What CTOs Say vs. What Developers Hear w/ DataStax's Shankar Ramaswamy

**Shankar Ramaswamy** (0:00)
There is a big difference between what you intend to say and how it is perceived.
Especially as a leader, I call it the intent perception gap, right? You intend to say something a certain way, and how somebody picks up on it is going to be very, very different.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:18)
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Sign up for your free demo at linearbeat.io and mention the Dev Interrupted Podcast discount for a one-month free when you sign up for an annual Pro membership. Welcome to Dev Interrupted. This is Conor Bronsdon. I am Dev Interrupted's executive producer, and I'm here filling in for Dan Lines as host today.
I'm here with Shankar Ramaswamy. He is the head of engineering at Datastax, and a former VP of engineering, and also senior director of engineering at Google. He's had a million titles, a very storied career, and we're really honored to have him here today in the Dev Interrupted community to talk about what he's done, what he's working on at Datastax, and much more. Shankar, thank you so much for joining me.

**Shankar Ramaswamy** (1:06)
Oh, thank you, Conor, for having me. Glad to be here. Awesome.

**Conor Bronsdon** (1:10)
I'd love to get to know you a bit better and talk a bit about your career. I really want to dig into Datastax too, but let's give our audience a chance to get to know you.
Like I said, you've previously been a senior director of engineering at Google. You were VP of product management, and you also led the engineering team at Apigee, which was acquired by Google. You were previously a director of engineering at Paypal and a product management at eBay. Walk us through your career a bit. How did you get started in engineering and then make your way to where you are today as a very successful engineering leader?

**Shankar Ramaswamy** (1:37)
Thank you.
I started my career in engineering quite accidentally. I was not super engaged when I was in school.
Most of the stuff wasn't very interesting. Then when I got to college, I happened to read my textbook in electronics. And I just fell in love with electronics and hardware and all of that stuff. And then continued to study and got a PhD. And at that point, I switched over to the software side of things. And so I really, really loved technology and loved being in technology. And then as a technologist, the first half of my career, I got to do a little bit of individual contribution, also did a little bit of entrepreneurial work. And then the second half of my career, I did product management for a few years.
And that gave me a great insight into how to think about products and the value and customers and all of that stuff. And then decided that finally I wanted to be in engineering leadership. So I've spent the last decade as an engineering leader. So the first 10 years was individual contributor, then about five years as a product management person and leader. And then engineering leader for the last decade.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:53)
If I recall correctly, the product management, you were doing that as a director at eBay, right? And then you transitioned to engineering at Paypal.

**Shankar Ramaswamy** (3:00)
Yes, exactly.

**Conor Bronsdon** (3:01)
So how did that transition come about? You decided you wanted to go full into engineering leadership. You already had these skills, the leader, and you said, hey, let me go to this here. Or what happened there?

**Shankar Ramaswamy** (3:10)
I realized that as a product manager, while I had a lot of the experience of thinking about customers and value and experience and all of those things, I felt like I could bring that thinking and be more effective on the engineering side of the house.
Where I felt like a lot of times when I was working with my engineering partners, there wasn't that appreciation. And I felt like, hey, if I came into engineering and could influence the hearts and minds of engineers, then with product thinking and appreciation for customers and so on, that could be really powerful. And so that's kind of why what I've been doing over the last decade is trying to get engineers to really appreciate and develop that product thinking and then also being a good partner for my product management colleagues and enabling them better. So I felt like that could be the spot where I could make the most impact and being just in product management.

**Conor Bronsdon** (4:13)