Ravishankar (Ravi) Rajendran

If I ever learned a great deal about programming principles from any single person, it’s from Uncle Bob (Robert Martin), the author of the famous book Clean Code! I consider myself lucky to have attended some of his live virtual sessions and to have had the chance to ask him questions directly (conducted by O'Reilly - Clean Coders on Design Patterns, SOLID Principles, Advanced Test-Driven Development etc.). For anyone looking to get a quick summary of the key takeaways from his best book 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲, I found the following post by Mayank Ahuja to be very insightful. For those who want to master the concepts, I highly suggest the Clean Coders video series by Uncle Bob himself instead of the book [https://lnkd.in/dBiZyBrP] –  it is 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘶𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘜𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘣'𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘥𝘢𝘴𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘰 🙂! #Upskilling #CleanCode #UncleBob #SoftwareDesign #CleanCoders #Programming #ProgrammingPrinciples #EngineeringCommunity #DesignPatterns #CollaborativeLearning

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Are you a seasoned veteran in technology or just getting started your IT career? Follow ITVersity, Inc. to learn latest trends in Cloud Data AI space. It’s the place to learn technology while building strong fundamentals. Motive is to democratize the learning and seamless learning experience in the times of overwhelmed content out there. #data #ai #cloud #genai #dataenginnering

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Interesting to see the first legal enforcement on AI!

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What is your desired outcome? This simple question holds immense power in any conversation, whether personal or professional. Here’s why it’s such a game-changer: It gives you a moment to pause – Instead of reacting emotionally or impulsively, this question encourages all parties to stop and reflect. It provides a brief but critical pause to gather thoughts and respond with intention. It focuses on goals, not distractions – By asking about the desired outcome, we cut through the noise and narrow the conversation to what truly matters. It shifts the focus from problems or emotions to solutions and objectives. It clarifies intent – This question helps clarify what each person truly wants from the situation. Are we looking for a quick resolution? A long-term plan? Both? Understanding this sets the tone for more productive conversations. It drives action – When we focus on the outcome, we naturally start thinking about the steps needed to get there. It transforms passive or circular discussions into purposeful, action-oriented exchanges. It fosters collaboration – In a team setting, asking "What’s our desired outcome?" aligns everyone toward a common goal. It creates unity and helps ensure that efforts are moving in the same direction. Asking this one powerful question invites focus, clarity, and purpose into any conversation. Try it and watch your interactions become more intentional and outcome driven. 

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Super happy for Greptile and for Daksh Gupta for raising $4M to build AI-Powered code base expert. I had the opportunity to speak with Daksh, he walked me through how Greptile works. Check out the full video here #genai #greptile #codeassist

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Leadership matters. Football is a good analogy to business. They are both hierarchical organization where talent and team is critical to winning. Let's take a look at some recent examples where leadership matters. Being from the DC area, I have watched the Commanders be a losing team for the last couple decades. This year, they go all of a sudden to having a winning 7-3 season and poised to make the playoffs. All due to talent and leadership changes. New owner, new head coach and a talented rookie quarterback. All changes at key leadership position that has led to the success. Conversely the Jets are doing the opposite. Talented team but bad leadership at all levels. Bad owner, fired head coach and a talented QB with bad leadership. This has lead to a losing season and a disaster for the Jets. Teams who have good leadership, bring in talent and are stable tend to win. It works in football and it works in business.

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Software's being built by enterprises are relatively long-lived and exist for several years before any modernization happens. Given the investments required to modernize, this decision is put off and we continue to stitch, extend and modify existing assets by adding features and making updates to meet business needs. Technical debt like financial debt is difficult to repay. The more debt we accumulate the harder it becomes to remediate it and the more interest (cost) we need to pay (incur). Having a mechanism to constantly monitor and review technical debt is extremely important for any enterprise either building new assets or adding to an existing one. This should not be an afterthought but core to the engineering practices being put in place for software development. https://lnkd.in/dzFsWn3n Persistent Systems Siddhesh Bhobe Dr. Rajesh Gharpure

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The Penalty of Leadership In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. ¶Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. ¶In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. ¶The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. ¶When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. ¶If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. ¶Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. ¶Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. ¶Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. ¶Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. ¶The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. ¶The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. ¶There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. ¶And it all avails nothing. ¶If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. ¶Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. ¶That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. ¶That which deserves to live — lives.written by Theodore F. MacManusCopyright Cadillac Motor Division

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Today, I met with a friend, Chetan Jha who recently completed an AI/ML course at UT Austin. He shared insights about machine learning, emphasizing its core functions: pattern recognition and predictability. I explained how my teams current projects align with these principles—one focuses on predicting call volumes using historical data to optimize business efficiency, and the other employs pattern matching for agent compliance and sentiment analysis to categorize better and understand customer interactions. This is just the beginning of what’s possible with AI/ML, and I can hardly imagine the problems we’ll be solving in a year or two. #AI/ML #prediction #sentiment analysis #pattern matching #lifelong learning

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Technical Debt as a Financing Decision I have been in some tech debt discussions, first as business owner being asked by the PM to help justify engineering resources for new features plus for tech debt AND in same role, asking the engineers how long would features x, y and z if they decouple it from the "dependent" tech debt work they intended to do. As a #tpm and as #pmo, I have been involved in deciding whether to set aside "NO feature deployment" periods to address reliability/compliance debt and in another context, to compute the capacity to allot for these work, and also even running a campaign to reduce these debts. There is a lot of back-and-forth in these discussions about costs and benefits, can also get heated sometimes particularly if the business stakeholders feel tech debt is being used as an excuse for features being delayed vs commitments. Seldom I have seen a direct application of finance to these discussions, which is surprising since we call it "debt" in the first place. In a guest post at The Pragmatic Engineer (https://lnkd.in/gHsDWUCw?) Lou Franco shared his practical insights on addressing tech debt and his bias towards work that immediately deliver some gain NOW vs uncertain benefits in the future--> in finance, we understand this as discounting. This is reason why I like Jack Danger Canty's mental model (https://lnkd.in/gXf3PJ7a?) in which he used the financial concepts of principal, interest and payoff. We can view technical debt as deliberate shortcuts or postponement of effort, to move fast now but will lead us to be slower in the future or things we would necessarily need to do as we scale or when compliance items come due. Its not about low quality software though not having sufficient test coverage is a form of debt. For tech debt, the principal is the effort to pay it off. The principal can also increase, meaning the effort to pay off could be much greater in future (as users, services, engineers scale up). Interest is the costs of not doing anything and it can also increase due to scaling. Payoff event is when the debt becomes due, an audit deadline or when system will just fail. Also note having debt is OK (to quote " the fact that something stops working at significantly increased scale is a sign that it was designed appropriately to the previous constraints rather than being over designed." from https://lnkd.in/g7sZJMwJ) inasmuch as a business can be capitalised by an appropriate mix of equity and debt. I think using a table such as below allows a more nuanced discussion between engineering leaders, product managers and the business, and a common language to decide on prioritisation can lead to more aligned decisions. WDYT? #engineering #finance #softwareengineering #technicalprogrammanagement #tpm #programmanagement #it #ict #cio #cto #cfo

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Great point, Daniel and thanks for the share. I particularly appreciate JB's insight on 'self-interested insincere critique.' It's crucial to recognize this and engage in genuine self-reflection. To those in my network who are embarking on new ventures or seeking investor backing—how often have you been asked to frame your vision in terms of what's already established, or adjacent to existing ideas? It can be disheartening for those striving for moonshots or innovation, knowing that misunderstanding is almost guaranteed during the product-market fit journey to secure that first investment. JB’s point serves as a valuable reminder.

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I've been lucky to be a part of various leadership and management training classes/programs over the years, but it was also a trial by fire much of the time. The article hits on a joke that I've made for years, jobs tend to take really good developers and promote them to management because it's "natural". I think coming out of the pandemic and this layoff filled world we're now in, there is a lot more value in ICs being leaders, but not managers (as well as a healthy respect for decent managers). You shouldn't need to become management to get promoted, and companies also have a responsibility to help make better managers. Maybe in a few more years we'll all just be taking orders from ManagementBot: Powered by ChatGPT and it won't matter anyways! What are some of your stories about good or bad management?

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This is definitely introduce trust issue with the app. Changing more based on traffic surge or demand make sense but not because a user perceived to be able to pay more because he is using iPhone vs Android. What is next ... pricing based on user with iPhone 10 pay less than user with iPhone 16??

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"AI Eats the 90-Hour Grind for Breakfast—and Asks for Seconds" 💼 Extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary efforts. But does grinding 90 hours a week really lead to success or burnout? 🤔 📊 Did you know? Burnout impacts 77% of professionals, and overwork often leads to diminishing productivity, strained relationships, and mental health struggles. In today’s fast-paced world, the mantra isn’t "work harder" anymore. It’s work smarter. And nothing embodies this better than the rise of AI. Here’s why AI makes the "90-hour grind" philosophy obsolete: 1️⃣ Automates Repetition 🛠️ AI tackles mundane tasks like scheduling and data entry, freeing you up for creative & innovative work. 2️⃣ Expedited Learning 🚀 AI helps employees reach expert-level productivity up to 4x faster. That’s pure efficiency. 3️⃣ Co-pilot Support 🤝 Whether brainstorming big ideas or refining complex projects, AI has your back. 4️⃣ Output > Hours ⏳ With AI, it’s no longer about hours worked—it’s about results delivered. The Truth is It’s not about staring endlessly at your spouse or your screen. It’s about striking a balance that fuels both innovation and happiness. 👩‍💻 Leaders, ask yourself: Are you building a culture of burnout or balance? 💬 Have you embraced AI at work yet? What tasks would you love to hand over to your AI co-pilot? Drop your thoughts below! 👇

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You are a multiplier in the team. (if you exhibit the following five traits) 1. Empower other people: 🎯 You empower others and encourage autonomy. 🎯 You believe your team members are intelligent. 🎯 You trust your team members to figure out solutions 🎯 You build confidence in the team and empower them to excel. 2. Listen actively: 🎯 You engage in a conversation by giving your full attention. 🎯 You listen to what is said and what is not. 🎯 You can read nonverbal cues such as body language and tone. 🎯 You make them feel valued and heard. 3. Cultivate a Growth Mindset:  🎯 You promote a continuous learning environment. 🎯 You see potential in people. 🎯 You stretch team members with challenging tasks. 🎯 You provide growth opportunities and harness their full potential. 4. Provide Feedback: 🎯 You cultivate a culture of regular feedback. 🎯 You offer constructive feedback and identify growth areas. 🎯 You highlight strengths and recognize achievements. 🎯 You boost the team's morale and encourage high performance. 5. Optimize Collective Intelligence:  🎯 You foster a collaborative culture. 🎯 You listen to diverse perspectives and consider all options. 🎯 You focus on the team over individual efforts & ensure the best ideas win. 🎯 You are a leader, but more importantly, a leader-maker. You are a multiplier when you amplify the capabilities of others and bring out the best in your people. What traits do you think are most crucial for being a multiplier in a team?

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