Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership. What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention. A nuanced perspective. Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

Today is a refresh on my write up from 2022 about owning your career and what that means in 2026 and with AI that responsibilities multiplies 10x.

So share and subscribe to read my next issues.

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Most people believe they own their careers.

But if someone else controls your learning, your opportunities, and your direction- do you really?

For a long time, I thought career success came from effort.

Work harder. Apply more. Learn faster.

In 2022, I called the real ingredient ownership.

Four years later, I think ownership means something very different.

2022 Take: Ownership Means Showing Up

In 2022, I wrote about what I believed was the secret ingredient to success: ownership.

At the time I was trying to restart my career after a break. I thought I was doing everything right — updating my resume, applying for jobs, preparing for interviews.

But nothing was moving.

I felt stuck and discouraged.

Eventually I realized something uncomfortable: I had confused activity with ownership.

I was doing the tasks around my job search, but I wasn’t truly shaping my career.

Around the same time my neighbor started gardening. Every morning she was outside tending to her plants — watering them, pruning leaves, pulling weeds, adjusting for seasonal changes.

Her garden flourished.

I had also bought a few plants around the same time. Mine looked less like a garden and more like a random collection of pots trying to survive.

The difference wasn’t knowledge.

We had both started at the same time.

The difference was ownership.

She treated the garden like something she was responsible for nurturing. I treated my plants like things I remembered to water when convenient.

That analogy stayed with me.

Careers work the same way.

When you take ownership, you stop treating your career like something that happens to you and start treating it like something you are responsible for growing.

Back then, ownership meant:

Showing up consistently.
Figuring things out even when you didn’t know how.
Changing your approach when something wasn’t working.
Staying responsible for growth.

That lesson helped me rebuild my career.

But over time, my understanding of ownership has changed.

2026 Refresh: Ownership Means Designing Direction

In 2022, I believed ownership meant working harder for your career.

In 2026, I think ownership means designing your career intentionally.

Because modern careers don’t grow like ladders anymore.

They behave more like living systems.

Roles change.
Industries shift.
Entire skillsets appear and disappear in just a few years.

In that kind of environment, ownership is less about effort and more about direction.

Ownership today looks like:

Paying attention to patterns in your work.
Noticing where your curiosity naturally goes.
Actively shaping your skills toward emerging opportunities.
Building relationships intentionally instead of transactionally.

Most people still treat their careers like a collection of disconnected plants.

A job here.
A course there.
A resume update when panic hits.

But the people who thrive treat their careers like something living — something that needs attention, adjustment, and care over time.

And perhaps the hardest realization of all:

No one is coming to manage your career for you.

Not your manager.
Not HR.
Not the job market.

Ownership doesn’t mean controlling everything.

It means deciding:

“This is mine to shape.”

Ownership in the Age of Intelligent Tools

There is another shift happening that makes ownership even more important. Artificial intelligence is changing how work gets done. Tasks that once took hours can now take minutes. Information that once required deep research is now instantly accessible and that is empowering.

But it also means the value of simply doing tasks is decreasing.

Ownership in the AI era looks different again.

It is less about executing instructions and more about:

• Understanding problems deeply empathetically

• Asking better questions.

• Deciding what direction is worth pursuing.

AI can help you water the garden faster but it cannot decide what garden is worth growing.

That responsibility still belongs to you.

Reflection Exercise

If ownership means shaping your career, here are three questions worth asking:

1. What parts of my career am I actively designing and what parts am I simply reacting to?

2. What skills or directions am I curious about but haven’t explored yet?

3. If no one else was managing my career path, what would I start doing differently today?

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

• share it with someone who might need it

Share

or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership. What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention. A nuanced perspective. Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

Today is about creating small systems that work for you so you can focus on things that matter.

So share and subscribe to read my next issues.

Subscribe now

There’s a tiny feature that has quietly changed how I operate at work.

Scheduled send.

On Teams.
On Outlook.
On anything that allows me to talk to the future.

This feels embarrassingly basic to admit.

But I wish someone had told me earlier:

My brain is not a reminder app.

The way I used to work

I am a deeply context-based thinker.

When I’m in a meeting, I’m in it. I’m mapping threads, anticipating objections, thinking about Monday risks, Friday follow-ups, stakeholder reactions, downstream impact.

It’s one of my strengths as a product leader. I see the system.

But here’s the part no one sees.

Every meeting ended with invisible tabs open in my head:

• “Don’t forget to follow up next week.”

• “Ask her about that before the QBR.”

• “Send that nudge on Monday.”

• “Revisit this after finance reviews it.”

So while others left the room lighter…

I left carrying 12 mental sticky notes.

And then I would wonder why I felt cognitively tired by 3pm.

The small shift that changed everything

Now, if in a meeting we decide:

“XYZ needs to be presented on Monday.”

I immediately schedule a Teams message for Monday morning:

“Hey — just a reminder we’re presenting XYZ today. Are we aligned?”

If someone is on PTO and I need context from them next Thursday?

Scheduled.

If we decide to revisit something in two weeks?

Scheduled.

If I need to check in before a milestone?

Scheduled.

I Wish I Knew This Earlier

I spent years trying to become “more organized.”

More disciplined.
More on top of things.
Better at remembering.

But that wasn’t the real problem.

The real problem was that I was using my strategic brain as a storage device.

High performers don’t rely on remembering.
They build infrastructure and systems that work for them.

In product, we design scalable systems so humans don’t manually patch things every sprint. Why don’t we do the same for our own cognitive load?

What This Actually Gave Me

This tiny habit has given me three unexpected upgrades:

1. Focus protection
When I’m in a room, I can stay fully present. I’m not negotiating with future tasks in the background.

2. Anxiety reduction
The low-grade “don’t forget” hum? Gone. It lives in my calendar now.

3. Quiet reliability
People think I’m incredibly on top of things.

I’m not.

I just talk to the future on purpose.

Career Lesson Hidden in a Tech Feature

We glamorize mental agility in leadership.

But sustainable growth is less about holding everything in your head
and more about designing systems that hold things for you.

Especially if you are:

• A systems thinker

• A context-heavy leader

• A multi-threaded product brain

• A parent juggling 19 timelines

• A “I’ll remember that” person who absolutely will not

Your brain is for:

• Strategy

• Pattern recognition

• Creativity

• Influence

Not for remembering to nudge someone on Tuesday.

The Meta Lesson

Every phase of my career where I burned out had one thing in common:

This is why in this series, I Wish I Knew- the lessons are rarely dramatic.

They’re operational. Tiny structural shifts that prevent emotional collapse later.

If I had built more micro-systems earlier in my career, I would have avoided a lot of unnecessary self-doubt.

Because sometimes what we call “impostor syndrome”
is just cognitive overload wearing a dramatic outfit.

If you’re in a season of growth- especially if you’re ramping back up, aiming higher, or carrying more scope:

Start by picking one recurring “mental sticky note” and automate it.

Your future self will thank you.
Your nervous system will too.

Reflection prompt for you:

What is one thing you are currently trying to “remember” that could be designed into a system instead?

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

  Subscribe now

• share it with someone who might need it

Share

or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership. What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention. A nuanced perspective. Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

Today is about everything else that surrounds your career. Everything that matters.

So share and subscribe to read my next issues.

Share

A lot of what you do at work enables your career growth — the challenges, the hard conversations, and collaborations. But just like an iceberg, that is only the tip. The rest is below and unseen.

So yes, your career growth happens in meetings, in performance reviews, in promotions. But over the years, I’ve realized something quieter and far more powerful. Your career is shaped in your personal life. In the systems you build. In the rituals you protect. In the boundaries you enforce when no one is watching.

Here are the personal practices that quietly changed the quality of my professional life.

1. I Took Mental Exhaustion Seriously

We no longer work in a physical labor era. We work in a cognitive one.

Mental work is invisible, which makes it easy to ignore the fatigue that accumulates from constant thinking, deciding, responding, producing. I stopped treating exhaustion as weakness and started treating it as a signal. Also, physical labor and output are directly proportional.

However, with mental work, you can be in a flow state and knock something off in two hours. What I am trying to say is physical labor is proportional to effort and is almost always consistent.

Mental labor isn’t directly proportional.

So, when I am mentally depleted, I take time off. Period. For clarity, which is a competitive advantage. Exhaustion erodes it quietly.

2. I Built a Reflection Practice

We don’t give enough credit to writing and journaling. But it has been the single most important activity that has saved me time and again from burnout and exhaustion. Most gurus suggest having a particular time in the day devoted to it. However, with ever-changing priorities at home, I wasn’t always able to maintain a consistent time or day. But I kept writing whenever I was overwhelmed.

What that did was center me and ground me. Automatically, I started bringing that centering even without a physical journal in hand. I started noting throughout the day what I was feeling. Slowly, I created a consistent end-of-day practice since I was paying attention to myself throughout the day.

So now every night, I journal. Not pages and pages. Just enough to process the day instead of carrying it into tomorrow.

And on Fridays, I zoom out.

What worked. What did not. Where I overreacted. Where I showed up well. What energized me. What drained me.

Without reflection, weeks blur into survival mode.

With reflection, patterns emerge.

And patterns are power.

3. I Outsource Without Guilt

If I want to lead at work, I cannot micromanage my life.

Every decision, whether small or big, high impact or not, has an energy cost. Cleaning, groceries, logistics, endless small admin all cost the same energy that would otherwise be directed toward impact I want to work toward. So I have worked hard to devise systems where I allot a day to do this work.

Outsourcing where possible is not indulgence. It is allocation. Having themes to days is my secret weapon.

I always try to reserve my best energy toward decisions that move the needle, not decisions that exhaust it.

Leadership requires margin and space.

4. I Became Intentional With My Time

I am my calendar, and my calendar is me. As someone trying to be intentional about life, some might say I am tied up by my calendar. However, I have long understood that if I don’t control it, I will lose the freedom that this job gives me. So I stopped leaving my calendar to chance.

If something matters, it is scheduled. Thinking time. Learning time. Creative time.

Timeboxing forces clarity. When work has a container, focus sharpens.

Your calendar is your value system made visible.

If everything is urgent, nothing is strategic.

5. I Created Rituals for Creative Work

Creativity does not respond well to chaos.

I built simple rituals around writing and thinking. Same time. Same cues. Same environment.

Ritual reduces friction. And friction is what usually kills consistency.

The more predictable the container, the more original the thinking.

6. I Designed My Circles Intentionally

As an introvert, I try to be intentional about connecting with people — professionally and personally. Social life and professional life are not separate worlds.

I choose rooms that stretch me and relationships that anchor me.

Networking is not random. It is directional.

Energy management is strategy. Who you spend time with shapes what feels normal, possible, and ambitious.

7. I Established Communication Boundaries

At work, I stopped being endlessly available.

Clear expectations. Defined response windows. Structured check-ins.

Availability is not leadership.

Focus is.

The more I respected my time, the more others did too.

8. I Built a Personal Advisory Board and a Village

Three people I trust deeply. Different perspectives. Honest feedback. No flattery. When I feel stuck or uncertain, I do not spiral alone.

Careers are not built in isolation.

9. I Invested in Curiosity Beyond My Job

I write on LinkedIn and now Substack. I also enjoy mentoring and volunteering — it has expanded my thinking beyond measure. I learn skills that may never show up on my resume. I explore areas adjacent to my role.

Not everything needs to ladder up immediately.

Curiosity expands thinking. Expanded thinking improves judgment.

And judgment compounds over time.

10. Build Financial Slack And Something Of Your Own

This showed up late on my radar. We talk about promotions, skills, visibility. We don’t talk enough about financial cushion.

I’ve realized that when there is margin financially, decisions feel different. You negotiate differently. You leave misaligned situations faster. You take thoughtful risks. You speak more honestly.

Financial slack is not about excess. It is about leverage. It softens fear.

At the same time, I’ve started building something of my own. Writing. Mentoring. Creating. Not necessarily to replace my job. But to plant a seed.

Owning even a small stream of output or income changes how tightly you hold your role. It shifts you from dependence to choice. I am still building this. But I now see it as long-term insurance for both confidence and courage.

If I could compress all of this into one truth, it would be this:

Your career trajectory is constrained by the quality of your personal systems. Your habits determine your momentum, not your title. Build your life like an operating system.

Your career will run better because of it.

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

  Subscribe now

• share it with someone who might need it-

  Share

or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

This series collects the quieter truths of work that rarely make it into frameworks or highlight reels. The detours, pauses, and lived experiences that shape a career over time, especially in the space where work and life intersect.

Today’s reflection is from Rujuta Biware. In this piece, Rujuta shares what she wish she had known when she started her Tech career.

Over to Rujuta…

Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier in My Tech Career

When Shradha reached out to me to write this piece for her Substack, I was honored and excited at the same time, because this topic is close to my heart. Today, I am sharing four things with you that I genuinely wish someone had shared with me early in my career.

1. Keep a “WIN” Folder

About a couple of years ago, I discovered this practice, and it was a revelation. A WIN folder is exactly what it sounds like: a place to document your accomplishments, metrics, positive feedback, and compliments. This simple habit pays dividends in three ways. First, when it’s time to make your case for a promotion, you’ll have concrete examples at your fingertips. Secondly, when you need to update your resume, you won’t be scrambling to remember what you worked on two years ago. And perhaps most importantly, when imposter syndrome creeps in, you’ll have tangible proof of your growth and impact.

To be honest, I first thought this would be another overhead for me, but over time you will realize that a block of 10-15 mins every other week is all you need. Every week/other week, block 10-15 minutes on your calendar and document highlights and accomplishments of your week straight into the WINS folder.

Here are a few guiding questions you can use to document the weekly WINS

• Did you receive a compliment from your team/co-worker regarding a feature you shipped/A tough problem you solved/A document you created?- Goes in the folder!

• If you are doing some voluntary work/ERG work for your company- Add that to the folder!

• If you create content/volunteer/on a committee outside of your 9-5 and receive a compliment/feedback- Mention it in the folder!

2. Say “Yes” to Opportunities You Don’t Feel Ready For

Fear of judgement and rejection has cost me countless chances to grow, both personally and professionally. I turned down opportunities, because I didn’t feel prepared. The truth is, no one ever feels completely ready. Growth happens when you lean into discomfort and trust that you’ll figure it out along the way.

This is easier said than done, I get it. But I want you to try one brave/uncomfortable thing this week and see what happens. Over time, this will become a habit and won’t feel daunting.

How to determine if an opportunity is good enough to say Yes?

• Does this opportunity excite you?

• Is this something you would want to do longer term?

• Does this opportunity scare you? Definitely say yes, because it means that this will challenge you in a good way!

3. Ask for Help

This one is rooted in cultural and gender conditioning. Growing up in India, I internalized the belief that asking for help meant I wasn’t capable or didn’t deserve to be in the room. As a woman of color and a mother in tech, I felt even more pressure to prove I could do it all on my own. I was wrong. By refusing to ask for help, I sacrificed my health, delayed my career goals, and at times damaged my credibility by struggling alone when collaboration would have led to better outcomes. Asking for help is a strategic skill that accelerates growth and builds trust.

When do you ask for help? When you are stuck on a problem for more than 2 days, it’s time to raise the issue.

Guidelines for asking help:

• If it’s impacting timelines.

• If it’s affecting your deliverables.

• If it’s impacting your mental health.

4. Build Connections Intentionally

I’ve always wanted to build a community but didn’t know where to start. Here’s what I’ve learned: just start showing up and sharing your learnings and thoughts. Write about what you’re working on. Comment on others’ posts. Attend events, even virtually. The right people will find you. Connections are all about being visible, authentic, and generous with what you know.

How to build connections?

• Does it truly excite you to talk to this person or are you just following the crowd?

• After talking to this person do you feel energized or drained?

• Are you being yourself (within a reason) with this person or do you have to put up a face?

These lessons didn’t come easily, and some took years to learn. But that’s okay. Your career is a marathon, not a sprint. Be patient with yourself, celebrate your wins, and remember that the person you’re becoming is just as important as the goals you’re chasing.

Connect with Rujuta Biware:

• LinkedIn

• Instagram

If this resonated, you can follow the series, share it with someone who might need it, or reach out if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own to share.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership. What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention. A nuanced perspective. Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

Today is about constant change in tech careers especially and how to get ahead of it.

So share and subscribe to read my next issues.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Change Is the Default Setting

One of the biggest shocks of my early career was not the workload.

It was how quickly everything could change.

Layoffs.
Reorgs.
Senior people leaving.
New leaders arriving.
Projects shelved overnight.
Projects suddenly accelerated.

In tech, we are told this is normal. Business as usual. Take it in stride.But no one tells you how destabilizing it feels the first few times it happens.

My First Shock Wave

In my first small company role, within a month of joining, the senior-most engineer on the team announced he was leaving.

He had onboarded me. He was the person everyone went to. He carried the lion’s share of the technical weight. We had a customer deal in motion. So, my mind started to spiral.

How will anyone know what to do?
How will I understand the system?
How will we deliver on time?

I carried anxiety for days. It felt structural, like something essential was being removed. Looking back, I smile at how rattled I was. But at that moment, it felt enormous. And yet we delivered. Not perfectly. There were hiccups. But who is to say those hiccups would not have existed even if he had stayed?

That was my first lesson in impermanence.

Stability Is Not Promised

Since then, I have lived through layoffs from both sides. I have seen reorgs become routine. I have pivoted more times than I expected. In the era of AI, teams and priorities reshape constantly.

Here is what I wish I had known earlier:

Stability is not the baseline of a career.

Change is.

School trains us for continuity. Semester to semester. Promotion to promotion. Clear progression. Corporate life does not operate on that rhythm. The faster you accept that change is structural, not exceptional, the steadier you become.

The Body Reacts Before the Mind

What no one teaches you is that change first hits the body.

The racing thoughts.
The tightening chest.
The mental worst-case scenarios.

Over time, I realized the real skill is not controlling change.

It is managing your reaction to it.

When something destabilizing happens now, I follow a practice.

I step away physically, even if only for a few minutes.
I let the emotional surge move through me instead of suppressing it.
I refuse to make decisions in that state.
I wait until my body settles.

Only then do I move into problem-solving.

Shift From Loss to Agency

The brain is not effective when driven by emotional charge. It is effective when given a problem to solve. So I give it one.

What is still in my control?
What is the next smallest stabilizing action?
What can I clarify before reacting?

This shift does not eliminate uncertainty. It restores agency. And agency is the antidote to panic.

What Long Careers Require

No curriculum prepares you for how often you will need to rebuild footing in your career. No professor teaches you how to metabolize reorgs or layoffs. But if you stay long enough, something changes inside you. You stop seeing change as catastrophe. You start seeing it as terrain.

The professionals who build long, luminous careers are not the ones who avoid disruption. They are the ones who recover faster. They do not eliminate shock. They shorten its duration. Change is not an interruption to your career. It is the environment your career exists in.

And once you accept that, you stop waiting for stability. You become it.

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

  Subscribe now

• share it with someone who might need it-

Share

• or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership.
What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention. A nuanced perspective. Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

Today is about leadership and how to make it work for you.

So share and subscribe to read my next issues.

Subscribe now

Leadership has an aura.

The title carries weight. The word feels aspirational. Everyone wants to “grow into leadership,” but very few can clearly articulate what that means beyond visibility, confidence, and authority.

So we do what ambitious professionals do.

We observe. We study executives. We dissect charismatic speakers. We borrow phrases. We mirror behaviors. We try to replicate what we believe made them effective.

And then we wonder why it feels forced.

Leadership Cannot Be Reverse-Engineered

One of the biggest realizations I wish I had earlier is this:

You cannot disassemble someone else’s leadership into parts and reassemble it onto yourself.

The tone.
The body language.
The communication style.
The decisiveness.

Whatever made them powerful was not the checklist. It was the integration.

Leadership is greater than the sum of its parts.

The mistake I made early was trying to sound like leadership instead of being aligned enough to act like it.

Alignment Is the Real Foundation

Leadership begins with certainty.

Not certainty that you are right.
Certainty that you are willing to stand behind your view.

Being sure of yourself does not mean having all the answers. It means having enough internal clarity to decide.

When you borrow conviction from someone else, people sense it. The words may be technically correct. The posture may look composed. But if it is not anchored in your own thinking, it feels performed.

And people do not follow performance for long.

I was more exhausted trying to lead like someone else than I ever was leading like myself. Imitation drains you. Alignment stabilizes you.

The Truth About Decision-Making

Here is an uncomfortable reality:

Most people delay decisions because they want to be right. Leaders decide because they are willing to be responsible.

Indecision erodes trust faster than wrong decisions do. People can forgive imperfect action. They struggle to follow prolonged hesitation. Experience sharpens judgment. It does not create courage.

Accuracy improves with time. Boldness does not automatically arrive with tenure. Boldness is a value choice — the willingness to move before you feel fully ready.

If you hesitate long enough, someone else will decide. And leadership quietly transfers.

What Leadership Actually Signals

Leadership is often misunderstood as:

• Loudness

• Extroversion

• Charisma

• Being liked

In reality, leadership signals something far simpler and harder to fake:

Trust.

And trust is built when:

• What you say aligns with what you believe.

• What you believe aligns with how you act.

• Your decisions reflect consistent values.

Alignment under pressure is what people read as leadership.

Not volume. Not title. Not perfection.

A Practical Reset

Before your next significant decision, pause and ask:

• Am I hesitating because I lack information or because I fear ownership?

• If I had to decide today, what would I choose?

• What value is guiding that choice?

Leadership is not a prize waiting at the end of experience.

It is alignment in motion, but making other believe in the direction as much as you believe in it. And motion requires courage long before it requires a title.

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

  Subscribe now

• share it with someone who might need it-

  Share

• or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

Subscribe

For the longest time, I thought journaling belonged in the category of self-care.

Something you do to process feelings.

To reflect.

To calm down.

To be mindful.

All of that is true.

What I didn’t realize is that journaling would quietly become one of my most powerful professional tools.

Somewhere along the way, it stopped being just reflective and started being strategic.

Now, it’s my first move.

Whenever I have something important coming up — a presentation, a difficult conversation, a proposal, a career decision — I don’t start with slides or bullet points.

I start with a blank page.

Before I outline anything, I ask myself a few questions.

Who am I presenting to?

Why am I presenting this?

Why does it matter?

What is the point of view I want to share?

Why should they listen to me?

Only after I sit with those questions do I move into structure. Then I outline. Then I build.

The difference is noticeable.

When I skip this prework and jump straight into formatting and structuring, the result is technically fine — but flat. It lacks depth. It feels drab. It sounds like information.

When I start with journaling, I internalize the message first. I ground myself in the why. I clarify my stance. I bring my own voice into it before anyone else’s expectations shape it.

It also does something subtle but important: it sharpens my confidence.

When I take the time to articulate why I am uniquely placed to deliver something — what perspective I bring, what experience informs it — I stop feeling like I am presenting borrowed ideas. I feel like I am leading.

That shift is not visible on the slide deck.

But it is visible in the room.

Journaling, for me, is not about documenting feelings anymore. It is how I think clearly before I act. It is how I strategize. It is how I align intention with execution.

If you have something important coming up, try this once.

Don’t start with the outline. Start with yourself.

You might be surprised at how much stronger the final output feels when the thinking has already been owned.

If this resonated, consider sharing it with someone who has a big meeting coming up.

Share

And if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own — tactical, reflective, or hard-earned — I’d love to hear from you. You can write a short note, talk it through with me, or share anonymously.

We’re building this archive together.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership.
What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention.

Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

I’m publishing one reflection a day, starting from early career and moving through the messy middle, to capture what usually gets lost. Today is about office politics and how to make it work for you.

So share and subscribe to read my next issues.

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There are certain phrases that immediately trigger discomfort, and “office politics” was one of them for me. Early in my career, I instinctively categorized it as something I did not want to engage with. It sounded manipulative, strategic in the wrong way, and disconnected from what I considered “real work.” I believed that if I focused on being competent, thoughtful, and reliable, that would be enough. Skill would win. Results would speak. And for a while, that belief held up.

College reinforces this mindset. You are taught technique. You learn how to code, analyze, design, present, solve. You are graded on output. The formula feels clean and rational: effort plus ability equals results. So when you enter corporate life, especially in tech, you naturally double down on technique. You assume that mastery of skill will translate into recognition and progression because that is the model you have always known.

But technique only gets you so far. It gets you hired. It earns you credibility. It builds trust in your ability to deliver. What it does not automatically give you is influence.

I remember the first time this became visible to me. I had worked deeply on a project that was technically strong and thoughtfully executed. Yet when decisions were being made about its future, the real conversation was happening in rooms I was not in. The outcome was not determined solely by the quality of the work. It hinged on alignment, sponsorship, visibility, narrative, and timing. I had optimized for the work itself. Others had optimized for how the work moved through the system.

That was the moment I realized I had mastered technique but ignored the rules.

Every team sport operates with rules. Without them, there is no structure, no coherence, no shared understanding of how to win. Corporate environments are no different. They are team games played by humans, and humans bring incentives, perceptions, alliances, trust, ego, and influence into every decision. These dynamics are not inherently unethical. They are simply part of organized human activity.

When I reframed office politics as “the rules of the game,” it stopped feeling dirty and started feeling legible. Instead of rejecting it, I began observing it. Who actually shapes decisions? Whose opinions carry disproportionate weight? How are priorities formed? What narratives travel across teams? Who frames the problem? Who summarizes the conclusion? None of this required manipulation. It required awareness.

It is important to distinguish this from toxic politics. There are environments where power is abused, where exclusion is systemic, where credit is intentionally withheld. Those realities exist and should not be minimized. But that is not the entirety of what people mean when they say “politics.” Much of what we label negatively is simply influence, coordination, and human behavior operating within a system that no one formally teaches.

The mistake I made early on was assuming that learning the rules meant compromising myself. I equated awareness of influence with becoming opportunistic. In reality, understanding the system does not require abandoning your values. It simply prevents you from being blindsided by outcomes that are shaped by factors beyond technical merit.

When you ignore the rules, you do not transcend the game. You just lose influence within it. And influence is not about ego; it is about being able to move good work forward. If you care about impact, you cannot afford to ignore the mechanisms that determine what gets prioritized, funded, and advanced.

What I wish I had known earlier is that you can learn the rules and still play in your own way. You can remain ethical, grounded, and aligned with who you are while understanding how power and perception move. In fact, as you grow, that understanding gives you the ability to shape those rules more intentionally. But you cannot change a system you refuse to understand.

Working in tech or corporate is a team sport. Studying the game is not selling out. It is maturing inside it.

If this resonated, feel free to:

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• share it with someone who might need it-

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It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
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Hello! I am Shradha- I’m writing this series because so much of what actually shapes a career never makes it into frameworks, books, or LinkedIn posts.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership.
What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention.

Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

I’m publishing one reflection a day, starting from early career and moving through the messy middle, to capture what usually gets lost. Today is about being the CEO of your career.

So share and subscribe to read my next issues.

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Early in my career, I believed something that felt reasonable that if someone had the title manager, surely they were responsible for managing me.

My growth. My aspirations. My trajectory.

That assumption quietly shaped how I showed up. What I learned much later is this:
your manager’s primary job is to manage the work, not your career.

They are accountable for outcomes, delivery, priorities, timelines. Your growth may matter to them, but it is rarely the thing they are evaluated on. Sometimes it’s supported. Sometimes it’s encouraged. Often, it’s incidental.

There are managers who genuinely invest in people. Who build others up thoughtfully and consistently. But they are rarer than we like to believe. And even the good ones operate within systems that reward delivery far more than development.

This belief doesn’t hurt you much early on.
It hurts you most in the middle.

Years in, when you look back and realize no one was really tracking your trajectory but you. When you did “everything right,” worked hard, delivered well, and still ended up with something that feels… fine. Good enough. Not wrong. Not intentionally shaped either.

What I didn’t understand early enough is that even with a great manager, outsourcing ownership of your career usually leads to a default path.

The shift happens when you stop seeing your manager as the driver and start seeing them as one input.

Someone who can support you.
Advocate for you when it aligns.
Open doors occasionally.

But not someone who will magically connect Point A to Point B on your behalf.

That bridge is yours to build.

That means being explicit about what you want, even when it feels uncomfortable. Bringing it up more than once. Following up when the answer is vague. Being visibly invested in your own direction. Seeking mentors outside your reporting line. Staying curious about how decisions are actually made. Asking questions you weren’t invited to ask. Not aggressive in tone- but persistent. Uncomfortably consistent.

Because the truth is, if your manager disappeared tomorrow, your career should still be moving in the direction you want. No one else can make that magic happen for you. But once you realize you’re in the driver’s seat, you’re far more powerful than you think.

Yes — this is a much cleaner and more mature frame.
You don’t need metaphors or hypotheticals here. What you’re describing is a personal gap analysis, done quietly and repeatedly.

Here’s a simple, grounded activity you can drop straight into the post. It aligns perfectly with your practice and doesn’t feel like a worksheet.

A simple gap check I return to often

A few times a year, I pause and do a quiet gap analysis for myself.

Nothing elaborate. Just three questions.

Where am I right now?
Not in titles or labels, but in skills, confidence, energy, and exposure.

What am I curious about next?
This could be public speaking. A new skill. A different kind of work. A leadership muscle. Or even rest.

What’s one small step that moves me closer?
Something I can do without waiting for permission. A conversation. A class. Writing something. Raising my hand. Practicing in private.

That’s it.

No five-year plans.
No manager sign-off.
Just an honest look at the gap and one intentional move toward it.

That’s how I stay in the driver’s seat of my career, even when everything else is uncertain.

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

• share it with someone who might need it-

Share

• or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership.
What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention.

Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

I’m publishing one reflection a day, starting from early career and moving through the messy middle, to capture what usually gets lost. Today is about Rejections

Rejection has a way of quietly turning into a label in corporate life.

You encounter it while looking for jobs. You encounter it when your ideas don’t land, when a proposal doesn’t move forward, when timing or priorities shift without explanation. Over time, those moments can start to stack, and without realizing it, you begin to carry rejection as something that says who you are, not just what happened.

Having experienced many forms of rejection across my career, this is what I wish I had understood earlier: rejection is information, not identity.

It is a signal. About timing. About fit. About context. About constraints you may not even be able to see yet. Very rarely is it a verdict on your capability or potential, but that distinction is easy to miss when rejection repeats itself.

What makes the biggest difference is not whether rejection happens, but how quickly you learn to read it. When rejection is treated as a personal verdict, it takes up space. It lingers. It requires recovery every single time. When it is treated as information, it becomes something you can work with. Something you can respond to.

At some point, I stopped picturing rejection as falling down or being pushed back. I started picturing it as an airport departures board. Flights change all the time. Some are delayed. Some are rerouted. Some are full. Some were never going where you thought they were going. None of that reflects the worth of the passenger standing there with a ticket.

So now, when rejection shows up, I try to slow it down just enough to understand what it’s telling me. I name what actually happened, without adding meaning to it. I ask myself what the signal might be pointing to. Is this about timing? Framing? Fit? Capacity? I don’t need a perfect answer. I just need one plausible explanation that doesn’t default to self-blame.

From there, I make a conscious choice. Sometimes that means adjusting and trying again. Sometimes it means rerouting. Sometimes it means letting something go without dragging it along as unfinished emotional business. The goal isn’t to feel unaffected by rejection. It’s to not let it harden into an identity.

If you’re early in your career, this is the part I wish someone had told me sooner: don’t store rejection as a story about yourself. Read it, respond to it, and keep moving. The faster you learn to do that, the lighter your journey becomes.

Rejection doesn’t mean you don’t belong on the path. It usually just means the route is updating.

The next time you face rejection, pause before responding to it emotionally and try this instead.

Write down what actually happened in one neutral sentence, as if you were describing it to someone else. Then ask yourself what this rejection might be signaling. You’re not looking for certainty, just a reasonable explanation that isn’t self-blame.

Finally, decide what this rejection asks of you next. Adjust and try again. Reroute. Wait. Or let it go intentionally.

Close the loop by finishing this sentence for yourself:
This rejection says something about ________, not about me.

You don’t need to feel good about rejection for it to lose its power. You just need to read it clearly and keep moving.

If you’re comfortable sharing, what’s a rejection you’re still carrying as a label instead of a signal?

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

• share it with someone who might need it

Share

• or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

Most career advice focuses on growth. More titles. More money. More leadership.
What’s missing are the quieter truths we learn along the way. The detours. The pauses. The seasons where work and life collide.

I’m writing this to build a shared archive of lived career experience. A collection of reflections from people who are a few steps ahead, in the middle, or simply paying attention.

Not advice. Not highlight reels. Just the things we wish we had known earlier.

I’m publishing one reflection a day, starting from early career and moving through the messy middle, to capture what usually gets lost.

When I was starting out, I thought a good career looked neat.

I believed success would be a clean, linear ladder.
If I did things right, worked hard, and kept getting the equivalent of A’s and A+’s, I would keep moving up.

Just like school.

New academic year. Next grade. Higher level.

I assumed careers worked the same way.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

In real careers:

• sometimes you score a C and still move up

• sometimes you score an A and stay in the same place

• sometimes you repeat the same “grade” for years, by choice or by force

That’s when I stopped thinking of careers as ladders.

And started thinking of them as journeys.

Journeys have landscapes.
Journeys have pauses.
Journeys have detours.

You don’t just climb one mountain forever.

Sometimes you stay in one place because you like it. Sometimes you move quickly because you’re restless. Often there isn’t a direct train, so you take a few unexpected connections to get where you’re going.

These days, I think less about climbing and more about creating itineraries.

I decide what I’m curious about.
What kind of season I’m in. What kind of “fun“ I’d like to have- beach bumming or , mountain hiking. And then I loosely map how I might get there.

For some people, their career is one tall mountain, and they keep climbing it relentlessly. That’s valid. For others, it’s a range of landscapes.

Both are careers.

So if you’re early in your journey, this is what I wish I had known:
there isn’t one right map.

It is choose your own adventure.

Lets Create Your Career Itinerary

Try out the itinerary template to create an understanding of your own career. Away from the shoulda coulda woulda when it comes to careers.

1. Where am I right now?
Role, season, energy level, life context

2. What landscape am I in?
Examples:

• climbing

• coasting

• recovering

• exploring

• rebuilding

3. What am I curious about next?
Skills, industries, ways of working, pace, identity shifts

4. What stays the same for now?
Things you are not trying to change this season

5. Possible routes (no commitment):

• a stretch project

• a conversation

• a lateral move

• staying put intentionally

• a pause

6. What would make this leg of the journey successful?
Not titles or grades. But how you want to feel or function.

If this resonated, feel free to:

• follow this series by subscribing

  Subscribe now

• share it with someone who might need it

  Share

• or DM me if you have a “what I wish I knew” of your own

It can be a short note, a conversation, or shared anonymously.
I’m slowly building this into a shared knowledge base, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

Not because I didn’t care. Because I was tired in a way that sleep does not fix. Also, I am learning to be consistent and what it looks like to me.

This piece was originally written in 2022 and first shared as a LinkedIn newsletter. I am republishing it here because I am slowly bringing all my writing into one home. But also because I have changed since I first wrote it. My thinking has softened. My urgency has slowed. My relationship with career, identity, and worth has matured.

What you are about to read is a story from an earlier version of me, told with the awareness I carry now. If you are in an in-between season, or feeling behind, or quietly questioning the role your career plays in defining your value, this one might land close to home. And share with someone who might need this in the strangers times we are in.

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We had just moved to the east coast when I was invited to a house party at a neighbor’s place. Begrudgingly, in the hope of making new friends for myself and my kids, we decided to stop by for a bit.

As the new person in the room, I smiled and nodded as I walked past a few people, looking for somewhere to sit. As soon as I did, a kind woman walked over to introduce herself.

The conversation began with our names, where we lived, and then the inevitable question.

“So Shradha, what do you do?”

Even now, I remember how quickly my body reacted. The pit in my stomach. The tightening in my throat. At the time, I thought I was just discomfort. Looking back, I see that I had lost the language I used to explain myself to the world.

In that moment, I could not answer. I did not know what I did or who I was.

I was on a career break. I could not accept the stay-at-home mom tag because until then I was deeply ambitious. I had come from India to the US to build something meaningful and to become someone.

After nearly three decades of planned and guided education and a steadily progressing career, this hiatus was the first time there was no charted path in front of me.

At the same time, I was learning to be a mother in a new place, without friends, without familiarity, and without the professional identity that had anchored my sense of value. All my life, my worth had been tied to my career.

I see now that I was not just grieving work. I was grieving visibility.

If one wants a fulfilling life, an environment filled with loneliness, confusion, and identity loss is rarely conducive. But that is often how career breaks unfold. Like much of society, I had tied my self-worth to professional output.

Who we are and what we do are two very different things. When we blur that line, psychologists call it enmeshment. Career enmeshment is just as likely during a pause or pivot as it is in a long, upward career.

Enmeshment is often reinforced by conditional worth. When productivity becomes proof of value, stillness feels unsafe.

When I eventually began job searching, I did what many of us do. I tried to be efficient. Identify roles. Rewrite resumes. Apply consistently.

Searching for a job without a strategy can feel like walking through a mirror maze. Every path looks right, but you do not make meaningful progress.

At the time, I thought clarity would come from choosing the right role. What I know now is that clarity often arrives only after we stop demanding certainty from ourselves.

There needed to be a foundation before the pillars of role clarity, interviews, and preparation could stand. Without that foundation, even landing a job would not allow me to show up fully.

Three things helped me begin rebuilding that foundation.

First, learning something new and building consistency. Picking up a new skill forces you into beginnerhood. It requires repetition without praise and effort without guarantees.

Second, rebuilding my network. Career breaks shrink your world. Days become inward-facing, shaped by routines and responsibilities.

Networking stopped being about leads and started being about reconnection. It reminded me that identity is relational, not just professional.

Third, owning my story. Career breaks are rarely impulsive. They are taken after deep contemplation or under circumstances that leave little choice.

Owning my story meant speaking about where I was without apology. I started describing myself as someone actively exploring her next chapter, learning, experimenting, and asking better questions.

This did not just change how others responded to me. It changed how I treated myself.

Wherever you are on the spectrum, actively re-entering, just beginning a break, or choosing a slower season intentionally, you can start laying this foundation.

What I know now is this. Enoughness does not arrive after the next role. It is something you practice alongside ambition.

When the ground beneath you is steady, everything else becomes easier to build.

If this resonated, you are not alone. Much of my writing lives in the space between ambition and enoughness, between growth and rest, between who we are and what we do.

I write here as part of my reflections from inside the work. About careers, identity, transitions, and the quieter questions we rarely make space for.

If you would like to stay with me as I explore these ideas, you can subscribe below. And if you know someone who might need this reminder right now, feel free to share it with them.

Thank you for being here.

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I don’t write career advice.
I write from lived experience, using everyday metaphors to explore how careers, leadership, and identity actually evolve.

These stories aren’t meant to be skimmed. They’re meant to slow you down. To help you notice something you may have been rushing past. To shift how you see your own career—just a little.

If something small changes inside you as you read, then this is working. I hope you come along for the ride.

Last year, I had the privilege to travel to Africa.

Not as a long-held dream or a meticulously researched plan. More as an act of trust. I showed up with imperfect packing, borrowed expectations, and very little understanding of what the trip would actually demand of me.

Africa, I learned quickly, is not a place you consume. It’s a place that asks something of you.

The days were long. The terrain was unforgiving. There was a lot of sitting, a lot of waiting, and very little control over how things unfolded. It wasn’t a trip designed for efficiency or optimization or even comfort. And yet, it gave me some of the most expansive moments I’ve experienced in my life.

Somewhere in those ten days, surrounded by vast skies and an unfamiliar relationship with time, I realized I was being forced into a posture I don’t practice often enough: simply being. Observing. Not rushing to meaning. Letting things reveal themselves at their own pace.

That mindset mattered more than I knew, especially on the day we went to see the great migration.

The great migration is a sight to behold, yes.
But what no one prepares you for is how much of it is spent waiting.

Before this trip, I used to wonder why the wildebeest crossing was such a big deal. We’ve all seen the photos, thousands of animals charging across a river, dust flying, water splashing, chaos and drama captured in a single frame. You assume that’s what you’re going to witness when you come to Africa.

What you don’t imagine is sitting in an open jeep for hours, unable to step out, watching wildebeests line up at the riverbank… and then do nothing.

They wait.
They hesitate.
They move forward, then pull back.

Cars around us start leaving. People get restless. They didn’t come all this way to watch indecision. They came for the moment, not the waiting that precedes it.

At first, I read the waiting as fear.

We’re told wildebeests hesitate because they’re checking for predators. They’re supposed to be reactive, nervous animals, driven by instinct and danger. And on the surface, that explanation fits. They line up, retreat, regroup. They try again somewhere else. They repeat the pattern.

But the longer I watched them, the less that story held.

This didn’t feel like chaos.
It didn’t feel panicked.

It felt intentional.

Almost contemplative.

They weren’t just deciding whether to cross. They were deciding when, where, and together. It felt like they were taking stock, of who was present, of what they were leaving behind, of whether this was the right moment to commit to something irreversible.

There were several moments when they decided this crossing wasn’t worth it. After hours of lining up, they turned back, every single one of them, and moved as a unit to find another point. We followed them from place to place, watching this collective change of heart unfold in real time.

And then, after nearly six hours of waiting, something shifted.

One wildebeest charged across the river.

And within seconds, thousands followed.

The speed was astonishing. The hesitation vanished. There was no debate left, only motion.

That kind of speed doesn’t come from impulse.
It comes from clarity.

From knowing this is the moment.
From trusting that others will follow.
From accepting what you’re leaving behind and believing you’ll reunite on the other side.

What struck me most was that the boldness everyone talks about didn’t come first. It came after the waiting.

And sometimes, even after all that waiting, the crossing doesn’t happen. That happened to us the day prior- but nothing went as planned.

We had planned our travel dates around this exact moment. We were at the riverbank on time. The wildebeests were feet away. “Any minute now,” we kept thinking.

An hour passed.
Then another.

And then they decided, this wasn’t the crossing.

We followed them to other points, hoping to catch the moment somewhere else. But by the end of the day, they had dispersed in different directions. It didn’t happen.

Earlier in my life, that would have disappointed me deeply. I would have fixated on the thing I came all this way to see and didn’t. I would have measured the day by what failed to unfold.

But this time, something felt different.

The day still gave us more than we had planned for.

A hot air balloon ride that felt like a National Geographic film.
Breakfast as giraffes, elephants, and zebras grazed nearby.
A bush lunch overlooking the endless Serengeti plains.
Unplanned sightings, elephant herds, crocodiles sunbathing, a shy hippo finally lifting its head.

The pursuit of the wildebeests led us to experiences we never set out to have.

And while we waited, really waited, I pulled out a pen and paper and doodled in the back of the safari jeep where my kids sat. It wasn’t good. But it was a beginning. And I was grateful for the stillness that allowed it.

The great migration isn’t just something you witness while traveling in Africa.

It’s a lesson in how change actually works.

That waiting is not weakness.
That hesitation can be wisdom.
That you’re allowed to change your mind.
That clarity often arrives quietly, and then all at once.
That once you know, you move fast.

I’ve learned that intentional careers ask for the same thing: long stretches of waiting where nothing looks like progress, but something is quietly aligning.

Because the most powerful thing I learned wasn’t how to leap. It was how to wait, without panicking.

If you’d like more reflections like this on careers, leadership, and the spaces in between—you can subscribe below. I write when there’s something worth sitting with.

This post was originally published as part of my LinkedIn newsletter in December of 2022. This is as relevant today as it was then. In an attempt to create one base for my newsletter, I will be republishing my LinkedIn newsletter—not as is, but updated with my further observations and learning. Hope you find value in this new addition.

As a candidate I always felt sorry for myself having to go through the job search process. Creating resumes, finding positions, applying, phone interviews and then in-person interviews. Rinse and repeat for weeks and months. The process is hard for regular job seekers. With a career gap that most people in the hiring world don’t know how to navigate, it becomes all the more harder. So no doubt the job seeker is a hard gig! But only after I started interviewing I realized that the interviewer has an equally hard job. I am here today to present the other side of the coin—the interviewer’s side.

Being a student of product management the biggest skill I have gained is to put myself in the customer/user’s shoes. This has helped me not only become better at my job but I also use this every chance I get in life. Applying empathy to the job search scenario—let us put ourselves in Mary’s shoes who is playing the part of an interviewer in our scenario. In product management we call it “persona” development.

Step 1: Let us build a world around our interviewer Mary Hawkins

Mary is a full time employee, a wife, mom and also interested in doing community outreach. She loves painting, but seldom gets any time for it. At work she has been with the company for 6 years and has been in several different roles. Currently, as the head of Product Management she is focused on launching 2 new products but is also recruiting for 2 positions in her team.

Step 2: Let us come up with her goals and some challenges she faces:

In addition to several meetings related to the launch she is working on she has to come up with a job description which takes several rounds of back and forth with her team and her boss.

She then gets it across to the HR somehow on time after the budget passed.

She will then figure out who all from her team will be interviewing and make sure they have their calendars up to date. This process keeps repeating for several candidates that they have to meet with. Aligning calendars across everyone soon becomes a huge roadblock.

Finally Mary and her team start receiving resume bundles with at least a 100 resumes that they have to sort through before starting to schedule interviews in the next 2 weeks. Going through 100s of resumes in such a short time means she has to rely on scanning it to sort and whittle it down to a handful. Even a list of 5 potential candidates means at least 5 working days that need to be dedicated towards the interviews at the very least.

Then set aside time every week in your schedule to meet, amid their core roles and responsibilities. They have a very small amount of time to make these decisions.

There is a huge churn involved in interviewing a candidate. We haven’t even gotten to getting a final candidate and ready to hire, where negotiations happen.

Why am I sharing this?

To spread awareness around the churn involved in the interview process.

Because I wasn’t aware that there is a monumental amount of preparation that goes in interviewing candidates. I figured it is just me who is spending their time preparing. But it wasn’t until I started to interview candidates for roles in my organization I realized that the interviewers don’t have it easy either.

When you go into the interview, show empathy and ask questions about their day. Be armed with enough information to carry out the discussion by doing prior research. This will give you an insight into what they are going through. Be thankful for their time in person and via email.

So you can make it easy for everyone by being memorable—when they can only afford 30 mins to figure out who to move forward with—be that person who gets talked about in that meeting. Tell them stories and something they can relate to.

I hope I am able to share the interviewer’s side of the story. They want to hire you as much as you want to be hired. Make it easy on them by being authentic, turning the interview into a discussion and being memorable. And if you do all of the above and it doesn’t work out, let us chalk it up to not a good fit for each other.

Updated Reflections (2025)

Since originally writing this, I’ve had the opportunity to interview more candidates—this time from within our broader team. These were colleagues coming from launch readiness testing roles, hoping to pivot into tech product management. This experience gave me yet another perspective on what makes interviews challenging—not just for the interviewer, but for candidates themselves.

Here’s what stood out:

1. Preparation matters more than you think. Many candidates came into the interview without first reaching out to understand what the product manager role actually involves. If they had invested even a short conversation before the interview, so many of their questions—and uncertainties—would have been cleared up in advance.

2. Transferable skills need a spotlight. None of the candidates were able to articulate how their existing skills could map to the product management role. This was a missed opportunity. The ability to translate past experience into future value is one of the most powerful tools you can bring into an interview.

3. Job descriptions are not just paperwork. Some candidates hadn’t read the job description carefully enough to answer basic questions, such as those about the software development life cycle (SDLC). It showed immediately. The job description is not just for HR—it’s your blueprint for how to prepare.

If the original lesson was about showing empathy for interviewers, this new chapter is about owning your side of the table as a candidate. Interviews are not one-sided. Just as interviewers have to juggle calendars, resumes, and meetings, candidates must come prepared to show curiosity, initiative, and alignment.

Because at the end of the day—empathy goes both ways.

If this piece gave you a pause, a plan, or a spark, take it into your own work or life storm — and tell someone about it. We’re all better when the ship keeps moving.