A mistake I made for a long time was not owning my 1:1s with my manager. So my manager did. My 1:1s became status update meetings. Or we discussed topics that my manager wanted. We rarely spoke about growth or feedback. Here is what I do now: ✅ Own the 1:1s and set the agenda. ✅ Created a document, and shared it with my manager, to list items I want to discuss. The manager can also add their items. ✅ Talk about feedback and growth at regular intervals. ✅ Bring up any critical issues related to projects or help needed. ✅ Discuss things my manager is working on and where I can help. ✅ Status updates are discussed separately. In some meetings, it might happen, but this is rare. The outcome: 💠I am now strategic about my growth. 💠I get a picture of my manager's view at his level and topics discussed with his peers. 💠Most importantly, it helps us be aligned and prioritized on the right things. Here is a wonderful question that a leadership coach, Ali Merchant, shared with me to ask my manager — “What’s one thing you need from me, you’re not getting?” Do you own and drive your 1:1s with your manager?

Some teachings that I have been thinking about recently: - Nothing lasts forever. - All good things come to an end. - Change is the only constant. - Failure isn't final. - Success isn't permanent. - This too shall pass.

Have you come across candidates using AI during interviews? How would you even know if someone is using AI during the interview? Interesting thread -

@LeaderElixir @LeaderElixir definitely, it is not just about working hard - building connections, establishing relationships and being intentional will go a long way.

Work smart > Work hard, is what one hears. I am curious about the definition of working smart. I end up working long hours, as that is my default. Would this be working smart? What is your definition of working smart?

I have used devices for fitness and sleep tracking usually like the Fitbit and the Apple Watch. Seeing information like this in @ouraring is new for me. It gave an alert for major signs of strain. It also indicated my body temperature was elevated. I have been sick the last couple of days, and it is interesting to see such details. What has been your experience with fitness devices?

"When people ask tough questions, give them straightforward, honest answers. Transparency and clarity build trust. " From Beyond the Hammer by Brian Gottlieb

“Accountability breeds response-ability.” - Stephen Covey Yesterday, I had my first experience as a guest speaker. Pramoda Vyasarao invited me to the second cohort of his Beyond Your Limits @MavenHQ course to talk about accountability. Being accountable has been critical for me to achieve goals.

What is the most frustrating build problem to debug? You have made no code change, but suddenly things start failing. Why? 1. We didn't pin package versions. Suddenly, we start picking the latest version of a package resulting in failures. 2. We pinned the package version. But it has a dependency that is not pinned. This requires patience and can take time to debug. Ran into such issues this week and took several hours to debug. The impact can be significant as it can block your CICD pipelines. Which other problems have you found difficult to debug?

Another Friday morning starts with more issues: Several hours on a call to debug and finally resolve! Learned something new along the way - xargs has limits with a long command - kubernetes finalizers - When you have too many abstractions, it becomes difficult to identify the root cause

As a manager, whenever I get the opportunity to be on-call, my learning curve increases tremendously. I get to experience first hand : - Issues encountered by users - Time it takes to triage issues and the back and forth until an issue is resolved - I also learn about how different systems are setup - Debugging an issue requires a lot of patience As a manager, do you take part in the on-call rotation?

@Rich_Hillier Still exploring. Have been comparing notes with friends and mixed reviews so far.

I am a manager by title and my biggest challenge - Managing myself! Just when I think I have it in control, I realize I have missed something 😞. There’s a lot of context switching. - Switching between different projects - Focusing on a team member for a 1:1 - Cross functional team meetings These are just some examples and everything happens with little time between each. It gets overwhelming at times. A lot of it is in the head. Keeping to do lists hasn’t worked for me. At the end of the day, the chaos also makes it fun! Would love to hear your experience and suggestions.

From the Trillion Dollar Coach - characteristics to look for when finding the right players for the team.

@oznova_ It's been fun to explore the outages related to postgresql transaction id wraparound topic at Thanks for the references in the talk.

@arpit_bhayani you have really sparked my interest in outages. Whenever I hear about an outage, I get curious. Came across this repo about post-mortems - I know what I am going to be reading in my free time 😀.