies that either propel or impede the speed of shipping code. The big reveal? Older and larger companies tend to move more slowly because the costs of missteps become greater. In some cases, those costs are fairly non-negotiable (e.g. ensuring software for customers in production remains secure) while in other cases, the costs are more optional and cultural (e.g. wanting a lot of accurate estimates, forcing a manager's vs. maker's schedule, etc). #SoftwareEngineering #Tech #DevelopmentVelocity #Innovation #Productivity

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https://lnkd.in/gbMitrBY These are interesting questions to ask in retrospect. For example, "If I were the main character in a movie of my life, what would the audience be screaming at me to do right now?" This will force us to look at the situation from a bird's-eye point of view. #leadership #lifehacks

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I recently became aware of the term "Gish Gallop". I find that this concept can also be applied to a similar style of discussion, whereby a person dominates the conversation to control the narrative. The opposite style of discussion is where participants minimize words to convey the maximum quantity of useful information. Then, provide the maximum opportunity for participation by others. Learn to not gish gallop. https://lnkd.in/gYw4g_XE

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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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Let’s face it, LLMs aren’t without limitations. In this discussion, Varun Grover shares the benefits of a RAG framework and provides an overview of how it works as well as practical use cases. Watch now: https://vrt.as/43MNQQx #AI #GenAI #LLM #RAG

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I have known Avni for almost ten years and I am super glad (and not surprised) that her customer-focused approach remains unchanged. We were fortunate to have Avni Savant speak to our teams at G2 India. The session was inspirational, and we learned a lot from her. Avni has a wealth of experience, and we are grateful for the valuable insights she shared with us. During the session brilliantly moderated by Aravind Raj, we discussed several topics and gained a few key takeaways: ⚡ Creating an environment that supports a "fail fast" mindset fosters innovation, and consistent leadership support is essential. Interestingly, this is something that Roger Valade aligns with strongly, and we are just in the middle of an innovation sprint. :) 🧠 We explored areas where AI can be implemented to solve product use cases. Avni stressed that we don't need to reinvent the wheel; instead, we should learn from companies that have successfully adopted AI. The most doable areas for AI implementation are to improve developer productivity and summarize insights and discoveries. 📊 We discussed how squad-specific goals (OKRs) can be integrated with the company's larger goals. For example, we can analyze if improving our product's onboarding experience impacts the adoption rate, and understand if the release was successful. Avni emphasized the importance of using data to make feature iterations and prioritization decisions. 💬 We discussed the significance of product development teams being close to the customers and leveraging customer interviews, and feedback from pre-sales, sales, and support teams. 💗 Lastly, Avni highlighted the importance of self-drivenness and having a clear point of view in one's career. She noted that this proactive approach is valued and appreciated. We are truly grateful to Avni for her time and lessons!

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Transitioning from an individual contributor to a team leader is a significant milestone. Early in my career, I had to step up as a leader when I joined as a founder and CTO in my first venture. Once I moved into leadership, the fundamental shift I had to make was in my mindset. From thinking about what I needed to complete a project, meet a deadline, or excel in my KRAs, I now had to contextualize my team members' personalities, skillsets, and strengths. The question was no longer, “What do I need to succeed?” but now— How can I help each of my teammates uniquely so that they can each meet their targets? Initially, it is more likely that one might get frustrated with the different competency levels, and it’s easier to fall into the trap of “Let me just do it myself” You might relate to an example of how a monolithic application can seem more straightforward because everything is in one place, but you are bound to move to microservice architecture at a certain point for scalability. This goes similarly with growing & mentoring your team to ensure sustainable growth & productivity. Here are some aspects that I learned over time in my leadership journey. Points 2,4 & 5 came naturally to me & 3,7 are the areas am trying to get better. Which of the below do you relate to most 👇 #leadership #technology #startups #management

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One of the key capabilities that sets Memgraph apart from the competition is our deep path traversal algorithms. Come read our latest blog explaining all about it: https://lnkd.in/gBtWPJuZ

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Presenting at #MRCVegas2024 was a true pleasure and the response to our session, "Future of Strong Auth – Passkey" was fantastic. Shout out to Anand Bahety, Mahendar Madhavan, and the team for their invaluable contribution in enabling passkey capabilities for eBay users. Also, thanks to Kathryn Irwin and Julie Fergerson, CPFPP from #MRC for the opportunity and for making this conference possible. A few things to share on the topic of Passkey and its impact on payment risk management: 1. Passkey has significant potential as an option for 3DS, a standard currently in draft at EMVCo. If anyone is interested in learning or collaborating further, feel free to reach out to Ulrich Herberg, Ph.D. from eBay who has been actively involved in these discussions. 2. It would be particularly intriguing to see how EU regulations will classify passkey—whether as a two-factor or as a single-factor authentication method. 3. I learned from some of my friends about how some EU banks are already adopting mobile apps for verification over SMS. Similar innovations in the U.S. would be awesome! I'm eager to hear your thoughts on the following topics: 1. Has the widespread adoption of 3DS in the EU indeed resulted in lower chargebacks compared to the U.S.? 2. Given Passkey's potential, do you think it has the capability to not only safeguard accounts but also mitigate first-party chargebacks?

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It's fantastic when the team leverages platform goodness for our customers! I love how I'm able to follow along the IPL match even when I'm on the go! As with most things we do, we had to scale what came out of the box to make this work for our customer base. Read on for practical tips on how we got there.

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Lido Learning was India's best live online classes... that went bust after raising $23.5 million, with 1200 employees laid off, and customers who felt cheated. Why? The biggest killer of Lido Learning was its “go big or go home” strategy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lido enjoyed the bull run, raised tons of money from investors, and grew at all costs. However, it's the post-pandemic period that killed them. Instead of fixing its internal problems, it raised even more money and expanded to other markets. 🎈 The balloon was getting bigger, and here's how it burst: https://lnkd.in/gEFcAiKj Crazy time. Do you think edtech is a bubble in India?

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There is definitely a perception gap regarding maturity of Indian AI startups to scale and compete with its global peers. Indian government can help startups scale by providing the right regulatory framework, investment incentives, digital infrastructure development and structured AI skill development through educational institutions. More public-private partnerships, international collaboration and highlighting its success stories in AI will set the ground running.

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Here's another successful framework they have applied. Suppose, you are against the surrender of the villages or against government actions. If you raise the voice, then you could be considered as a supporter of northern corporate and you are automatically triggered by other citizens as "not worthy to listen to" - Nir Eyal describes this as an internal trigger. Moreover, the framework has developed a manual, that was evolved and played out exceptionally well by the northern corporate and the government authorities. This is a plan prepared over the years, developed and infused into society. This framework is not new, but as Social Media was emerging, so-called analysts, political figures, YouTubers, military and other telegram authors, bunch of commentators were grown for a sole purpose - to develop a "Habit forming behaviours in citizens". These people are players. As data manipulation became easier, the developed behaviours started to ensure that regardless of the actions taken, majority of the society will not act against in order to avoid being triggered by the players and less knowledgable supporters of the actions. On the other hand, some other simple citizens don't think about the depth of messages and actions and most of them lack critical thinking, they do not try and look other ways, they are looking into the "manual", which leads to the most simple interpretation - "what is good or bad for me ?" or "whatever manual insists is the right thing to do for me". The choice is simple, it's based on the manual. Others who act or raise the voice, become internally triggered by the supporters of the actions and either getting muzzled or silenced or becoming obsolete (these people usually won't come back to make another try). The framework develops a vicious circle, that can not be broken, unless a better "reward" (I am not gonna talk about this though) is proposed to the citizens and sometimes players in order to develop a switch of the vector. The book here describes an ability of brain manipulation for creating good, habit forming products that actually hook people to improve their lives. However, Nir mentions an important aspect of building habit forming products. That is if they are not done for the good they become evil. With AI emerging and content creation/curation becomes easier, this framework will emerge too and will most probably create other, more complex instances, which can self-educate, those can potentially erase the line of morality and truth, deceiving the reality in unprecedented level. We'll be facing superpowers, that can be used for evil. Here and now or tomorrow in the future, it's up to the people to decide how we will progress, because as it is said - "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." Now it can be misattribution, but in a way it's true. P.S. There is no evidence that Edmund Burke said the last quote in my text, so no reference to him.

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Improving productivity seems deceptively simple, yet it remains an elusive goal for many organizations. To unravel this mystery, let's delve into the fundamental facets of productivity. Productivity manifests in two distinct dimensions: 1. Quantified Productivity: This dimension quantifies the amount of work completed. In the realm of software development, metrics like story points and ticket counts are common. Quantified productivity paints a clear picture of output. 2. Perceived Productivity: Unlike its quantified counterpart, perceived productivity hinges on subjective perceptions of progress. It encompasses questions like: How close are we to our goals? What is the user's perception of our speed? Are we outpacing our competitors? Perceived productivity embodies the essence of progress beyond mere output metrics. Both dimensions merit attention for a comprehensive understanding of productivity.  In the end, only perceived productivity matters, but quantified productivity does play a role in that perception. To improve on quantified productivity, there’s no magic.  You can: 1. Augment the workforce: requires financial investments. 2. Improve your architecture: make development easier and reduce the number of issues. 3. Upskill: continuously train existing personnel. 4. Optimize your processes: alleviates burdens and enhances efficiency. 5. Let go of underperformers. While this yields tangible benefits, there exists a threshold beyond which returns diminish. Good enough architecture and organizational efficiency reaches a plateau where further improvements yield minimal gains. Similarly, expanding the workforce introduces complexities that dampen productivity growth per new hire. Contrary to popular belief, the true magic of productivity lies in its perceived dimension. Small teams often outperform larger organizations not due to sheer output, but because of focused efforts and streamlined initiatives. Picture this: one person running in circles expending energy, while another moves steadily forward towards a goal. Perceived productivity embodies this directional focus, where every effort propels the team closer to its objectives. To achieve super productivity, organizations must prioritize focus and cohesion: 1. Eliminate Distractions: Clear the clutter and hone in on core initiatives. 2. Align Goals: Ensure every individual's efforts contribute synergistically towards overarching objectives. 3. Streamline Collaboration: Minimize redundant tasks and foster a culture of collaboration. In essence, both objective and perceived productivity are pivotal and work together. However, it's often the latter that distinguishes truly productive organizations from the rest. In the pursuit of productivity, it's not merely about doing more, but about doing better. By fostering focus, alignment, and collaboration, organizations can transcend conventional boundaries and achieve remarkable productivity beyond measure.

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For those who have ever pondered a career break, including myself, here's my take: amidst the relentless pace of our professional lives, stepping away isn't a setback; it's a strategic move for self-reflection and renewal. It's about recalibrating our direction, refuelling our passion, and nurturing our well-being. Embracing this hiatus isn't just about pausing; it's about actively investing in our growth—both personally and professionally. Just as muscles grow not in the gym while working out but during recovery, so too do we flourish when we prioritise rest and rejuvenation. Let's redefine success not just by what we achieve in the office, but by how we nourish our whole selves. #rejuvenate #heal #detox #reflect

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