Avil Page (Posts about careers)

First 30 Days in a Senior Technical Role

Anand Reddy Pandikunta — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:17:29 GMT

A little trust goes a long way

As a senior technical person, you will have certain professional authority. But to be effective, you need to build personal trust with your team and peers. That can happen only if you are approachable & transparent.

Set up 1:1 meetings with your team members and cross-functional team leads. Go on a listening tour and take your notes.

Be specific on how people can reach you and how you will communicate with them. Setup routine 1:1 meetings if required.

Follow the money

It is important to have high level overview of the business. This will help you make informed decisions and prioritize your work effectively.

Sankey chart of Apple's revenue

If the company is public, you can get quarterly & annual reports. If not, try to get a good sense of where the money is coming from and where the money is going.

Follow the data

Get a high level overview of product(s), infrastructure, tools, data flow. This is crucial to make informed technical decisions or architectural changes.

Start Small

For the first 30 days, you should be in "listening mode" or "absorbing mode". Try to understand the company, the team, the product, the customers, the culture, and the processes.

It is better to avoid any big changes in the first 30 days. There will be plenty of time for that later.

30-60-90 Day Plan

Note down action items for next 60 and 90 days.

It could be anything from setting up a new monitoring system, to improving the deployment process, to hiring new team members, providing simple tools for self service, etc.

Commnicate the plan with all stakeholders and avoid any surprises.

Reduce Cloud & SaaS Costs

If these are a significant part of the company's expenses, then review the costs and see if there is any room for reducing these costs.

On cloud, moving compute instances to reserved or spot can save 70-90% of costs.

That can have a big impact on the company's bottom line.

Buy or build good tools

On the other hand, if there are any tools that can help the team to be more productive, then it is worth investing in those tools.

To do that, you should already have a good toolset under your belt.

Sometimes building a simple tool which can make team self sufficient can have a big impact on the team's productivity and morale.

Conclusion

The first 30 days in a senior technical role are crucial for building trust, understanding the business, and setting the foundation for the next step.

Without much work to do, you can have a big impact on the company by following the tips mentioned above.

Best Pay After Placement Courses In India

Anand Reddy Pandikunta — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 12:31:14 GMT

Introduction

In India, huge number of students are graduating every year. Most of them are not able to get a job right after graduation. In order to get a job in IT industry, students need to have some technical skills.

There are thousands of institutes in India that are providing paid technical courses. Depending on the course, the fees can be anywhere between 5,000 to 5 lakhs. The percentage of students who are getting a job after doing these courses is extremely low. In addition to that quite a few students are not able to afford fees to join these courses.

Pay After Placement Courses

To combat this problem, some institutes are providing pay after placement(PAP) courses. In these courses, students will pay the fees only after getting a job with a desired package. This is a win-win situation for both the students and the institutes. This is a far better option than paying the fees upfront and not getting a job. These courses are also called as income share agreement(ISA) courses.

Here is a list of top pay after placement courses in India for front end developers, back end developers, full stack developers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and data engineers.

Site-Rank	Institute	Fee(Approx INR)
134,988	Sharpener Tech	68,000
59,928	AccioJob	177,000
321,989	Placewit	0 (Upto 10L)
37,294	Masai School	350,000
1,482,058	Digikul	234,000
1,554,412	10xAcademy	295,000
295,708	Function Up	295,000
84,513	AlmaBetter	Not known

Conclusion

Most of these courses have an entrance test that candidates have to clear before joining the course. However taking these courses is far better than paying the fees upfront and not getting a job. If you are interested in any of these courses, you can apply for the entrance test and join the course.

Work From Home Tips For Non-remote Workers

Anand Reddy Pandikunta — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 13:09:58 GMT

Remote-first and remote-friendly companies have a different work culture & communication process compared to non-remote companies. Due to COVID-19¹ world wide pandemic, majority of workers who didn't had prior remote experience are WFH(working from home). This article is intended to provide some helpful tips for such people.

Work Desk

It is important to have a dedicated room or at least a desk for work. This creates a virtual boundary between your office work and personal work. Otherwise, you will end up working from bed, dining tables, kitchen etc which will result in body pains due to bad postures.

Get Ready

Image Credit: raywenderlich ²

Start your daily routine as if you are going to office. It is easy to stop caring about personal grooming and attire when WFH. Your attire can influence your focus and productivity.

If you find getting ready is hard, schedule video calls for all meetings with your colleagues. This might give some additional motivation for you to get ready early in the morning. When the work time, go to your work desk and start working.

Self Discipline

Schedule your work time. Whenever possible try to stick to office working hours. Without proper schedule, you will either end up under working or over working as your personal work and office work gets mixed up.

Take regular breaks during work hours. Without any distractions, it is easy to get lost in the pixels for longer durations. Taking short breaks for a quick walk and getting a fresh air outside will freshen up.

With unlimited access to kitchen and snacks, it is hard to avoid binge eating at home. But atleast avoid binge eating during office hours.

Exercise. Since WFH involves only sitting in a chair through out the day, staying physically active is challenging especially during this pandemic. Exercise few minutes every morning, help yourself in the kitchen by making a meal or doing dishes, clean your house etc., should help in staying physically active.

Seek Help

WFH can be lonely at times as the social interactions are quite less. Schedule 1 to 1 meetings or virtual coffe meetings with your colleagues to increase social interactions. Discuss WFH problems with your colleagues, friends and remote communities to see how they are tacking those problems.