Mastering Resilience with Umadevi Santhanam – Techstrong Unplugged EP5

Hey everyone and welcome back to Techstrong Unplugged. This is episode five of our series, and I'm your host of Atan Solomon. Joined by my amazing co-host, Cassandra Chen on Techstrong, unplugged.

We dive into all things tech and get people up to speed with everything happening across the industry. Recently, Cassandra went to the Great International Developer Summit, also known as gis. Cassandra, why don't you tell us a little bit about that experience?

Yeah, so I talked to, um, Debbie Ra, and she brings us a really unique perspective because she grew up in India and she really started her developer career there, and she's still at India being a developer. It's a really unique experience. Awesome.

So as mentioned, Cassandra went to GID 2024 and sat down with a few industry experts and engaged in some great discussions. Today we'll be taking you to the conference where Cassandra's talked with Uma Debbie Hannum, who is a distinguished technologist at OpenText. In this interview, Cassandra and, um, de talk about building resilient systems in the tech industry.

Cassandra, what were your thoughts in the interview and what should we know heading into it? It's definitely a very exciting interview and like she gives her own perspective, but like very unique upbringing. It's a really fun story to hear, and she's a fun person.

Awesome. Well, without further ado, let's head over to kids at Bangalore, India. Okay.

So welcome back to Textron Unplugged. I'm your host Cassandra Chen, and today we have Uma, who's a extinguished developer. Technologist.

So can you tell me a little bit about how you got to be where you are today? Yeah, Uh, yeah, maybe, uh, started my career maybe two decades back and I've been pretty much passionate about technology. I've not been the okay, maybe when I started my career, there were not too many girls who were doing technology.

They were more moving to the manager, being manager, senior manager, director. There were going those parts. There were very few, uh, women who were, you know, aspiring for a technology career path.

And I think, you know, as I started my career, I was pretty clear I needed to stay on this line. And so, so maybe one of the few distinguished technologists within my company. And there, you know, very few women today there.

But I think it's like interesting journey so far that it's been Like how did you decide to keep sticking with computers? Oh, how would I stick? Because there's not a lot of women do it yet, so like, okay, you're really resilient.

Okay. So my fancy for computers was maybe when I was in school, college I used to be very interested in computers and uh, we had a school room. I mean, like, I grew up in Bangalore, so we had a school computer room those days when computers had just started in India at least.

And the only way that you could spend a little more longer time in the room is if you clean the room. So I used to spend my morning prayer time instead of attending the prayers, clean the computer room quickly so that I can, you know, play with the computers a little more. So I had a big fancy for computers for a long time in my life.

When you played on the computers, is there anything specific you do on them? Early days, it used to be all those mindless games, but slowly programming started, uh, interesting me and then I did my, uh, bachelor's, then my masters then I think then it was, I think what's been interesting to me is more of networking. I've been a very, you know, networking kind of person and now I'm into cybersecurity.

So the whole space of, you know, how do you catch the attackers, how do you find what is happening in the network, what is happening around you, you know, kind of, it feels like a police firefighter. It feels like you know somebody you are, uh, you know, trying to hunt, uh, hunt some, hunt somebody who's doing something wrong. So it's kind of interesting.

And when you were getting an education in computer science Yes. Do you feel like you were able to find people, like, make friends? Okay.

That was okay because I was so, like I am, I was born and brought up in Bango, so it's not very difficult, but the class was very skewed. Obviously the class has been very skewed. We used to have, I think maybe like five, six girls in a class of 30 odd guys.

But, but I think the, the whole numbers are changing. Like my daughter is now doing her, her Eugene computers. I see a class which is pretty, it's almost at a half, which is good.

So over the many 25 years, I think like the world has changed dramatically. Look, it's really nice she's following in your footsteps. I don't know if she's following in my footsteps because she likes the way that I like it.

She likes it for different reasons. She likes it for design, she likes it for other things. See, the thing about computer science is that you have a whole range of things that you know, you know, it can excite you about.

It's interesting 'cause you said that like half the class has girls now. Yes, but I live come from the us like California, and that's not really the case where we live. Oh, is it?

No. Interesting. The back load, it's like 40, 40% of the class is now girls.

Okay. It's pretty good. I mean, people are learning that.

It's exciting, it's interesting. You can do stuff. It's, it's getting that slowly.

So what do you do more now for your job? What do I do more as a job? Uh, I work as an architect or a global team at, uh, at OpenText I have a global team, which is around 200, 2 15 engineers roughly across the globe.

So my day starts with India, but then goes on to Europe, goes on to Turkey, goes on, goes on, goes on all the way to Santa Clara, and then, you know, and then California is my last team sitting there. So my typical day goes around design discussions, architecture meetings, trying to meet deadlines, trying to meet releases, figure out what, what are the problems, customer issues, name it. It's a, it's a very, it just goes on to anything.

Okay. So like you talk to different time zones as the day goes throughout. Yes, yes.

Like the day goes on with the time zones and then you're like, that's, so that's a slightly difficult part of working off from Bangalore and then being an architect or global teams, you kind of get stuck into, you know, working through the time. But it's still fun. I mean, no, no regrets with it.

Do you like going to this conference is the more fun part of your job? I think, uh, I get to meet people is what is interesting and, and when I saw your mail, I was like, yeah, I mean, it's nice to meet somebody else who's not technology, so it's good. Let's just go meet them.

So I like to meet people, your perspectives. It gives a whole different way to your thinking. So I love to meet people.

I'm a kind of an introvert, but once I get into my space I'm good. So Yeah. I'm also kind of an introvert.

Okay. But once we get talking, like Yeah, then it's good. Yeah.

Till then it gets a little hard. So I'm hoping to find somebody that I can talk with. So like grabbing a nice conversation.

Yeah. Do you, when you meet people, do you feel like you learn anything or maybe make friends or, Uh, it's usually make friends first, then learn. It's usually make friends first because you know, you, for you to learn something, you just have to get along with them at the first go.

And then it gets interesting. I think make friends first learn happens. Learn happens in a conversation according to me.

So like, you keep traveling around to do this or how do you do it? Um, so I actually go to lots of conferences. Okay.

And recording these interviews is a new thing for me. Oh, okay. Oh, so like you keep recording these interviews and must be exciting job.

Yeah, it's exciting Fun. Okay. Anything else you want to know from me?

Um, maybe do you wanna talk about your hometown? Oh, my hometown. Okay.

So I grew up in Bangalore. Interestingly, not, not many people were born and bought up in Bangalore. If you see the current generation, I was born in Bangalore when Bangalore was that laid back city.

You had maybe like maybe a hundred cars in whole of Bangalore. And then there was like really nice roads and all the trees and the really nice Bangalore. It was, and when I grew up, when I, I was saying right when I wanted to become a computer scientist and then there was no computer scientist assets, like my only ambition was to buy a car.

It was like, okay, I need to be one of the persons who buys the car there, because I knew if you're a computer engineer you get a lot of money. So that was the, maybe it was not computer first, it was the car earlier, I think. I think I was very fascinated by a particular brand of car, which no more is made.

I think it's, it was ambassador and I think it's still made. I don't remember exactly, but so grew up, uh, dad was an engineer, so like, you know, grew up, uh, you know, seeing him in the telecom department, seeing him doing a lot of stuff. Uh, siblings, uh, went around different things.

But you know, primarily I was the kid at home who was the nerd who used to try and, you know, do things. And then eventually, yeah, yeah. Graduation, post-graduation went through.

Do you feel like your parents and family supported you going into computers? Oh yeah, definitely. It was, I think my dad, uh, if you see at the generation that I was, girls were still not very, uh, pushed to studies or, you know, very, uh, you know, accommodated or very supported.

And I think like my parents played a huge part in, you know, pushing me forward into a, into a domain like this. And yeah, I think thanks to them Link. That's really great.

Like you're really headstrong with technology. Yes. Yeah.

It's, it's fun because I think, uh, over the years it's been interesting because now I still feel I'm in a lot of places. I'm the only woman in the room. I'm st I'm still there in a lot of places, but I still see one or two places where there are more women than me.

But yeah, you still are the only person in the room. It's still, I think it'll take a long time for that. Does that feeling ever bother you being the only woman in the room?

Nah, No. It used to Once upon a time, I used to be very worked up about the fact that, okay, what next? I mean, simple things like, oh, where is the restroom?

I had to ask the guys where the lady's restroom was. So it was little interesting, but now over time I'm like, okay, I don't care much. What else?

Um, do you want to mention your talk and a little bit what it's about? Okay, yeah. My talk is about, uh, how to become a great architect.

I am kind of, you know, talking on the soft skills really to say, you know, your ability to, you know, uh, tell a story to your team to be able to take the risks, to be able to, you know, vary your passion, you know, run through the risk, run through your challenges, you know, try and, you know, motivate your team. How do you, you know, innovate into really difficult situations? How do you, you know, kind of work through almost a sinking project?

You know, how do you go through a really, you know, you know, most projects don't really, you know, meet deadlines. So like how do you manage through that? How do you keep, uh, your stakeholders in confidence?

So you should add in my talk, You mentioned telling a story. Yes. How does that help?

Oh, this is one of my favorite topics. I think as architects, most people don't want to tell the story. They wanna be able to just say, okay, you do this.

It's like, okay, you go and take Homa interview. You don't tell the person, why are you doing Homa interview? Why is it that, you know, why is it that you're sitting here?

Why is it that it's uma? Why is it that you have to ask certain questions? If you don't do that, the person executing the job, it's just doing that.

So, so like I call it, you know, building the catheter, you know, you need to tell the people that, okay, you are building the catheter. You are, you are building this. You're not building a wall, you're not building a square wall that you know you are responsible for.

You're building a wall which is responsible to eventually build the catheter. So it's like, so the catheter is the vision. And I think the vision is important for everybody to keep telling.

And I say, you know, communicate at every opportunity. Tell everybody here's the cathedral. Don't just, you know, say, oh, you know, you are building the square feet wall.

If you didn't finish it, you know, you are like, you know, like the, like the project is doomed versus, you know, telling them, yes, here's what it is. So everybody understand what needs to be done. So instead of just telling someone to do something by a deadline, yeah, we should tell them why they're doing it.

Yes. Why they're doing it, and how it fits the big picture. They feel more, uh, engaged.

They also may, you know, give you inputs which you, which may sometimes surprise you. So I think, you know, telling the whole story, that too, as you grow to larger teams, you start disseminating parts of information to different teams saying, okay, you do this, you do this, you do this. But at every, which is good, but you also need to keep the big picture always being told everybody saying, okay, here's why you're doing this.

Here's why like, this wall is important. This wall carries this for me, so please do it correctly. So I think that's important.

How do you break up the flow of like, you do this, you do this. 'cause isn't it easy to just get into that habit? Like do you need to hold a meeting to like have a discussion where you collaborate?

Oh, we usually work in sprints and squad teams. So like the sprint teams are working pretty well. The problem is that's all defined work.

There is a lot of undefined work now, which happens, you know, people have surprises on the way people have things that are happening. So then you are a whole lot of, you know, there's a whole joke about me saying, I say hi, quick call, which means, okay, something is happening, one needs to talk to you. So I keep saying quick call every now and then to a lot of people.

And I have a lot of, you know, scheduled meetings that I get in. I get into the sprint standup meetings just to see what is happening. Sometimes things don't bubble up to you, so you are like listening into something else that's happening that you don't really need to listen in so that you know, you know, okay, here's what should be happening.

So you think it's important to listen into other meetings? Yes, I do. Even if they're not relevant to you?

Yes, Yes. Like I constantly do that. Those are not really, you know, like each of the team meetings, I don't need to get in, but I usually get in, into one of the meetings.

I will dial in and then, you know, figure out what's happening there. So it's interesting because you see what are people talking, what's their perspectives? Maybe you'll catch something which you should catch.

So it's good. I think that's really good advice. 'cause it's easy to get caught up into only doing what you have to with your own team.

Yeah, right. So like you get into other teams, do things that you don't do usually makes it, makes it interesting. Do you ever find yourself talking in those meetings?

Oh yeah. Sometimes I step in, there are a lot of people who see me in teams and they're like, oh, UMMA has joined. I'm like, no, UMMA has not joined.

Please don't be so careful over the fact that I've joined over time. Sometimes you join and then you step in and then you know you're talking. But usually I don't step in because then it doesn't let them, you know, freely converse.

Over times. I just listen, come out and then, you know, find the lead or the architect or the manager and say, okay, this shouldn't have happened there. But, but with more comfortable teams, which are okay with me stepping in, I do step in and say, okay, by the way, we should talk through this.

Okay. So it really depends on the situation and Yeah, it depends on, I don't have a particular way to it. And so it works either way.

Works usually. Are there any other like soft skills you wanna talk about? Oh, okay.

So one of the soft skills that I think I think makes a great architect is your ability to take risks, your ability to take very calculated risks. If you see as an engineer, when you start programming, when you start programming, what you do is somebody's telling you, okay, write this code, you do this, somebody tells you, okay, test this, you test it. So that's typically what you do.

Slowly as you go up a little, somebody say, okay, design this, you design it, somebody tells, okay, do this, you keep doing it. But as you move higher, you realize the, there's a lot of ambiguity around you, and there is no right or wrong as an answer. There's nothing like, this is the most perfect thing to do.

This is not, and you need to be able to, you know, make your own judgmental calls. You can read everything, talk to everybody, but at, at the end of it, it's your judgmental risks. And I think if you don't have an appetite for risk, invariably you'll play it very careful.

You'll play it very careful and you know, you don't know. So I think what I usually do is take those risks, tell people here the risk and say, okay, I think a schedule needs a plus plus 20% just in case one of these risks ize, maybe 10 of these may not materialize, maybe two of these may materialize, which I don't know today. But because of that, I'm not going to spend the time, you know, getting it to a clear place for all the 10 risks can then start the project.

I'll start the project, let you all run, but at some point something is going to happen and I'm gonna keep it 20% for it. So I think your appetite to take risks is a big thing according to me for you to succeed and move forward. So always try something new rather than just, yeah, keep doing the, yeah, Just keep doing what you've been doing all along, anything or Done.

It's really easy to get caught up in doing what you've always been doing. And it's easier. In fact, it's easier to keep doing what you've been always doing because you know how to do it.

The minute you're running away from your comfort zone, it gets scary for you also because a lot of people are depending on you. And at the same time, I mean, it's, it's, it's a very easy thing to say, okay, I'll just do the same thing because it's comfortable for me. I'm not doing the risk.

People are depending on me, it's all safe. But the minute you are just a little off the comfort zone, there's a very lit, very different excitement that starts building around you where like, okay, you're doing something which is not what you've done, but at the same, same time you're kind of running it like along with other, so makes it more fun. I think we talked a lot about a lot of important soft skills today.

Yes. So thank you. It's been a really great time with you.

Thank You. Thank you. K.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.