About

About

I’m Yogi and I’m a software developer (linkedin) with ~14 years of building and scaling software at Flipkart, Udaan, Amazon, Rubrik and Google. These days I help founders and engineering leaders at high-growth startups ship faster as they scale, without breaking what already works.

I’ve been a geek for as long as I can remember, and grateful for getting paid to tinker with technology.

In the real world, mostly I don’t talk much. But I am a good listener (or, so I’ve been told by people who are really good talkers). And listening is an underrated skill in this world. One fine day, I realised, all this listening has led me to a point where I have something to say about everything I’ve listened to. But since everyone around me is used to me listening, and not talking, I turn to you - friendly human on the internet - as an outlet for my thoughts.

Where I’ve been

Over the years, I’ve worked at companies of almost every shape and size. I was at Flipkart back when it was just 200 engineers, and Udaan as the 13th engineer. Of course, like most folks in Bangalore, I eventually tried building my own startup - only to realise I was quite terrible at it :) I took a break from the startup hustle to venture into Big Tech, first with a short stint at Amazon, followed by a longer run at Google Search.

I’ve been fortunate enough to witness the tech abstractions we take for granted today get built out as I grew in the industry. I’ve gone from managing MySQL, HBase, and Kafka on VMs and bare metal (and dealing with the associated outages), to now marveling at how it’s all outsourced to the cloud. But I still fret the small stuff - because I know so much of what can go wrong. #BattleScarred

What I do

I’ve always been particularly passionate about productivity. It started out with obsessing about my own (a philosophy I wrote about in Time is the real currency), and grew into a fascination about how engineering organisations scale & behave. I’ve seen what they get right and what made them fail.

Today I work as an independent software consultant, partnering with founders & leadership teams at high-growth startups. I’ve personally felt startup growth pains and also learnt how 30-year-old tech giants manage to consistently ship quality software. I’m privy to the chaos, organisational dynamics as well as the systems at all stages of a company’s journey. While every company has a unique culture & a style of working - I know that these problems rhyme and potential solutions are similar. I embed directly in their day-to-day and leverage my unique experience to help figure out solutions that work for them. That usually means helping with:

  • Prioritisation: Which best practices will move the needle today and the fires that are safe to leave burning for now.
  • Systems that hold up: Anticipate future scalability & reliability problems before they become 3AM outages.
  • Platformization: I build AI powered internal platforms that enable the organization to preserve their style of working while incorporating practices that help them move faster as they scale.

If that sounds like something your team needs, let’s talk.

A special note for Software Engineers

I’ve been lucky to have incredible mentors who have helped shape my career and my thinking. I’ve always tried my best to pay it forward. Tech, especially today - in the Age of AI - is hard.

If you’re looking for career advice, interview prep, or just want to vent & worry - please don’t hesitate to reach out. Chances are, I’ve experienced something very similar to what you’re going through.

  • Cried at work? Done that.
  • Burn out? Oh - Multiple.
  • Dysfunctional team, bad manager? Check.

You’re not alone. I’m happy to share my experiences with a hope that it can help others navigate theirs.

Aside from reading my writing, please feel free to book an open slot on my calendar.

Get in touch