What we talked about
Shira Krishnan charts her path from hands-on engineer to product leader at Fivetran, the global leader in data movement. Shira explains why she traded pull requests for product briefs, how she rewired her mindset from “how do we build it?” to “why does it matter?”, and the frameworks she now uses to make hard trade-offs between reliability, speed, and business impact. We dig into the nuts and bolts of “just-works” data pipelines, the chaos of changing SaaS APIs, and what it really takes to serve AI/ML, analytics, and operational workloads at enterprise scale. Shira also shares candid lessons from early PM missteps, the mentors who helped her navigate the transition, and how she keeps her technical edge sharp without living in the codebase. If you’re an engineer eyeing product, or a PM wrestling with deep technical products, this episode is your roadmap:plus a peek at how AI is reshaping both product work and software engineering careers.
Show notes
Shira Krishnan declined a PhD offer from Georgia Tech, wrote her father a two-page essay justifying the decision, and took a job at Cisco instead, a choice that set off a career arc that eventually led her to found a marketplace startup, join an e-commerce platform that got acquired by Infosys, and land in product leadership at Fivetran. The thread running through all of it is the same question she kept asking as an engineer: not how to build something, but why anyone would buy it over something else.
What we covered
- The moment that unlocked her interest in product management came while celebrating a successful Cisco release. She asked her PM whether the feature she had worked on was actually moving the needle for customers or just checking a compliance box on an RFP. When she couldn’t get a satisfying answer quickly, she realized a PM would have known from the start, and that gap in business context became the pull that eventually drew her out of engineering.
- At Cisco, she joined a data center team that went from pre-revenue to one billion dollars in revenue during her time there. Watching a product grow from nothing to that scale, with what she describes as a lot of really smart people solving hard problems, gave her a close-up view of innovation, but also highlighted how much of the why behind product decisions stayed invisible to engineers.
- She founded Event Yoda, a marketplace for team building events, which she ran for about three years. The experience of talking directly to customers, understanding their problems, and translating those problems into buildable solutions reinforced that product-customer interaction was where she wanted to operate, not just in the code.
- Her framework for balancing technical debt against new features is context-dependent and business-first: if reliability is at 99.9% and a new feature would accelerate expansion revenue, you build the feature. If a core function is broken, she uses the ATM cash dispensing example, you fix it immediately, regardless of priority queues.
- She was a judge at a hackathon where a 10-year-old won first place by building a prototype for an AI-powered personalized learning tool for schools, solving a problem the kid actually experienced in his own classroom. The other participants were all working professionals, and none of them beat his problem statement, feature prioritization, or demo quality.
- Her advice for engineers considering a move into product: start asking why behind everything you build, be curious about jobs outside your own, finance, design, sales, and use that curiosity to identify a real problem you could pitch to leadership. That pitch becomes your case for the transition, and it’s more convincing than any resume update.
About Shira
Shira Krishnan is a product manager at Fivetran, the global data movement company, where she focuses on pricing infrastructure for consumption-based pricing, a role she describes as both deeply technical and highly customer-facing. She holds a graduate degree in computer engineering from Georgia Tech and previously founded a marketplace startup and held a PM role at Scaba prior to its acquisition by Infosys.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirakris
- Website: https://www.fivetran.com
Episode 56 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01.868) Welcome back to the Priveted Podcast, where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Our guest today is Shira Krishnan. I apologize for pronouncing your name. She’s a former engineer turned product leader at Fybetran, the global leader in data movement. We’ll unpack her jam from engineering to product management.
the mindset shift that came with it and how she now balances technical depth with business impact. Hello Shira, how are you doing today?
Shira Krishnan (00:41.633) Hi, Friedrico, really nice to meet you and be at this podcast.
Federico Ramallo (00:48.792) Great, I am happy to have you here. And I think today’s a very interesting topic because I have a similar experience where I’ve been doing software engineering and I’ve been doing product ownership. so I understand some of the struggles. So I hope to provide my insights as well.
and hearing yours. So let’s start about how you started your career in engineering. Tell us a little bit about that.
Shira Krishnan (01:20.875) Yeah, absolutely.
Shira Krishnan (01:31.733) Yeah, so I was born in India, born and raised in Bangalore. growing up, I was really interested in math and science. And I was truly also fortunate to be encouraged to pursue that in my undergraduate. So I graduated and then
At the end of my graduation I was like, what should I be doing? And that was like the time when tech was booming in India. The tech actually started to boom in Bangalore. And I did get a couple of job offers from software companies with really, really good initial offers in Bangalore. And I was like, sweet, this feels like I’ve made it. But then I had also sort of applied to
I studied at different places across the world and I happened to get admits from a couple universities in Europe and also in the US. I just figured that would be my one shot to travel and maybe bring my experiences back home to India. So I picked Georgia Tech. was like farthest away from home and when you’re…
when you’ve just finished college, that’s what you want to do is like literally like be as far away from parents as possible. And so that’s kind of how I landed here. And then I finished graduate school. I did computer engineering for a couple of years and then it was 2009.
There weren’t too many jobs, but I was really fortunate to start at Cisco. I’d interned there and they gave me a return offer. And it was this really interesting program called Cisco Choice, where you literally got to reverse interview your manager and pick the group you wanted to go join. And the reason was corporate was paying for one year of our salary. And so a lot of teams were actually interested in the head count because it was free labor.
Shira Krishnan (03:49.355) And it was a really good experience. I kind of experienced like all of the breadth of what Cisco had to offer in terms of engineering. Within that like one month, then I picked data center because that was like the thing that was booming then. And I felt like that would be, I would be in the middle of all of the action. And you know, that’s kind of why I chose to come to the Bay Area and not go back to India at that point. And so.
I’ve been here ever since. know, life takes a, you know, it has different designs compared to what you plan to do, right? So, yeah, I started Cisco as software engineer and as I grew in my career, like one of the things that always like kind of felt missing as an engineer is like larger business context and the why behind some, you know, product decisions and
why behind certain things that we’re building. I had a fantastic onboarding within the data center group. Like we hadn’t, were pre-revenue and by the time I left, were a billion dollars. And so that I got to see that like tremendous growth and obviously like Cisco, you know, being the large enterprise networking company, you know, they pulling their full, you know, muscle behind that product, like really did help it succeed, but also like,
think the innovation up close was really inspiring for me. And there were like a lot of really, really smart, talented people that kind of came together to solve hard challenges. But like the business context was missing. And that’s when I kind of realized that I maybe even though I like the technical piece, I like knowing the why and figuring out the why more. And that’s kind of, you know,
That kind of stayed with me and then I at some point decided that I wanted to make that transition and the shift and I started an e-commerce platform company, like a marketplace company called Event Yoda, which is a marketplace for team building events and we did that for about three years.
Shira Krishnan (06:13.047) and during that journey, the thing that really, again, resonated with me, it was like the why and the product market fit talking to customers, solving, understanding their problem and translating those problems into practical solutions that we can actually go build. think like that, you know, along with technical depth, you know, depth is what, I think really inspired me to make that transition into product management.
And so then I became a product manager at Scaba, which is an e-commerce platform company that got acquired by Infosys. And then after four years there, I joined Vytran as PM for pricing and buying. Again, the overlap is the buying piece. And then now I do a lot of pricing infrastructure for consumption-based pricing, which is deeply technical, but also
Federico Ramallo (07:12.408) Right.
Shira Krishnan (07:12.943) very, very customer facing. it just having that engineering background has always helped me go into the technical depth, interact with engineers at their level. But again, like be able to surface back up and talk to customers and be that person that can translate and speak both worlds.
Federico Ramallo (07:37.654) Interesting, interesting. Wow, what a journey.
Shira Krishnan (07:40.823) Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (07:43.816) So in Argentina, the, I’m from Argentina, moved to Mexico 17 years ago. And I’ve been working with different companies in the U.S. forever. So in Argentina, when the kids want to leave the house, they have more freedom to do that. Usually the parents are more like open to that.
In Mexico, what I found is that they are more conservative in that sense. So it’s like, if you’re going to leave the house, you have to leave the house married, right? That’s kind of the theme there, right? I’m wondering how is, in general in India, how is the culture related to that?
Shira Krishnan (08:26.561) you
Shira Krishnan (08:37.015) You know, the thing is anything I say about India, I’ll be wrong because there are different Indians, right? Like it’s such a diverse place in my family. It was totally fine. Like if it was for education, they kind of encouraged it. In fact, I actually got I passed the PhD prelims at Georgia Tech and I got invited to pursue my PhD at Georgia Tech and I declined because I was like,
I don’t feel like I can last that long and be that focused for that long on a single problem. And my dad was at that time was really upset about that. He was like, this is such a great opportunity. You should totally pursue it. And then I had to write him a two page essay on why I don’t, I should not be pursuing PhD and I should go take that job at Cisco. And so it’s a little bit like my situation’s a little bit different.
I don’t know if this is all of India, but a lot of my friends were in the similar board. um, so yeah.
Federico Ramallo (09:43.438) Right, right. Yeah, my, I met my wife in, in Colima, it’s a small town and she, her family is from Ciudad Guzman, which is another city that it’s 45 minutes away. And she kind of did, you know, it was a shorter distance, but still, you know, she moved, she moved to Colima to study and that’s where we met, right. And we started dating. So, so yeah, the, the,
It was a very unique situation because usually families in Mexico don’t allow their kids to go out in the world. They’re more holding that. So it’s interesting to learn about your experience in that regard.
Shira Krishnan (10:36.241) Yeah, yeah. I guess like the other thing about like India, in my engineering college, half of the class was women, which is very different from my experience here at Georgia Tech. So, you know, when I came here, a lot of them,
would be like, wow, you’re an engineer but you’re like a woman. I would be like, yeah, it didn’t seem like that big a deal like when I was in India, but like it apparently is a big deal here. So yeah, there’s that.
Federico Ramallo (11:17.678) When I was studying in Argentina engineering, was 90 % men, right? I can understand that difference.
Shira Krishnan (11:31.563) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (11:33.4) So what sparked your interest in product management?
Shira Krishnan (11:40.759) I think I distinctly remember like we were celebrating wins around, you know, success of our first release and how like successful it was. And I really wanted to understand like, why would somebody buy our product versus somebody else? Like the competitive analysis and kind of like understanding like the needs of the customer. And I was working on a very core feature within Cisco.
And my piano at time was like, yeah, this is every RFP I fill, this is a default feature that they require. And I was like, that’s great. But is it a needle mover, or is it just something that they check off? Is it a box that they check off, or is it something that’s actually making a difference in their life? And it took me a little bit to…
dig into that and get that perspective. And I felt like I could have gotten that more and more quickly if I was a PM. And so I think, I think that’s where it clicked. And I kind of started talking to more people and I was like, you know, I talked to my PM at that time and talked to other PMs. And I was like, what is it that you guys do? Because it was not a very well known profession at that time being a product manager as it is today. It was not like
You know, it was not the sexiest thing to do back then. And so at least in my experience. so it took me a little bit to figure out what it is PMS do actually.
Federico Ramallo (13:19.566) Right. When I train software engineers, I tell them about that they need to understand what is the value for the user, the why. Why are they building what they’re building? Because when you’re in a team and there are a lot of moving parts, it’s easy to lose the vision and ask a lot of questions to the product owners.
Why? And sometimes they don’t know the answer because they haven’t done a good job on them understanding the user. So I usually explain that the mission of the software engineer is to build soft features that has impact on the users, that are solving the user’s needs. And the product owner is the facilitator for that.
But it’s our responsibility as software engineers to be able to understand that. So we can build software that makes sense. So when we are building automated tests, instead of saying, it works based on my expectations, we can say, well, it works based on the user’s expectations, or where the user is going to get value.
Shira Krishnan (14:46.709) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s why we’re building software, right? So someone can use it and feel like it solved their real problem. So yeah.
Federico Ramallo (14:56.802) Right. Yeah. I always give the example of the ATM. If you go to the ATM and you want to take money, cash out, right? But there’s so many steps to get that working, right? So it’s as if one of those steps are wrong, then the whole, it’s not a transect, the transaction breaks, right? So it is important to follow that procedure correctly, right? So…
but understanding that at the end of the day, the user wants to take cash out, right? That’s most of the times you want, you go to an ATM, right? Or to deposit, but most of the time you want cash, right? Anyway, I use that example because that’s a good example of a transactional use, right? Yeah.
Shira Krishnan (15:47.093) Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. At the end of the day, like if a user does not get that money when they go into the ATM, they’re going to be so upset and it’s going to be such a bad user experience. They, you know, there’s a bank takes a reputation hit, you know, the user is upset. There’s downstream impact. Maybe they may withdraw the money from the bank and go back and get a different bank. So there is just so much that could happen because of that one negative experience.
that I think just getting those aha moments right is so important.
Federico Ramallo (16:22.19) Right. And when you see that, because you can physically see the money coming in and out, or coming out of the machine and you’re grabbing it. I use that example because I can say, what are the most important things you need to test? Because if when you release break, they, sorry, I cannot give you cash. That’s important. So we have to focus on that to make sure that that works. Anyway, it’s…
That understanding of the user, think that’s the key. What your engineer peers, how they reacted when they started to move into product.
Shira Krishnan (17:08.247) It was at a different company, so I guess it was not the same peers But I do have very I do have really really smart engineering peers here at 5Tran They’re based in Serbia And they’re very very like product focused and 5Tran is also very technical company and so
I feel like I’ve been really blessed with amazing engineering partners that really understand not only the technical depth, like you said, ask the right questions and you know, peer engineering manager director, they all kind of help problem solve together. And so that has also been just a fun experience to being on the other side of it.
to be able to collaborate with smart people on the engineering team and be problem solve together has been just fantastic.
Federico Ramallo (18:14.338) Right, right, interesting. So this is your first role as a PM, right, in this company.
Shira Krishnan (18:24.151) it’s, want to say my third role. First was the startup. Second, I did everything. the startup and that, the e-commerce platform company was my second. and then this is my third. so I’ve had, I’ve had varied experiences, but I, I’ve got to say like hands down, my current engineering team is like one of the smartest.
Federico Ramallo (18:34.638) You
Shira Krishnan (18:52.609) people I’ve worked with as a product manager.
Federico Ramallo (19:01.038) How do you balance technical depth with business priorities?
Shira Krishnan (19:07.863) That’s an interesting question, you know, and it really depends on prioritization, I would say. It all starts at like the business priority, right? Like is the business priority increasing reliability, for instance, then you go fix your tech dads to make the system robust and more reliable.
But if reliability is at the number you want it to be at, let’s say it’s at 99.9 % and you know, like, yeah, there are like some straggler ones, but like, you know, you could push it off by another quarter and it’s not going to like be really bad. Then, and there is like another need for the business, you know, maybe moving revenue or reducing like increasing expansion or whatever, like other new features that’s going to be to customers benefit the new.
prioritize that versus if something that you built really is leading to suboptimal customer benefit for instance, you you’ve built ATM and like money doesn’t come out then you fix that technical debt ASAP right now. So yeah, I really think it depends on what the priority is. At the end of the day, we’re solving this user problems no matter what.
whether it’s technical data or it’s a brand new feature or it’s like enhancing an existing feature. It’s about what is the priority and what needs to be the focus.
Federico Ramallo (20:49.208) Right, right, yeah. I understand.
What do you think are the things that are changing on the product management role?
Shira Krishnan (21:04.023) Yeah, I’m sure like every podcast guest or yours is gonna talk about AI like that’s just a thing That’s that’s the reality of our world right now and it’s it’s Such an exciting time to be alive to be honest. I And I feel lucky that I’ve been part of two such right like I grew up in Bangalore during early 2000s when I
tech boom was actually happening and I could actually see that like skyline changing Bangalore was a retirement city. Like it was like always in the seventies people would go there to actually retire. And from that to it becoming like the tech city in India, like that transition was quite remarkable and happened over like two, three years basically. And the AI booms like even shorter.
timeframe and so AI is here, some of it may be hype, but there is so much goodness that it is going to change our work lives and our life forever, I think.
Federico Ramallo (22:20.908) Yes, yes, I agree. I didn’t want to lead the question, but yes, there’s a lot of AI is changing a lot the role of PM and it’s also changing the role of software engineer as well, Building product is changing.
Shira Krishnan (22:35.159) Yep.
Shira Krishnan (22:39.723) Yeah, yeah. And, there’s going to be growing pains. there, there’s going to be like AI hallucination. There’s going to be like incorrect answers by quoting breaking stuff, like all of that. Yeah. But it doesn’t take away from like that tectonic shift that we’re seeing like my day to day. Like there’s not a day that I don’t use chat GPT like, in my, for my work, like when I’m writing requirements, I’m like using that. So I don’t have like a blank page problem.
using that to like validate my site you know like to to gut check things or to if I don’t have analytics you know resources to run like quick analysis for things or to give me like gut check my like querying like for my analytics stuff or to understand something that I don’t really understand I you know it’s replaced my search basically so
So yeah, I think there’s a lot of value in leveraging all of the things that AI, the capabilities of AI, and there is just a lot more. And I’m only scratching the surface. mean, there’s just a lot more things that we could be doing. And then also for software engineering, like GitHub Copilot, for instance, it’s just such a tremendous value add for engineering time.
Federico Ramallo (24:09.08) Yes, yes, I did a hackathon last weekend.
was one of the sponsors and they gave us a month free of their copilot version, whatever it’s called. And it’s amazing how much high level task you can ask and it can do that automatically. And then it’s frustrating because it makes mistakes in the most silly things that it’s like you feel it.
all this stuff out but then you make this silly mistake and when you want to fix it, know, it kind of like it itself, you know, it’s a yeah, it’s very interesting to see. So instead of fighting with it, you have to learn how to, you know, guide it in the right direction, provide more specific prompts of what you want, right? Try to provide more smaller tasks, right?
Yeah, but it took me a while to figure that out, right? Yeah. And the same on doing a…
doing analysis, getting information, summarizing information. It’s becoming better and better. I’ve seen this year much better responses than before.
Shira Krishnan (25:39.019) Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s just like exponential leaps. Also, I do want to say like, you know, the next generation or like the generation after, there’s going to be AI native and it’s going to be interesting to see like their design patterns. It’s going to be so different from ours. That, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (26:07.074) Yes, yes, but I have a conflicting opinion about that, right? Because, bless you, because the…
So we as human, learn by doing. So when you are by coding, it’s great because you can build something fast. But the first problem is that you haven’t done it, so you don’t understand how it actually works. It is done, but you don’t understand how to build it yourself.
So it is less efficient, but it’s in the doing that we learn. So we have this tool that is interesting, but it could also be a limitation for our learning.
Then on the other hand, the LLMs, they can guesstimate how to build something. They can guess based on the average of the code that they’ve seen. But they don’t understand how to abstract or how to design an architecture or how to design a component that is going to work for the future needs.
So, Vibe coding has that limit right now where, you know, for prototyping is great, but if you want to implement it in production on a bigger application, then you start having these issues of, you know, of limited context or not being able to understand the whys, right? Which, you know, we come back to the importance of the product manager’s role, right?
Federico Ramallo (28:09.614) So, yeah, of course.
Shira Krishnan (28:09.985) Yeah.
No, was going to say it’s interesting like that you you your perspective there. I actually have a more optimistic perspective. Yes, things are not great now. Right. Like we’re at ground zero and anytime that is happening, it’s not great. Like we’re we’re the guinea pigs of the of the AI era in some sense. But I was a judge at a hackathon last
Federico Ramallo (28:36.929) Ha ha!
Shira Krishnan (28:42.177) weekend, this past weekend, and guess who won the award? A 10 year old came to the hackathon, wipe coded his idea of like enabling learning at learner space for schools. And it’s a, he was saying it’s a challenge that he faces in his day to day. Like he’s great at some subjects and he wants to move ahead and some others he’s not. And he wants, he wants AI to help him like leap frog and
Federico Ramallo (28:48.676) really?
Shira Krishnan (29:11.521) help him in other areas that he’s not good at, like at least baseline and catch up. So he actually built a prototype, like in six hours, a 10 year old doing that, like, know, and he’s not a software engineer. He doesn’t know how intricate details work. And he’s able to like think of a problem, come up with a solution and demonstrate at least a prototype. And that…
to me is very refreshing to see. like all of the other participants at least were 18 years and up. They were all like working professionals and his idea and his lab quality of demo and his problem statement and the why and you know, all the way through the demo, like prioritization features, all of that, like was so rock solid. You could not have told that it’s a 10 year old that built it. And so like that gives me hope.
that we’re just at ground zero and this is going to become so much better as it evolves over the next few years that we’re just going to like, not be able to do our jobs without it.
Federico Ramallo (30:27.138) Right, right. Interesting, interesting that a 10 year old will win the hackathon. In my hackathon, a project manager won the hackathon. And it was mostly software engineers, right? So I find that fascinating as well. And it supports what you’re saying that now…
And I agree with you that the LLMs, the AI allows with vibe coding, it gives access to building stuff to a lot more people, right? That, I mean, before HTML and JavaScript in the 90s, right? You would need to compile everything. Before that, you would… And my mom told me this, so I…
I haven’t experienced that, but she would write the instruction on a piece of paper and then type it into a machine that would basically put ink on different spots and that big piece of paper with the instructions, she would need to schedule a time to get the computer time to get the input.
And then the output would be another piece of paper, a pile of papers. And then she would analyze and debug if what she did was correct or wrong. So a cycle will take weeks. So every cycle will take one week or two until you get access to the computer. was one computer for the whole university. So the access to that type of…
building software has been, you know, that barrier has been lower and lower and now more people can do that, right? So, yeah, I agree with you that an AI could help on that sense, My concern or, you what I was discussing before is that the 10-year-old would only be able to build code with AI, right?
Federico Ramallo (32:52.588) And then it can get to a point where if the AI doesn’t understand the abstractions, then that project can get stuck at that point because it will be hard for the 10-year-old to give the specific instructions to move it forward. I’ve seen it myself when I buy code and I…
build stuff and I realized, okay, this is not working, but because I spent time fighting with JavaScript or whatever, I kind of understand what’s going on, right? So I needed to have that knowledge in order to guide the ChachiPT better, right? Otherwise it would be like shooting blind, Like you don’t know what the target is because you don’t understand what’s going on.
Yeah, but
Shira Krishnan (33:53.207) Yeah, I agree. think that’s like I said, I mean, look, where are the guinea pigs there? There’s like definitely a lot of problems. But I also think there’s a lot of opportunity. Like think about the startups you could build that bridges this gap, right? Between somebody that understands JavaScript and this 10 year old. There could be a translation layer that somebody builds and solves for that actually makes
this translation work that fights with, you know, LLMs that does like all of these things that we’re, we’re like struggling with. That’s a great business to be in, in my mind, you know.
Federico Ramallo (34:33.974) Yes, yes, I agree. mean, the amount of opportunities are now available. It’s the greenfield opportunities that were not available before, thanks to AI, are huge, right? I was talking with a friend that it’s similar to the level of opportunities or more than we had back in
1999, 2000s, where there were so many greenfield opportunities that you could do now, because the technology catch up to a point where you could do that, right? Yeah, so, so yeah, it’s interesting. I’m interested to see how the LLMs are going to evolve because they’re evolving very quickly, where these type of problems that we’re discussing now are not going to be an issue in the future.
Shira Krishnan (35:32.533) Yeah, and look, I don’t want to paper over issues, right? There’s ethics issues. There’s like, are samples, you know, are the modeling, is the modeling done correctly on the right data set? Like the data set itself may be like not representative of everybody else, you know, in the world. Does it interpret results fairly? Like there’s ethical issues. There’s just like whole set of problems that are yet to be figured out. Yes.
But I have faith in humanity. We’ll figure it out, you know, together.
Federico Ramallo (36:08.546) Yes, yes, I agree.
Isaac Asimov wrote about some of these, where he wrote about this bionic man that never dies, basically replaces part of his body until he lives forever. And spoiler alert if you haven’t read the book, but what happens is that he went on generations and generations, right, learning about new stuff that was coming up.
And then it got to a point where people around him would learn about something new. They didn’t describe exactly what it was, but… And I remember this for many years, I read this book, so probably I’m butchering the story, but anyways… So everybody would learn about the new stuff and he was unable to catch up. He realizes that this is a point where I can no longer keep up with the new world, right?
And that’s the moment where he decided to retire. Let’s call it retire. But anyway, it’s interesting because in that sense, every new kid that’s born comes with a fresh mind. Imagine if we had all the memories, we grow up as a kid and we have all the memories of
all the society or whatever, then the society is doomed, the humanity is doomed. But with every kid there is hope, because now you have a blank slate. You can change culture, you can change everything with new generations. And they can adapt, as you said, to the new tools.
Shira Krishnan (38:06.177) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I have a 15 month old and it’s just amazing. All of the stuff he’s learning. He already knows how to like take pictures and take videos of himself. And I’m like, we don’t allow any screen time. He we have not taught him anything, but he just knows how to use our phones. So, you know, like it’s just amazing how how like fresh clean slate, like you said, you know.
you know, kids can actually absorb new things because they are not prejudiced by previous knowledge and information. So yeah, you’re absolutely right. I do think like every day, like I learned something new from him.
Federico Ramallo (38:53.57) Right, right. Congratulations on the new baby. What happened with me, I have a 10 year old. So what happened with me is that I, know, we get used to so many things, right? That we get to a point where less and less things surprises, right? Or woe us, right? So, but with the babies is everything’s new, right? So that’s…
Shira Krishnan (39:17.121) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (39:23.614) That energy is contagious, right? So it’s a great weight because you relive all that, all your childhood through your kids, right?
Shira Krishnan (39:25.111) Yeah.
Shira Krishnan (39:44.895) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (39:48.418) Yeah. One thing I recommend you do is there is a YouTube channel. she has videos as well, but it’s called Signing Time. And it learns, it teaches the baby sign language because they can communicate with signs before they can talk. So.
Shira Krishnan (40:10.585) nice.
Shira Krishnan (40:15.873) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (40:18.638) Now our son kind of forgets the signs, But he was able to say more milk. we learned the songs and we’ll sing the song with him. So anyway, we enjoyed as well because it’s a good way to communicate with the baby 10 years ago, right?
Shira Krishnan (40:25.74) Mm-hmm.
Shira Krishnan (40:31.041) Yep.
Federico Ramallo (40:47.234) But anyway, I suggest you see that because it’s a good way to learn to have a basic communication with the baby. Or at least it worked for me as a dad, where it’s harder for me to talk.
Shira Krishnan (41:00.695) Yeah, no, that’s such a good tip. you. Yes, no, give me all the tips. There is so much to learn. It takes a village to raise a child, I think. So I will take all the tips.
Federico Ramallo (41:18.302) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, um, usually the moms can understand better the kids, you know, it’s instantly and for, for the dad is more, you know, take us a little while. So I said that these helped me to communicate a little bit better with, with my son. So, yeah. I’m happy to give you more tips offline. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, what’s next?
Shira Krishnan (41:39.669) Yes. Yeah. Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (41:46.254) What’s next on your journey? What are you excited to learn? To learn next?
Shira Krishnan (41:53.171) I I mean we touched on this a little bit, like I’m really excited for the world we live in. I’m really excited for this tectonic shift. But I still think fundamentally, I’m excited, still excited to be a PM because at the end of the day, AI is a tool, but what we’re doing is solving user needs and business problems and that’s not gonna change necessarily.
how we do it and how we solve it will change. But fundamentally, deciding is a problem worth solving? Is it a priority? How do you think about how to solve it within your ecosystem? How do you get buy-in? How do you communicate with your stakeholders? That’s not changing. And I think those…
skills as a PM like you can always like carry forward to to this AI world I think.
Federico Ramallo (42:58.22) Yes, yes, agree. software engineers lives these industry revolutions much faster than any other role, right? Because the technology changes faster. one of benefits of product owners and product managers is that the people’s problems, I mean,
Maybe the tools we use to manage would change, but the people’s problem remains pretty much the same because we’re pretty much the same animals, right?
Federico Ramallo (43:43.864) So one last question before we wrap it up. I want to be respectful of your time. What advice would you give to young engineers that are considering jumping to the PM role and follow that career?
Shira Krishnan (44:04.213) Yeah, think start with the why behind everything you’re building. Like be curious. I think curiosity is like the number one trait. Like be really curious, ask good questions, even at your work. Try to understand like why behind what you’re building. So one, you’re building really good product. Two, you’re developing really good product instincts. And three, if you ask a lot of questions, they will make you a product manager.
So I would say like start with the questions Be curious not just about your job, but about like other people’s jobs within your company because you never know You know like be curious about like your co-worker in finance and be curious about your co-worker in design and you know like in sales and you
Federico Ramallo (44:35.288) Ha ha ha ha.
Shira Krishnan (45:02.263) you will uncover other ancillary problems that you could then go back to your leadership and say, hey, this is what I want to solve and this is why I want to be a PM and let me come help you solve that and this is my path. So you can actually lay down what you’re going to solve, what the need is, why they should hire you. And you have all of the engineering context and then just…
getting this layer on top, like for business contacts will actually help you make that switch within your org. And even if you don’t make that switch within your org, it actually develops your product instinct and you can go to that somewhere else.
Federico Ramallo (45:43.534) Right, right, right, right. Maybe I can ask you one last question and then this is the last one I promise. So what advice would you give to young engineers or young people that are considering to move all the way from another country? Could be India, could be, I moved from Argentina.
What advice would you give them?
Shira Krishnan (46:20.875) Hmm. I think just knowing, like expanding your knowledge regardless, right? Like whether you move from, I know people that have moved from other countries to India. Like I had a friend that moved from Nigeria to India to study in my college. And so when you do that, like when you actually like are exposed to different culture and I know like friends that go to like Europe for summer, like, you know, internships and things like that. So.
When you do that, you not only pick up language skills, you pick up different culture, you get a more deeper appreciation for us as humanity. Our cultures may be different, but at the end of the day, we’re all the same. We’re social, we care about our families, we really care about our ecosystem. We have the same…
you know, emotions, right? So like we have the same basic needs. We want to feel comfort. We want to feel that safety and security. So I think like you just get a deeper appreciation for like humanity in general and you just become more empathetic. So I highly encourage like being exposed to as many different cultures as possible. So like you, you get that well-rounded empathy.
So yeah, like you don’t actually have to move like countries, but traveling in general is great also.
Federico Ramallo (47:58.19) So Sheera, thank you very much for joining us today. And I’m looking forward to continue the conversation.
Shira Krishnan (48:05.655) Thank you so much for having me. This was such a fun chat.
Federico Ramallo (48:09.346) Great. I’m glad that you had fun. Yeah. Thank you.
So I put a marker because I cannot stop recording. Usually I stop recording. this is, yes, it was so much fun. I appreciate you being here. I I’m happy to know you a little bit better and share your experience with the audience. yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll send you an email.
Shira Krishnan (48:22.615) Did you have fun? This is so much fun. Thank you so much for having me.
Federico Ramallo (48:44.59) with the Videos that I was talking about and I’ll see see my wife as well Because she’s going to have a lot of tips
Shira Krishnan (48:50.679) Yes, yes, I love that. Yes, I would definitely love that. I would also like just love to like maybe spend 15, 20 minutes like I’ll put more time on your calendar. I just like to get to know you like thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate you. Like this great. But I also want to just like connect, you know, like human to human and like just chat and see where you are at in your career journey, how I can help, you know, like I’m happy to like.
also help you, if I can.
Federico Ramallo (49:22.126) Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I truly appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. We can talk another time. mean, today I’m in San Francisco, but I’m leaving tomorrow night. yeah. But happy to also meet for coffee or something. I know with the baby it’s a little bit more complicated, so don’t feel pressure about that, right?
Shira Krishnan (49:35.606) you are, okay.
Shira Krishnan (49:46.835) Yeah, yes, it’s harder, certainly. But we can definitely do like a Zoom coffee, you know, you do. So we can do that. And yeah, no, I’d love to just connect.
Federico Ramallo (49:57.698) Yes. Yes.
Federico Ramallo (50:05.794) Yeah, absolutely. That’s, I mean, I call it Prevented Podcast, but that’s official title of the podcast, but I feel it’s more of about building great, you know, friendships and relationships that, you know, it’s so busy, you know, the workday and all that stuff. So I find this, this pace, rhythm, this, you know, level of connection that we can have in, you know, in this type of format, much more interesting, right? So, yeah.
Yeah, I’m happy to talk another time. Yeah, we can scale some time to connect. Yeah.
Shira Krishnan (50:42.879) Yeah, no less to that. Like, I would love that. Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (50:46.904) Great, right, awesome. So I’ll finish the call, leave the browser open for a little bit so it finish uploading for a few minutes and then you can close it, okay?
Shira Krishnan (50:59.831) Can I close on my end or no? Not yet.
Federico Ramallo (51:03.31) No, wait, I’ll do the end session now and then just leave it open for a little bit and it will say upload complete or something. Great. Awesome. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Shira Krishnan (51:10.447) Okay. Got it. it. Okay. Sounds good.