Cloud repatriation tends to be a pretty controversial topic. What is it exactly? It’s when companies decide to move off public cloud to their own datacenters. It’s rare that this happens because the decision to be on cloud isn’t one that most companies make lightly. It’s also a significant amount of work to do thisContinue reading “Cloud Repatriation”
Category Archives: Product
Getting promoted as a Product Manager
If you’re a product manager at a mid-to-large company, then there is probably a well-defined path for career progression. But when it comes down to it, promotions often feel like a crapshoot. For better or for worse I’ve gotten good at playing this game. I attribute this to my history of being an unabashed overachieverContinue reading “Getting promoted as a Product Manager”
Where have we landed with Kubernetes?
There has been a lot of chatter recently about whether Kubernetes (hereby referred to as k8s) has actually delivered its users to the promised land, as was widely suggested at the time. I think the answer is… it’s more nuanced than this tweet suggests, which is perhaps true of all tweets! I helped launch TanzuContinue reading “Where have we landed with Kubernetes?”
Thoughts on value accrual in infra
It’s fascinating to see where value accrues in the tech infra stack. As far as I can tell, accrual patterns seem to be fluid across time and verticals. I think we’re seeing an example of this transition of value with the “commoditization of IaaS” i.e. the quarter-life crisis of cloud. Publicly available data is scarceContinue reading “Thoughts on value accrual in infra”
Choosing between abstraction and customization as a PM
It’s been a hot second but I’m really excited to start writing again in 2023! I’ve been a PM for (internal) compute infrastructure aka Borg at Google for a year now and something that comes up a lot is the tension between abstraction and customization. Of course, this isn’t a novel problem, almost every industryContinue reading “Choosing between abstraction and customization as a PM”
Internal vs External Product Management
Moving from VMware to Google was straightforward for me in many ways. At VMware, I was working on the compute virtualization layer and built a product that ran Kubernetes containers in micro-VMs. At Google, I still work on the “virtualization” layer (called Borg) except now, its containers all the way down. The major difference betweenContinue reading “Internal vs External Product Management”
Working Backwards
A lesson I’ve learned the hard way is to not have a singular idol, whether that’s a person or a company. In one way or another, you will be disappointed. Instead, I pick and choose my favorite learnings from individuals and organizations. I had to remind myself of this as I started to read “WorkingContinue reading “Working Backwards”
Ramblings of a PM
This post is a transcript of a conversation I had with Rachel Spurrier from Merit, a wonderful platform for mentorship in tech. Rachel lightly edited and condensed this for length and clarity. This was originally posted on the Merit blog at Office Hours with Nikitha Suryadevara. Rachel Spurrier: You wrote that you knew at 23 you wantedContinue reading “Ramblings of a PM”
Thinking in Bets
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Most business books ever written could have been a (long) blog post instead. That’s how I felt about Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. The premise of the book is “Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts”. The actual contents of the bookContinue reading “Thinking in Bets”
The Mom Test
I’ve been working my way through a list of product/business books, most of which I discovered through Shreyas‘ recommendations. The first book I read was The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick and dang, there is so much great content packed into this tiny package. I can’t believe it took me this long to discover it.Continue reading “The Mom Test”