This week marks five years since I joined Oscilar as a founding engineer. Five years since Sachin and Neha took a bet on me. I've been thinking about what made that bet possible — and it wasn't my resume.
People ask me all the time how I got to know Sachin. The answer always gets a laugh, because it's such a small-world story.
Facebook had this thing called hack-a-month, where engineers and leaders from other teams could come work in a different team for a month, just to get exposure. That's how I met Sachin — he did a hack-a-month in our team. Our paths didn't cross after that. I left Facebook, did a couple of startups, and eventually landed at Yugabyte as a founding engineer.
Here's the part I love: Neha was an angel investor in Yugabyte. And when I chose to join Oscilar, the immediate signal Sachin and Neha got about me came from Kannan Muthukaruppan, one of Yugabyte's co-CEOs.
I'd known Kannan and Karthik since Facebook. We stayed in touch after I left — not networking, just staying in touch. So when they started Yugabyte, I didn't hesitate to join them on that journey as a 0-1 engineer. It's the same role I've been playing here at Oscilar: first engineer in, building from nothing, wearing whatever hat the day needs.
Read that back. I got hired because of a hack-a-month, an angel check, and friendships I kept for years without knowing they'd matter.
The day-in-day-out resume
The moral is very simple, and I tell this to anyone who knows me: in a professional setup, give your 200%. Your team will recognize it, and your network will take you places.
End of the day, it's not what you put on your resume that matters. It's what you do day in and day out at work. Kannan didn't recommend me because of a bullet point. He recommended me because of years of ordinary days — showing up, doing the work, staying in touch after everyone moved on.
I have one motto, in professional life and personal life: never burn bridges. Build relationships instead. Five years at Oscilar exist because of relationships I built years before Oscilar existed, with no idea they'd matter.
What trust does to you
Here's what I keep coming back to. Sachin and Neha hired me on trust — trust built on signals from people who'd worked with me, not on interviews or credentials. And that trust did something to me. When someone bets on you like that, you don't want to just do the job. You want to be worthy of the bet.
That's what good leaders do. They don't just manage you — they bring the best out of you. I cherish that, because I've felt the difference it makes. And it's the entire reason I try to lead the way I do.
People ask me how many years I've managed, like it's a number that explains something. I think that's the wrong question. I've never cared much about the title. What I care about is the actual work: rallying a team, leveraging what everyone brings, empowering people across the company, coaching, guiding, setting the example. You can do all of that without a title. Most of the best management I've seen had nothing to do with titles.
The anti-retention metric
I learned the craft in an unlikely place: managing interns at Facebook.
An intern manager's goal isn't just to coach the intern to a successful project. It's to make their whole experience so good — the coaching, the guidance, the motivation — that they go back and finish school instead of quitting to join full-time. You're trying to give them the best experience in the field they chose, so they stay the course they enrolled in.
Your success metric is someone choosing to leave. That's a strange and wonderful thing to be measured on. It taught me that managing isn't about keeping people — it's about what you give them while they're with you. Leadership as giving, not extracting.
Why I keep choosing startups
Someone asked me recently why I keep joining startups. My answer: I join startups where I can communicate directly with the founders.
When the founders are technical, they understand the angle. You don't spend weeks translating — you have the conversation, and you're off. And when something isn't working, they're willing to pivot faster. That direct line, that speed, is everything to me. It's the same reason I loved those intern terms: short feedback loops, real coaching, no layers in between.
Big companies taught me depth in a lane. Startups taught me breadth — 0-1 building, wearing five hats, doing whatever the team needs that day. I'm more of a tech lead manager than a pure manager, and honestly that's the startup imprint: you lead by still being able to do the work.
Five years in
So here's where I land, five years into Oscilar. I'm grateful to Sachin and Neha for the trust they placed in me — the kind of trust you can't interview for. I'm grateful to every teammate, intern, and friend who taught me something about leading.
And I'm still trying to be the kind of leader who brings the best out of people. No title required.