#484 The CTO as Orchestrator: Naga Vadrevu on Leading Tech with First Principles

Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show at Mehmet today. I'm very pleased joining me, Naga Vadrevu. He's the Chief Technology officer of Wonderschool. Naga the way I love to do it, as I was explaining to you before we hit the record button, I [00:01:00] keep it to my guest, introduce themselves. So tell us a bit more about, you know, your journey, your background, and what you're currently up to.

And then we can start this awesome discussion with you today. So the floor is yours. 

Naga: Thank you. Thank you, member. Thank you for having me today. Um, it's a pleasure. As a brief, uh, introduction, I grew up in India, um, like many immigrants. I moved to the, uh, I moved to the US around, uh, 2008, uh, to get my master's in computer science.

I went to University of Houston, uh, then I moved to Bay Area around 2009, 10. Have been here in the Bay Area in San Francisco ever since. Uh, this is a great place to be. You see innovation every day, uh, happening in so many conferences, so many meeting rooms. It's such a fun place to live and work. Uh, if you are in tech and as, as a part of my career.

Um. I've been in really big, uh, technology [00:02:00] companies, um, uh, uh, Adobe, Autodesk and Square. Uh, that's where I started my career. Saw systems built at scale and scaling to millions of users. Uh, and then I started my, um, startup journey again, um, last year with a company called Wonderschool. Which is trying to disrupt, uh, childcare in the us, um, or make it better, honestly.

Uh, we have a lot of, uh, um, a lot of problems with, uh, how childcare is managed in the US and it's a great opportunity to make it better. Um, that's what we are doing at Wonderschool. I. Um, yeah, that's my very quick, uh, introduction. 

Mehmet: Great. What a wonderful background and journey, uh, nega. So, you know, the first thing I, I like to focus on what you're doing now and then, you know, we're gonna dig more into some of the stuff you did before and, you know, some of the lessons that you have learned now.

Um. You are or still up? You did it and you're still doing it, you know, applying [00:03:00] AI driven pricing to the childcare space. So, and you've done something with Square, which is kind of a FinTech, but what were like the surprises or challenges in trying to bring data science for such a human centric industry, which is education.

Naga: That's a, that's a very, very good question. Um, yeah, at Square we had different problems, right? A YA, uh, this is, um, this is pre, uh, I wouldn't call it pre ai, but pre LLMA era at Square, uh, where we did a lot of, uh, intelligence, artificial intelligence around, around fraud with traditional ml. We did a, we did some early versions of, uh, Chad G PD 2.5 with support.

And things like those. Uh, I was leading the support engineering team for a little bit at Square, where we did a lot of innovation around support costs. Um, I remember, um, uh, our support cost. Every time, uh, uh, a support agent picks up the phone call, it was [00:04:00] roughly around 20, $25. Um, even with a little bit of more innovation.

Uh, we bought it down by around $5 per call, which was significant for the company compared to how many calls, support calls they take on a regular basis. And it's only getting better and better. By the time I left Square, we had a mandate of cutting our support costs by 50%, uh, which is very ambitious and very possible with the, the technology we had.

Um, when it comes to wonderschool, the problems very, very different. The scale was very different. The opportunity that we had, and we are, we were trying to innovate around is. Um, like you said, very rightly, it's very human centric. There are providers who are not as technology savvy as, uh, as somebody in tech would be.

They're very fo, very passionate caregivers. Um, we want to help them be more business savvy. We want them to be more, uh, profitable. These are the things that were primary focus, the way we did it, the way, the biggest problem for childcare providers is, [00:05:00] um, um. They have, they are small businesses where they have 10 kids in a, in a, in a school, uh, running a family home.

Uh, even if they lose a couple of children, they lose thousands of dollars of revenue every month. Um, so we built a machine, which is very, very, which is part of our marketplace and also a little bit innovative where a parent come, can, um, we call it concierge, can come to our marketplace and say, Hey, I wanna look for childcare in the zip code.

And we have the intelligence to find. The available childcare, uh, locations in that neighborhood. Talk to the provider, see if they have an availability and match it back with the parents. Get them both connected and, and, and set up a tour for them so the parents and parents can go look at the provider.

It's a very human centric thing, which, which means the providers do not have time to, to update their website, to update their availability. Pro parents do not know where to go find for childcare. All they have to do as, as a parent, all you have to do is, Hey, I have [00:06:00] a kid who's three years old. I'm looking for, uh, nine to five childcare in the zip code.

Help me. And it does all the matching, all the reaching out it does. Phone calls to the providers, does text and send it text back to the, to the parents and connects. Um, that is one of them. And we have done innovations around pricing. Um, how do we make sure that, uh, the provider is price pricing competitively in the neighborhood?

Based on, uh, the demographics, based on the income of the county, based on, um, um, um, based on many, many, many attributes, we were trying to build an intelligent pricing where a new provider was starting a business. They're never sure how to compete in the market. Uh, we have built them tools which will help them price the right way and, and, and really start their business the right way.

Mehmet: Right. Um, the way you're describing it, Naga, like it looks you. As, as a technologist, you immerse yourself [00:07:00] also in, in understanding the dynamics of the business Now, from your experience, whether now with Wonderschool or from your previous experiences as well. And I'm asking this question, which is, might look like obvious to many people, but, and this is the CTO show.

I name it the CTO show for a reason. Uh. What does, what does it take, you know, for someone like yourself, Naga, to go and understand? Because people, when they think about technology, they think about the code. They think about, you know, the infrastructure. They think about, you know, the different text that you're gonna use to get the product, you know, the end product, the in front of, of, of, of the people who gonna use it.

But for you, you have this mission of understanding the business outcomes Now. What were like, I mean, the best ways for you, especially because you've, you've worked. In, in FinTech you've worked with [00:08:00] MarTech, you and now with, with education. So what were the best techniques or like, let's say the best approaches you used in order for you to grasp, you know, these different businesses, not only what they look from outcomes, but also the nature of the business itself is completely different.

So what were like your, your, uh, secret sauce, if I might ask it this way. 

Naga: Uh, uh, that's a great question. Uh, um, uh, I, I take it for granted now, being in tech for 15 years, but when I started my career early, I was more focused on what's the most fun project that I can work on that can teach me more technical skills, uh, that can help me debug a problem that can help me, um, use new tools in the market.

That's what I was focused on very early in my career. Uh, over a period of time, over a period of time, what I understood is, uh, really getting a grasp of the customer. Is more important or as important as understanding the technology. Um, [00:09:00] by the time I joined Square, which was around 10 years into my career, um, square was obsessed about jobs to be done.

And this is a very popular framework, um, um, that, that Jack Dorsey in the company and all the product leaders in the company live and breed by, uh, which is focusing on jobs to be done as a customer, as a, as a customer. Could be a childcare provider, could be a merchant who is. Uh, who is running a restaurant?

Um, or it could be your, uh, B2B customer who's running your products? What is the, what is the job you're trying to solve? Like everybody has a task to do. What is that, to be, what, what, what are you trying to accomplish with this particular tool that really reorients you on how to think about technology solution?

As a childcare provider, your job is to make sure that you're taking care of children, providing them high childcare. And, uh, you're running a profitable business as a restaurant owner. You wanna make sure that you are profitable, you have a good marketing, and you are producing, uh, high quality food. Those [00:10:00] basics matter.

And you are thinking about your technology and your product, the way you're building end-to-end around a job to be done. How do I make sure that the payments are seamless? Uh, so that provi, so that the, the restaurant owner doesn't ever lose a payment, they never lose an opportunity to payment. That's how Entire Square was built, a multi-billion dollar company.

Um, the founding story is very fascinating, um, of Square, which is the product was entirely built because they never wanted to lose a payment. Um, uh, uh, uh, um, um, for example, somebody who's trying to fix, um, um, somebody you call on the phone and you're hiring help to do, um, a, a small electrical job at your, at your home.

Um. Five, six years ago, they could not take a payment. Somebody has to write a check or get them cash. They don't have, uh, readers on their phones and things like those. That's how Square was built. They built a very small attachment to the phone and they started taking payments. The job to be done was [00:11:00] there.

I never want to lose a payment as a customer, and they figured out the problem and figured out the solution for that problem. Um, I encourage all, uh, engineers to start thinking in that direction more and more. Because code is becoming a commodity now. Anybody can write code. It's, it'll, it'll only get easier and easier.

What you really need to get SA savvy about is the T-shaped angle, where you're really good at the technology, but you are have a broader lens on how you are solving the problem. Who's your customer? How are you solving it efficiently at a cheaper cost, with a higher quality, uh, with a better taste? Uh, these are things that matter in this competitive world.

Mehmet: Right. You mentioned Square and you just mentioned Jack Dorsey. So how was the experience working with Jack? You know, I just wonder and any, any principle, you know, or like something that gets stuck with you from, from that experience? [00:12:00] 

Naga: Um, it, it was great. Um, um, I mean, he was, uh, three, four layers above my, above my, uh, leadership level.

But, um, we got a lot of exposure to, um, the way he built the company. Uh, it was, um, a very design first and an engineering first led company. There was a lot of passion around making your customers successful. You can see in the DN of the company when you join and see, uh, how people are making decisions every meeting that you go into, there was a secret recipe in the meeting.

In every meeting that you go to. Everybody around you, uh, is smarter than you, and everybody thinks the next person is smarter than them. So you have a really humble environment in the company where there are extremely smart, smart people who are very focused about making small businesses successful. You can see that in the DNA every, every day.

And, and, and, and a lot of it comes from the CEO Jack Dorsey and also, uh, the leadership that he hired there. [00:13:00] Uh, and, and, and it was very principled around making merchant successful. Uh, if you're ever stuck in a decision. The, the, the, the, the decision, uh, uh, framework was very simple. Does this decision make the, uh, merchant successful or this decision make the merchant successful?

And the downstream impacts are very easy based on, uh, that framework. Um, very few companies have that magic sauce, uh, and square is one of them. 

Mehmet: Cool. Now, something also you mentioned, um, about codes becoming a commodity now as a CTO and you know, you, you just said that you believe that the importance will be on understanding the requirements and, you know, having this t shape understanding technology and the value of it.

Um, now. We've seen a lot of things happening in this space, NGA, [00:14:00] and, you know, different opinions. Uh, actually, for the sake of transparency, we're recording this on the 3rd of June. Probably in two weeks time it'll be out this episode, uh, or three maximum. And we're seeing the mass layoffs, you know, that are, that are happening today.

So for, for, for the folks who are like now. Worried. Plus for the folks who are considering to be in, in, in, in this domain of, of being, you know, developers. Some people they said, yeah, like probably we are gonna have the developers becoming like. Taking care of the more, I would say, complex tasks, whereas the AI would be doing the job of a junior, uh, you know, the developer and, you know, everyone else will become a senior developer or maybe they, they will shift focuses.

Um, from your perspective, what do [00:15:00] you think really would happen? Like, and, and I'm saying, I'm asking this because. We hear also the fear from AI and people say, yeah, like it's, it's like it's happening. Layoffs are happening and, and things are, are going, you know, out. I'm not worried by the way, but just I want to hear your, your feedback Naga on, on, on the whole, um, AI in development that is happening today.

Naga: Yeah. Um, um, great question. I think very relevant. Very, very, um. Top of the mind for everybody. I can only speculate on this, I just sent in it last week or, or a couple of weeks ago, uh, a Google, uh, event that was hosted, uh, with some of the investors partnership that we had. And I had, uh, I was listening to some really, really, um, senior leadership there, uh, who are in Deep Mind and, and, and, and Gemini teams.

Um, talk about it. I, I think, I think there is [00:16:00] no linear path here. That this would happen or that would happen, meaning there would be less engineers or there would be only senior engineers. I don't think the path is linear. We are all like, honestly, the whole industry is speculating and waiting to see the transformation, but some things are real.

The best way to um, uh, uh, think about this problem is, is from first principles, which is in engineering. Writing code is not hard. Um, debugging code is hard. Building a product that can, that can, that you can build other products around, or a system that you can build other systems around. These are the complex parts.

As an engineer, I would recommend everybody to start, uh, thinking more as an orchestrator rather than as a coder, uh, which used to be a job in the past, although, although it's not the most low, um, most of the time where engineers spend time is, is really orchestrating and making sure that they're.

Building a system that is, [00:17:00] um, uh, error free. They're debugging, they're building, uh, it for, uh, to making sure that they're handling the edge cases. This is where engineers spend time. I don't think that is going away. At least that is my speculation. I think that's a very long time. Uh, we have tried out, uh, tools like Devon Codex that are trying to get larger context windows that are trying to understand your whole code base.

Um, I found. It is very good in very small context when you are trying to solve a very small problem instead of producing a verbose code that is thousand lines and trying to solve a problem. Again, going back to first principles where engineers are making their prs. When you push out, uh, a five line code or a 10 line code, you get more feedback from other, other, other developers versus when you push a thousand line code, everybody's like, it looks good and they ship it, and there are so many issues.

I think the, if you take the same principle and apply to, uh, ai, spitting out a lot of code is not helpful for anybody, [00:18:00] for either engineers or for the product or for the customers generating and giving you speed. To ship new features, to partner with it and produce high quality products is where the leverage is.

I think everybody should continue using it. That is how I see the technology, meaning it'll help you debug faster, it'll help you iterate faster, it'll help you ship code faster. But you as an orchestrator really need to understand the edges, really need to understand what you're producing, uh, and, and putting it into production in a very meaningful way, and you really understand what the, what to expect.

What the customers are expecting and are you meeting their needs? I, I don't think that's going away. Now, uh, going back to your question of, uh, of, of layoffs and, and, and, and, and, and all of that, I would only speculate, but all, all, not just engineers, I think the whole workforce will be re transformed. Um, they have to be re-skilled.

They have to unlearn and relearn a lot of concepts. I think it's happening every day, even as a [00:19:00] technology leader now. Um, five years ago, all, all my time was spent in managing engineering teams, which is process management, performance management, making sure that, um, architecture is properly set up. I was barely able to spend any time on code or like the fun parts of engineering.

Now teams have become leaner, um, because you are able to do more with lean teams. My job has transformed to be more hands-on. I. And I'm able to be more hands-on because the tooling is available where I can get to a problem very quickly. I could, I could, I could look at a code, ask for, uh, ask to explain it to me and get to the, get to some assumptions.

Uh, and then I go back and ask my engineer saying, Hey, here's what I learned. What do you guys think? Here's what the businesses need needs. And so we have a debate at a very ground level very quickly, which used to take a long time for me in the past. Um, that's how the business is shifting. I. 

Mehmet: Cool. Now talking about, you know, [00:20:00] building engineering teams and, you know, scaling.

I prepared the question different way, but, you know, the, the discussion took it to another direction. Um, how easy or, I, I think it's easy. I will not ask how hard it is, like how easy it's becoming for, I mean, engineering teams led by someone like yourself to. Reach, I would say a level where they are from engineering perspective, from technology perspective, ready for their, let's say, series A, B and above, versus, you know, back in the days you needed to, to have, you know the proper, I would say.

Hierarchy you needed to make sure, like, you know, you have the CTO, you have the VP of engineering, you have the product team, you have, you know, your engineers and the sprints and all this. So how easy is it now for [00:21:00] companies to go in front of investors? At least, you know, when times comes for due diligence to say, yeah, look, we, we are a small team, but we are ready, we, we are really ready.

Do, are you seeing like also a, a shift in this from, uh, investment readiness, thinking in mind technology readiness or technology due diligence, if we want to put it this way? 

Naga: Um, 

Mehmet: a 

Naga: hundred percent. A hundred percent. There's a shift. Uh, lean teams are becoming more and more power powerful because you reduce the organizational overhead.

Um, and, and naturally you don't have to have layers. Of teams, which used to be a normal thing in the past where you need, if you have certain products, if you have certain revenue, you need to manage the teams in a particular, particular structure. You need to have layers of VPs, directors, you need to have product managers, you need to have designers who map to each one of those, uh, individual domains.

I think that era is coming to an end. Uh, [00:22:00] if not, it is already, I'm already seeing, uh, um, uh, really small teams in the bay area of five people, 10 people trying to have. 10 20 million a rrr that have, uh, spun up in the last 10 years, sorry, spun up in the last one year. Um, they're able to quickly iterate and get to revenue and fundraise.

So many stories like that, uh, um, in the Bay Area that really small teams are able to, um, generate 10 20 million a RR very quickly, uh, really add value, um, that is becoming more common because, uh, it's very fast to. Ideate and iterate with the toolings. I think that's the fundamental. If you're able to, um, quickly iterate all your technical solutions, you are able to put it to product.

You, you could test your product market fit multiple times very quickly. Imagine earlier in the past you to have like two years roadmap to build something. Um, for example, Figma, if you remember, they had a 5-year-old, five year, uh, [00:23:00] behind the scenes product building. Figma is a wonderful product. Uh, I don't think, um.

You can be competitive in the current market With that model, um, people are putting, putting out the product into the market in, in, in three months, six months, trying it out, uh, seeing, getting customer feedback very early on, iterating on it, and they're able to like really get into the next stage of fundraising very quickly, uh, because they're able to get the customer feedback like three months into their development, uh, of assembling a lean team.

Mehmet: Lean teams. This is, this is the key, key word I would say. Um, speaking of, you know, AI and speaking of the other stuff that's, that's happening, so back, I, I, I remember like back in the, in the days I used to ask, I'm, I'm, I'm not a developer, but of course like, I like to play sometimes, you know, I come from infrastructure and, uh, networking, cybersecurity background, but still, you know, I was.

[00:24:00] Always curious about building something, you know, building your own APIs, building your own tools rather than going and going outside. Now things are changing by the day. And now the big trend, uh, which I think everyone knows about, which is the MCP, right? So mm-hmm. Um, and Agen ai, and, you know, all the buzz about it.

So. From both a, a, a leadership perspective and from technology perspective, nga, are these new concepts Because still it's concept, in my opinion. Of course, it's, it's applied. So people are talking about, okay, buy API welcome, you know, cps, right? So, so we are seeing this changes from your perspective, uh, are we completely.

Also getting rid of that phase or, oh, like I don't need to think even if I should build this, you know, in-house or not. Like my first [00:25:00] choice if I can, you know, rely on. Ai or if it's something that needs a little bit of automation, I gonna like have an MCP framework and, you know, I build agents that gonna take care of this.

So this is the defacto, I would say, um, way to, to, to, to move forward. Am I like exaggerating? Is this something which is happening now as a veteran technologist? What, what you can share about, uh, what you're seeing? 

Naga: Yeah. Um, um, um, um, I, I think the way, the way to think about it is both will exist. CPS will exist for a purpose.

APIs will exist for a purpose. Uh, the purpose is really deterministic. What says non-deterministic things? I think, I think a lot of things in computer science will still be very deterministic. Uh, and, and people still have to [00:26:00] use APIs for certain things where you need guarantees. If you need a particular, if you wanna make a call and make something store in a database.

It's a simple API call that will exist forever. Uh. That's the way to interact, and that's the way you get guarantees that if you want something to be recorded, you need a endpoint to say, Hey, I will record it, uh, and I will store it. I think those first principles is how I start thinking from that. Alexis cps, um, are, are, are, are more for non-deterministic things.

And, and they're super valuable. Um, uh, and that's why the, the technology is here and, and, and people are adopting it. Um, for example, I was able to, last week I was, uh, working with one of our senior engineers and we both decided to, um, we have BigQuery as our warehouse, which is where we store our, all our analytics.

And we were, uh, just. Tweaking with it. And we built an MCP server for our BigQuery and connected it with Claude, [00:27:00] um, and, and, and also added, uh, our Google docs to, uh, to the MCP server. And we were able to ask questions like, Hey, in the zip code, how many childcare providers are on our marketplace? And it just gives you an answer, um, because it's able to, you have to give it a lot of context around what tables we have and all of that, but we were able to spin that in like five hours.

Uh, we just were like, one morning we just decided, hey, this seems very valuable. We could give it to all our internal ops teams. Uh, we have an operations team, we could give this to them and we just spit it out in like five hours. Uh, something like this would take probably a couple of months project, right?

The protocol is really, really valuable. You could do things like these, um, so. Again, uh, going back to the first principles, there are deterministic things, non-deterministic things, uh, determin things. You can still, you still have to rely on a APIs and, and things that are non-deterministic, and that can be more around, um, um, you could start using [00:28:00] cps.

Um, yeah, that's how I see. That's how I see both of them coexist. 

Mehmet: Cool. Now I want to touch a little bit on the leadership part, Naga, and, you know, part of being a leader, um, in any place, but especially being responsible of, um, you know, the technology. Um. If you can like, share this from, you know, maybe a story or maybe something that happened or maybe a time where, because being a leader you need to take tough decisions sometimes.

So, um, any, anything that you can share that can spark, you know, in people's mind. Yeah. This is what it takes to become a leader. Like if one day I become a CTO or become head of engineering or like. Whatever, you know, position, which is a, a, a technical leadership role. These are like kind of the tough decisions I have to make, but, you know, it, it has someone have to, to, to, to make the call.

[00:29:00] Right. Anything you can share about this? Yeah. 

Naga: Um, yeah. Um, I, I think that's probably the hardest thing of the job. Um, um, which is. There, there are a lot of tough decisions you have to make. Uh, I, I, I can think about a couple of them that come to my mind. One is around, um,

let me answer this in a very, um, meaningful way.

Oh, we had, um, this is, this is, um, when I joined Wonderschool, we had, uh. Manual QA operations team, uh, around six people, uh, that are, that were running our, uh, manual QA testing. Um, I had to shut down that entire department because I believe that QA should be completely automated. And I think it, it creates a counterintuitive habit to engineers to build something and throw it off to QA saying, Hey, you tested, it's your [00:30:00] responsibility.

And engineers did, don't take ownership. The end result is low quality product where engineers are not as connected to the customer. Mm-hmm. There are as many layers as you can remove from engineers to the customer. The more higher quality product you can build. And, and I completely believe in that. Um, uh, and, and I had to shut down our QA department two months into my new job because I, I was, that's my firm belief.

And, and, and in retrospect it worked out. Uh, the num I have metrics to, um. Before I share the metrics of how, how, how it worked out. But, um, as part of the decision, I had to come in, evaluate why do we have qa? Uh, even though I had very strong opinions of why it wouldn't work out based on my past experiences, I had to see why, why the company had it, understand what their needs were, and then make my own decision.

Um, and then I had to shut it down. But that means the engineers had to be retrained to, to, to take over all the ownership [00:31:00] of, of qa. That's one. The second thing is when I was laying off, uh, which is, which is not, which is, which was what the business needs because we needed to hire more engineers and red use our qa.

Um, I had to deal with, uh, things which are very personal. These are all really talented people, but it was not the right fit for business. Having those conversations with that team. And telling them, Hey, you, you have opportunities here. You can either transition into engineering, become engineers, or if you're really passionate about QA and, and building QA automation, I can help you find other, other opportunities.

And in addition to that, taking risks as a business, right? Like I'm going to my CEO and saying, Hey, I'm shutting down our entire qa. Um, and I, and, and you have to trust me now because, um, this is the right thing to do the to for the business. And gimme six months, I'll stabilize everything. Uh, and, and, and you need to convince with all, all of those when you're taking those bets.

Um, it comes and, and it comes with balancing people, balancing business risks, balancing budgets, [00:32:00] and handling really hard conversations with people around, Hey, your job no longer exists in the company, and, and here are the options for you. Uh, that's, I think. The hard part of leadership where you have to balance in a 360, um, uh, degrees and, and, and it's a trade off.

How do you have those trade off conversations with everybody, uh, around you? That's the hard part of, uh, leadership. 

Mehmet: Indeed. It's, it's like the tough conversations you need to have, and as you said, yeah, like, uh, bringing everyone up to speed and, you know, making sure that everyone from their point of view are understanding what you are trying to achieve.

I think this is, this is the key word here now.

I believe, you know, some people they might not, but I know a lot of people, they have this ambition to reach to the position of chief technology officer. [00:33:00] Right? So for the people out there who, you know, are like, just trying, you know, to, to get their, to, to, to get their, their feet there, um. What they should expect.

So, and especially, I'm talking here from, from startup operations perspective, so I know maybe like if you can shed some light, of course they need to understand the technology, but, you know, what are like some other things that they need to, to be able to actively be, um, contributing themselves into the business so they can be successful, especially if they're gonna become, you know, first time CTOs.

Naga: Yeah, it's a very good question. I think, um, um, it's, um, yeah, um, member, you've talked to many CTOs and probably you'll find a thread here, um, being a very, very strong technologist is, is second, uh, level skill. The first level [00:34:00] skill as you, as we talked about earlier, is, uh, really understanding your business.

Really understanding your business and how do you generate more value to your business is the first thing that you need to understand, even as a technologist. And then applying your ears of your technology skill that you have acquired to see how we, how you can drive more business value. I think if you can connect those two.

You will be a, you'll be a technology leader. It could be a CTO, it could be a vp, it could be a director, it doesn't matter. But, uh, but, but essentially if you're able to build, bring your technology muscle to drive more business value, you'll be a very successful leader. Um, that's what I recommend everybody to, um, start thinking about or building their careers in, uh, in, in, in technology.

Mehmet: Yeah, this, this is a great advice and yeah, of course it depends, uh, on, on, I call it the purpose and knowing the why. Yeah. I keep repeating this again and again. Like [00:35:00] I advise people of, of something, which I, I did this mistake in my career many times. Uh, jumping on a roll or the, the. You know, this desire of jumping on a roll just for the sake of the role.

Yeah. Which is a big, which is a big mistake. Ask yourself. Okay. Why I want to do this first, do you understand what this role is actually about? Do you understand, you know, all the ins and outs, especially as a CTO and a startup. And also part of what you have to do now guys, is you need to be if, if, of course like you, you are the CTO, you have an.

Someone as a CEO, probably like maybe a third team member as founding team or whatever. So you need also to, to, to be ready for the tough conversations. Similar to what you mentioned, you need also to be like always on the. You know, on, on, on the wait for, you know, anytime you can be called. Yeah. And because we need, we need like, hey, like we need to get this, we need to know the remote, the [00:36:00] roadmap.

Well, you know, we have an investor meeting next week. Like, if, if they ask this, are we ready? So, yeah. So plenty of things. I think people, they, they should, uh, they should, you know, prepare themselves for. Um, you know, maybe a small advice from my side, which applies to any role, not only CTOs, of course, I've never been a CTO fun fact myself, but I mean, um, is, is just imagine yourself one day in the job.

Like, I mean, imagine how your day would look like and okay, is this something you like to do it right and see, see how things works. But anyway, very, very, very valid point. Nga, I would say now. As we are almost coming to an end, um, this is something, you know, usually I, I ask, uh, all my guests to do is if. You want to give advice for people in tech today, um, who are like on the verge of starting their careers, [00:37:00] um, and they have ambitions, and because you kept up speaking about, you know, for yourself, uh, nga, you kept trying to, to follow a passion that you had.

You've, you, you put yourself in the right spot. Which is Silicon Valley, which is, you know, like the, the best place to be in, um, for, for innovation. So, so what, what can you share like final, like couple of, of of words for fellow, uh, people who are like, um, you know, having this ambitions to, to be successful in this industry?

Naga: Yeah. Um, I, I, I 

Mehmet: think, um, 

Naga: um, yeah. Um. For anybody who's starting their career in, in now in 2025. Um, as much as you are passionate about, uh, technology and passionate about, um, um, systems and passionate about computer science, really think about the customer. Start with [00:38:00] customer obsession. Um, I think that's a very, very, uh, important skill that is required that you need going forward in this industry because.

Um, with AI tooling, with, with the modern, modern technology code is becoming a commodity as we talked earlier. Uh, so you really need to understand what are you serving for your customers? How are you adding their value? How, how are you adding value to their life? Uh, those are the things that you should start from and be very curious.

Um, and, and the ma and. And, and, and the market is shifting so quickly. Earlier, if you are trained once in your career, you could continue a career for 40 years. Let's say for example, you're a computer scientist or a, or, or a doctor or, or, or, or a lawyer. Once you learn the skills, you can keep them for 40 years and retire.

That was the previous market trend. Now the market now, the way the industry is shifting is you have to reacquire skills every six months. Every one year you have to retrain yourself. Um, be very curious and. Have an open mindset to keep learning all the time. [00:39:00] Um, everything else will follow. 

Mehmet: Everything else will follow.

That's, that's a word. Finally thing Naga, where people can, you know, get in touch and find more about you. 

Naga: Yeah, they can reach me out on LinkedIn. Uh, I will share my LinkedIn, uh, uh, link with me with uh, uh, and you can always go, go to wonderschool.com. We are hiring, uh, very talented engineers, uh, in the Bay Area primarily.

We rarely make exceptions for remote, but. Uh, but we do consider them. Um, yeah. Uh, you can reach out to wonderschool.com uh slash carriers and you can apply if you're interested. 

Mehmet: Great. Thank you again, Naga for this and yeah, for the audience, you don't need to go and find out. Again, I put the link in the show notes, so if you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, you will be able to find it there.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll find it in the description again, Naga, thank you very, very much. Like I really enjoyed this conversation today. I, I enjoyed also, you know, the experiences that you shared with us, especially, you know, the part about, you know, taking [00:40:00] decisions about like, working, um, you know, in different sectors.

Whether, you know, when you mentioned about also the first principle, which a lot of my guests, you know, uh, they, they, they swear by it, I would say, which is, for me, it's the same thing. Like, you know, uh, I call it the quantum thinking because, you know, yeah. There is nothing that is not impossible until you try it and you prove it's not there.

Right. So, thank you very much for, for, you know. Shedding light on, on these aspects as well, of course, as well as the, the latest and greatest in in tech. Um, so I appreciate that. Now, this is how I end my episodes. This is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by.

I hope you enjoyed it. If you did so. Please give me a favor and subscribe. Share it with your friends and colleagues, and if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again, thank you very much for being loyal to the show. Thank you very much for taking the show this year to a complete new level.

I'm very humbled by seeing you know the [00:41:00] show because of you, not because of me. It's because of two. Two groups. First my guest, second you the audience. Because of that, the podcast is trending, and this is in, in May and June, something I never saw before. So in, in beginning of the year, it was trending in two, three countries simultaneously in the top 200 podcasts, uh, in the Apple Podcast.

Now. For the first time, we're trending in five, six countries simultaneously in the top, actually a hundred, uh, apple Podcasts in the entrepreneurship and business category. So thank you very, very, very much. This is cannot happen without you. I can't thank you enough and also. I am very humbled that the podcast is being always mentioned, selected as one of the best podcasts to listen, whether here in Dubai, in the US and other parts in the world.

So I'm really humbled that, uh, I was able to reach this global audience and I hope I. My guests and myself, we are able to spark [00:42:00] innovation because as you know, all the, what I do is just to try to get, you know, this inspiration, to try to get these ideas out of your mind and start building. So thank you very much and as I say, always tune soon for a new episode.

Thank you very much and bye-bye.