TaskHuman CEO Ravi Swaminathan Reveals Different Entry Points into Tech
“The Blind Ambition with Jack Kelly” provides a candid look into the top tech companies. Go behind the scenes with tech and workplace leaders and explore engineering and work culture, what it takes to land a role at these companies, and how to build, scale and succeed as an engineer or technologist.
Ravi Swaminathan is the founder and CEO of TaskHuman. TaskHuman is a real-time digital coaching platform. Users can amplify their daily work and personal life with one-on-one personalized guidance from live specialists over video calls covering nearly 1,000 aspects of well-being.
It’s OK to pivot your career
I have just been programming for a long time, and I never really thought that programming was going to be a career choice until I had to do it. Then I realized I love it, but I really want to scratch a different itch.
Call it the generosity of strangers. Somebody just said, hey, that guy is really bright, and I think we should take a chance on him and give him a program management job… And so, for a couple of years, I [worked in] program management and [then] moved into product marketing.
The credibility of a technical background as a project manager
[Project management] really teaches you a lot [about] how [to] manage [others] and get people to execute on the project. Do it in a humble way, but keep the project on track because that’s your job.
I think the fact that I had an engineering background provided a level of credibility—not to say that you absolutely need that.
Why you don’t have to explain yourself
A lot of people come in… want[ing] to be CEO, but they don’t know [or] can’t articulate why… Whatever your articulation is, whether it’s, “I want to be the guy making the most money” or having the most impact—because that role has the most impact—or I want to deal with this, I want to be famous—whatever your motivations are, it doesn’t matter. It’s yours, right? Nobody’s judging you for it.
The reality about leadership roles
The higher up you go, the roles are just numerically less available.
There might be 75 engineers… but there [are] probably only four director-of-engineering jobs. All 75 people cannot follow the same path… so then the question is, how can you differentiate yourself?
You have to be comfortable with knowing and working with the decision-makers because somebody has to take a chance on you for the very first time. You [could be] the world’s most brilliant, most qualified director of engineering to-be, but somebody else needs to see it because you don’t get to appoint yourself to that role.
How to deal with career setbacks
You don’t want to be the person sitting there being bitter and going, you know, I didn’t get this job because I’m bald. I didn’t get this job because I’m left-handed. I’m not dismissing any of the real things that are happening in the world because we know it’s complex. But… accept that… it happened [and] feel comfortable that you gave it your best shot.
At the end of the day, you can only control what you control, right?
Sometimes you do the work now and get rewarded later.
I don’t want to sound like an idealistic guy that says, “Just do the right thing and hope for the best.” That’s not what I’m saying. But do the right thing, and then, you’ll find that you’re getting really good at doing the right thing. Then, chances are, it’ll just flip over.