Kishore Jalleda

One of the hardest things to do as a professional (or otherwise) is saying "no". We tend to overcommit because of the fear of disappointing others; for social cohesion; and a variety of other reasons. We do this as it is easy to take on extra work; but hard to ruthlessly prioritize and respectfully say "no". Overcommitment almost always means we fall short on delivering results. The right thing to do is to (respectfully) say "no" (where it makes sense) -- and explain "why". Check out the video below (gave a talk at #SREcon Ireland in Aug 2017) on how I said "no" that helped reduce false production alarms (caused by over-monitoring) by more than 90% (the same can be applied to flaky tests). I said "no" to my teams who wanted to take on more (urged them to focus on one thing; execute on that one thing; prove that we could deliver; then promised that we can take on more). I said "no" to the teams that relied on us for...

Here's an MVP of an article that I don't want to wait any longer to ship. Would love feedback, so I can ship the real s***. Everyone wants to grow; growth seems to be at the core of all human needs. Growth usually means a promo. Unfortunately, promos are not based on how well you do on an aptitude test; there are no such tests in real life. So, what does it take? Rule#1: If you want to get promoted, you must ask for it first. Do not (for Jeebus' sake) assume that your manager has your career planned out for you. If there is someone responsible for your career, it's you; no one else. Rule #2: Deep understanding of how decisions are made in real life; (Office) Politics, after all, is about those unspoken rules. A big part of this is getting feedback from your critics. Rule #3: Always do the right thing; have a strong work ethic/integrity. You never know how and when good karma will come back for you. Next time you're passed up for a promo, try to reflect o...

Feels great to be back from a tech conference (was in London last month speaking at #VelocityConf ) and finding out that my talk got a 5-star rating (well, 4.65 to be precise, but O'Reilly rounded that to a five - I'll take that). Sorry, couldn't help but share this with you all.   As always, great support from Yahoo! Inc. ; thanks, Yahoo!  Below is some feedback:  "Great great great session"  "Awesome talk. One of the most valuable I attended during the conference"  "Excellent presentation used his experience as an example but then extracted the lessons from that into a useful set of guidelines that could be applied elsewhere"  "Excellent awesome."  "Very interesting and engaging. An impressive way of managing a difficult situation. Lots of good tips to take away."  I am happy; I am pleased! 

Leadership Not being mindful/present is detrimental to your team's performance. You must silence your inner voices to be present. Checking your phone during meetings(all the time)? You should probably find a different job/role. People Management  Empathy is really hard to teach; you'd be better off hiring for it. Senior managers have empathy/compassion; junior managers don't. Product Development  It is dangerous to idiot-proof yourself; it will slow you down. Be brave; ship an MVP.  Project Management  Don't show up a week before the deadline and ask for an extension. Raise flags early; raise them often.  Capacity Management Don't raise a flag now that you will run out of capacity in 2 weeks; raise it 6-8 months in advance.  Postmortems  Never, ever make an assumption that people will stop being stupid in the future. Put in systemic fixes.  Onboarding  (Tech) Boot camps are overrated; context is underrated. Co...

You have heard this: feedback is good; give/get feedback regularly; if you want to grow, sustain that growth, feedback is one of the most important things (if not "the" most important). But, let's face it, receiving critical feedback is hard; very hard.  Critical feedback shakes you to your core;  it is up there when it comes to things in life that are frightening, uncomfortable, unpleasant and painful. Our body's instinct is to defend us; to protect us. Basically, here's what's happening behind the scenes: when we are on the receiving end of critical feedback, we feel threatened; we feel insecure; we sense danger. Our natural defense mechanism kicks in. As a result, we become defensive. It's an evolutionary thing  ( our brain still thinks we are from the stone age). But, that reaction is the exact opposite of what you must be doing. Once you become defensive, things usually go south, and you generally end up losing out on a valuable opportunity ...

Here's an MVP of an article that I don't want to wait any longer to ship. Would love feedback, so I can ship the real s*** :) ***What no one tells you about getting promoted*** Everyone wants to grow; growth seems to be at the core of all human needs. Growth usually means a promo. Unfortunately, promos are not based on how well you do on an aptitude test; there are no such tests in real life. So, what does it take? Rule#1: If you want to get promoted, you must ask for it first. Do not (for Jeebus' sake) assume that your manager has your career planned out for you. If there is someone responsible for your career, it's you; no one else. Rule #2: Deep understanding of how decisions are made in real life; (Office) Politics, after all, is about those unspoken rules. A big part of this is getting feedback from your critics. Rule #3: Always do the right thing; have a strong work ethic/integrity. You never know how and when good karma will come back for you. Next time...

I am no product visionary, but I've always strongly believed that if you democratize innovation by removing most barriers between idea and execution, you have a greater chance of building something customers love. The idea is to let developers (and everyone else) freely express themselves through the products and services they build (essentially creating intrapreneurs), so they come to work everyday wanting to change the world! This is something I tried doing after joining Yahoo about three years ago: I interviewed a ton of engineers; found their pain points (i.e. barriers); found my partners in crime and been on a journey to eliminate most of those barriers (both technical and cultural). The macro goal? Velocity: rapid experimentation ("ship fast"), coupled with rapid invalidation of things your users don't care about ("fail fast"). Come find out the challenges faced, the insights, and the lessons learned at one of  my upcoming talks: "DevOps Enterp...