Rajalakshmi Srinivasan
Life at Zoho
Describe your current role in the organization.
Director - Product Management. My employee number was 55 when I joined. I handle multiple roles—currently heading the application performance monitoring section and the product management for Site24x7, a cloud-based all-in-one monitoring product. Also, I represent Zoho as a spokesperson in various colleges and industry events. I talk about technology, youth motivation, women's empowerment, and parenting here. Mentoring the development, marketing, sales, and support teams is an added responsibility.
What role does Zoho’s company culture play in your identity and the work that you do?
My career started as a software developer. The company trusted me and gave me the required freedom to own and execute on ideas.
I have been part of different products in various roles such as product development, recruitment, security reviews, handling customer support/escalation, analyzing the market and defining product roadmaps, talking at technical events about product/technology, and more.
If not for the company’s people-first approach and giving employees authority and ownership, I wouldn’t be who I am today.
What does your work space currently look like?
My workplace (be it at the office or at home) is simple with a calendar, a focus light (that I use for my talks), notebook/pen, and my headphone.
At Work
Your most embarrassing blunder?
I do recollect a mistake at work where I promised a feature to a customer and completely forgot about it. Those were times where we didn’t have proper tracking tools in place. It was a learning-from-a-mistake moment, I felt really bad about it, and was cautious not to repeat it.
Is there a project or an accomplishment at Zoho you’re proud of?
After I joined the organization, the first product I worked on was to collect metrics from devices that supported only the TL1 protocol. I was the one to write the first version of the TL1 agent.
After that, I have been part of the core design of some of the framework/database components that are still used in production. I consider every product/feature I do from end to end, from ideation to implementation, an accomplishment.
Through my speaking journey as an evangelist, I have been able to positively impact people around me. This is another accomplishment I am happy about. I have been able to do 50+ events year after year for the past three years.
Tell us about a time you overcame a challenge you didn’t think was possible.
One was a unique issue in the production environment—a rare use-case which we couldn’t replicate at our development set up, but occasionally happened in live environment, without a pattern. The irregularity in the issue and the distributed cloud environment were really challenging, so we couldn’t resolve the issue and decided to ignore it and do a General Availability (GA) release.
I wasn’t convinced because of the impact it would have on customers and I spent a stretch of almost 48 hours trying out various possibilities without any assumptions. I finally found the issue and fixed the problem. The satisfaction you get from solving challenging problems cannot be explained in words.
Another was the start of my journey as an evangelist for the company, an additional role besides the product development role. There were some initial difficulties, but I was determined to overcome them and cautiously work on them. Today, I am one of the spokespersons of the company who talks at our technical events, college/school events, and industry events.
Getting Personal
Any memorable moments of your journey captured?
Training to operate a fire extinguisher (2013)
Working from the Tenkasi Office (2015)
Road Safety Run (2017)
What are some of your favorite activities outside of work?
Traveling has been my favorite activity since childhood. I do all kinds of traveling: traveling for work, solo traveling, traveling with friends, and traveling with family.
My interest for travel gels with the evangelist role. In 2019, I traveled to 12 different countries and multiple states in India for work events. During the pandemic, my events were all virtual. Gradually, I’ve resumed traveling.
What are the top three books that you recommend?
There are many books that I can suggest. Some of my favorites are:
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
Rework:Change the Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Words of Wisdom
Enjoy your work every day.
Be strong in your concepts. Accept challenges and take them to completion.
“Be the change you want to see in the world” is one of my favorite quotes. Your work should speak for you.
Try to strike the right balance between work time, family time, and time for yourself.
Live in the moment. Don’t be over obsessed with results. Enjoy the path. Happiness is the path and not destiny.
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