Rohit Malekar

June 18, 2021

Why Do Careers Get Stuck in Middle Management? - Part III

This is a third and final follow-up to - Part I: High quality and low quality problems Part II: Common traps in seeking high quality problems How can you expand your circle of influence? For the purpose of this article, let us assume you are at a place that you are comfortable referring to as your habitat, a workplace environment where...
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June 12, 2021

The Power of Healthy Skepticism for Popular Opinions

It was the end of 2015. I was in the U.S. and had been exposed to politics there for a few years at that time. The Right was clamoring that the biggest threat to their country is ISIS. The Left was bent that it is climate change. I thought to myself the gradual loss of unbiased, critical, and objective thinking in human minds will be t...
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June 5, 2021

The Holy Grail for the Enabling Tech for Cohort-Based Courses

Cohort-Based Course is the new terminology in town. Without going into the debate of whether the phenomenon deserves a new name, there are a few elements of this experience that are being enabled creatively by more than a few instructors. Specifically, this includes peer-to-peer learning by design, small coach to coachee ratio, holding...
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May 28, 2021

A Brief Look at Alternative VC Funding Models

More and more start-ups don't fit the casting required by traditional VCs (to earn 3X returns for their LPs), especially in economies like India where disparities are huge. There are a significantly diverse sets of critical problems that have capital needs but will forever lie outside the term sheets of traditional VCs. A lot is at sta...
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May 21, 2021

Three Revelations During the Pandemic

In some corner of my mind, I knew these conditions existed, but the deeper I dug, the more I have realized these as massive personal blind spots. 1. Skewed focus of "digital" India Digital technology in India is heavily biased to address first-world problems of the highest urban earners. At a maximum, this is 10% of the population. Par...
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May 14, 2021

Why Do Careers Get Stuck in Middle Management? - Part II

Continuing on the theme from the previous post, let's review common traps we face in seeking high-quality problems. Trap 1: Expecting (and enforcing) a linear career progression The academic experience conditions us for a linear annual progression. Real-world problems and solutions are hardly linear. The number of high-quality problems...
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May 7, 2021

Why Do Careers Get Stuck in Middle Management?

Hypothesis: Most high-performing careers hit a wall in middle management because practitioners shy away from taking risks to address high-quality problems, thus unable to develop skills to create clarity and define playbooks as a leader. Shifting a career from an individual contributor to a leader requires the ability to establish the ...
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May 1, 2021

You Have the Right to Remain Silent

"Every right comes with a responsibility". Amongst the few things I remember reading in school, this one stands out. The recollection has been rather frequent in recent times when our individual ideals and values have drifted further apart from those with who we disagree with. However, there may be one exception to this norm. There has...
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April 16, 2021

Decoding Quality of Life

What is Quality of Life? Once you have done enough to reasonably meet the basic needs of your lifestyle, the next jump in the quality of your life is not going to come from external factors. It will depend on what you cultivate inside of you — the quality of your thoughts. It is easy to assume that life in another country with better i...
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April 7, 2021

How Can An Engineer Transition into Product Management?

I get this question often in different forms, so I thought I would write this up in some detail. “"How can a software engineer transition into a product manager [role] without having any management experience?"” If anything, the commonly interpreted meaning of "management experience" will be more of a hindrance than help in becoming a ...
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April 2, 2021

Your "Reality" Has Zero Value for Anyone Else

Some labels we are born with, some we pick up. I have learnt they all have limited utility. Whenever oversubscribed, it has contracted my world-view. A common pattern increasingly repeating in my feed is "looking down the perch, my label is better than yours" finely crafted subtly condescending viewpoints. Code over No-code, Design/Eng...
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March 26, 2021

We Are Prisoners of Our Own Biases

Why do we have to choose between putting a person on a permanent pedestal for their noblest deeds or criticizing their entire identity for their worst choices? Sharing a few thoughts based on recent events on whom we choose to follow at work, in our communities, and personal lives. Mahatma Gandhi is accused to have worked with the Brit...
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March 19, 2021

A Litmus Test for Your Future Workplace

Over the years, I have had dozens of conversations with colleagues and friends who were at the cusp of transitioning their career paths. Almost always, the trickiest and the longest part of the conversation hovers around objectively evaluating the intangible benefits of the current job vis-a-vis with the new employer. This is where num...
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March 12, 2021

The Title Trap in Transitioning into Product Roles

I was recently asked this question: "I have 5 years of experience; however, transitioning to product implies taking up a job as an associate product manager. Should I pursue this?". My 2 cents - if the role is right for you, ignore the title, at least for the first couple of gigs as part of the transition. What's the difference between...
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March 9, 2021

Title Inflation in Product Management

Most fields are troubled with title inflation, sometimes out of necessity, however, often out of vanity. But it feels like product management is out of hand. I am sharing my personal 1-line litmus tests I use to ratify titles. I don't expect everyone to agree with these - use it or refine it as you see fit :) You aren't a Director/VP o...
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March 6, 2021

About

Building the culture, the craft, and the community at Deloitte Studios. Amateur poet, anxious parent, apprentice non-dualist, and an aspiring golfer. Father of two. Born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. Living in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. I help design and build digital products for a living. Here, I share a weekly newsletter on my lessons...
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