Her Story
About Shruti
I have been working in product management for 12 to 13 years now. I earned my bachelor's degree in computer science from VIT University in India, and then completed my master's in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon in 2014. During my master's, I had a practicum or client project where we didn't just build a product for the customer, but we understood what their requirements were, why those were their requirements, and then understanding from a technical point of view what would be feasible to deliver, setting expectations, and managing the whole customer relationship. That project was really helpful for me to understand how to establish communication with customers. While I built a strong technical profile, I was always more enthusiastic about the business side of the house, and product management was a very good sweet spot for me, living between engineers as well as the customer. My career path took me from Hitachi to another startup, then to Splunk, then Snowflake, a couple of other startups, and now I'm at Google. The good part about being a PM is that you don't do one single thing - it really depends on where your product is right now. Currently, I'm working on building a product, and since I joined Google a few months ago, I'm focused on learning my user behaviors through a lot of user interactions to understand how they're using the product and what the roadblockers are, and working with my engineering team to build trust and make sure they're working on the right things to make the right impact. My biggest achievement is driving a lot of zero-to-one products in completely hyper-growth, chaotic environments. I'm also an entrepreneur in residence at Mighty Capital, a very famous VC firm in the Bay Area, where I review startups and help with the first level of decision-making for their pipeline of AI enterprise startups.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Shruti
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute almost all my success to my dad and my husband. You know, the people in my community say that behind a successful man, there's a woman, but behind me, there has been my husband and my dad. My dad is no longer here - I lost him last year - but I have never been told how to do and what to do. I've been told what you want to do. If you want to do it, then you have to put your 100% in, and we will support you to give your 200% too. Even when I had my daughter, I was working for a startup, and my husband took a seat in his career to be able to support me, and I've seen that rarely happen. They never limited me or dictated my path - they empowered me to choose my own direction and then supported me fully in pursuing it.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I think there are a couple of pieces of advice that have really shaped my career. One is pick the battles that you want to fight. There are only so many you could. It really helps when you're growing up in your career, because you would want to respond to almost everything that's happening around you, but you can't. And second, put your blinders on. You know, if you want to run like a horse, you have to have your blinders on for some time, to focus. I always keep these two things in my mind when I'm trying to work on something, and things don't go my way. These principles help me stay focused on what truly matters and not get distracted by every challenge or opportunity that comes my way.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice would be that sometimes you'll find yourself in a room where it would feel different, not having similar-looking faces or different attributes that you relate to. But then focus on the outcome. I have been in situations where I would be like, should I be in this seat, or take a back seat? Always keep yourself on the front seat. You know, because that's how this industry runs. I'm not saying that you need to always speak up, even when you don't need to, but when you have something to say, please do. Because a lot of times, the questions that you will end up asking, or the answers that you will end up giving, would be going on other people's minds, especially women in those rooms. They might be going through the same analysis, whether or not they should put this question in front of others or not. So speak up when you have something meaningful to contribute - you're likely giving voice to what others are thinking too.
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