June 1, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 37: Comparing Oneself to Others

In this episode: Conversation with 6 IITans in Silicon Valley (IIT Madras CS Batch of 1998) about the human instinct to compare oneself to others.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode: Conversation with 6 IITans in Silicon Valley (IIT Madras CS Batch of 1998) about the human instinct to compare oneself to others.

About the Guests: All the guests (and the host) wrote the IIT JEE 1994 (IIT Joint Entrance Exam). In 1994, only those ranked in the top 48 ranks in the entire nation of India, among 200K candidates, were admitted to IIT Madras’ Computer Science batch. Featuring: Balaji Srinivasan, Praveen Patnala, Ramesh Chandra, Rajasekar Krishnamurthy, Shankar Ponnekanti, Sriram Sellappa. Together with the host (Indy Gupta), these seven individuals comprise nearly 25% of the CS Batch of IIT Madras 1998 (7 out of 30 total students in that batch). Of these guests, three are/have been startup-founders, and three are long-timers in companies.

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 1.18: Introduction to Episode 
  • 4.16: Act 1: Rajasekar Krishnamurthy, Principal Research Staff Member & Senior Manager, IBM Watson Discovery
    • “The peer group plays a significant role in shaping any of us. Societal pressure… is the variable.”
    • “If everyone in a particular area has opportunity, they can’t all go to the same destination.”
  • 6.13: Act 2: Praveen Patnala, Co-founder and Chief Architect of (stealth mode) startup Valtix
    • “I chose to get to the top… It may not happen for everyone. It is up to the person to identify what to do.”
    • “In the Bay area, kids commit suicide… due to parental pressure.”
  • 9.54: Act 3: Ramesh Chandra, Co-Founder of Moka5, Software Engineer at Databricks
    • “In most areas except sports, there is not one winner… You can find some space in which you are valuable.”
    • “What is that person doing that I am not doing? How can I learn from them… I’ve seen this in the best people who run companies.”
  • 13.27: Act 4: Balaji Srinivasan, Director of Engineering, SAP Ariba
    • “In our generation, we needed to find a stable line of work. Which is largely gone in the current generation.”
    • “In any profession where you want to be in the top, it is impossible to do it without sacrificing everything else.”
  • 16.16: Act 5: Shankar Ponnekanti, Co-founder at startup Trust Lab
    • “It is a natural tendency to compare… even in my kids.”
  • 17.41: Act 6: Sriram Sellappa, Member of Technical Staff at Arista Networks
    • Just like the tendency to compare is primitive, the tendency to belong is also primitive. There is a tension between the two. How do we reconcile?”
Episodes Like This One

This is a remix episode. If you’re interested in hearing the entire conversation with these 6 IITans, they are available in the following 2 part-series:

Together the 6 guests (+host) comprise about 25% of the IIT Madras, Computer Science Batch of 1998 (total 30 students). The speakers in this episode include 4 PhDs + 3 Masters. 3 entrepreneurs, 3 industry long-timers, and 1 Professor (host).

Stay tuned for awesome remix episodes coming up during summer 2022!

Featured in this Episode
  1. Balaji Srinivasan, Director of Engineering, SAP Ariba
  2. Praveen Patnala, Co-founder and Chief Architect of stealth mode startup Valtix (with $27M+ funding including Series A)
  3. Rajasekar Krishnamurthy, Principal Research Staff Member & Senior Manager, IBM Watson Discovery
    • 1970s-early 1990s: Grew up in the state of Tamilnadu
    • 1994-1998: IIT Madras CS Batch
    • 1998-2004: PhD in Computer Science, from University of Wisconsin Madison
    • 2004-Present: 17 years at IBM
  4. Ramesh Chandra, Co-Founder of Moka5, Software Engineer at Databricks
  5. Shankar Ponnekanti, Co-founder at startup Trust Lab
    • 1970s-early 1990s: Grew up in the (then) state of Andhra Pradesh
    • 1994-1998: IIT Madras CS Batch
    • 1998-2004: PhD in Computer Science from Stanford
    • 2005-2020: 15 years at Google, where he left as Distinguished Engineer
    • 2020-Present: Startup founder, Trust Lab
  6. Sriram Sellappa, Member of Technical Staff at Arista Networks
Useful and Relevant Links
Recently on Season 2

Season 2 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

  • Anonymous 2 (Finale of Season 2): Featuring multiple anonymous stories and a hate mail response from the host [Episode 36}
  • Central America and South America: 2 Episodes
    • Interview with Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Prof. Northeastern (Silicon Valley), Entrepreneur, Yahoo! Labs Worldwide VP and Leader. Immigrant from Chile. [Episode 35]
    • Interview with Thamar Solorio, Prof U. Houston and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. Immigrant from Mexico. [Episode 34]
  • Romania Segment: 3 Episodes
    • Interview with Rada Mihalcea, Prof U. Michigan, and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. [Episode 33]
    • Interview with Ion Stoica, Founder/Creator of Apache Spark, Ray, Mesos, and founder of Databricks, Anyscale, Conviva. Prof at UC Berkeley. [Episode 32]
    • From Romania: Episode featuring 2 distinguished Computer Scientists (Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea). [Episode 31]
  • Israel Segment: 4 Episodes
    • Interview with Regina Barzilay, Prof MIT, and Cancer Survivor. Double Immigrant from Moldova to Israel, and then Israel to US. [Episode 30]
    • Interview with Moshe Vardi, Prof Rice Univ, and Winner of Gödel Prize and Knuth Prize. [Episode 29]
    • Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof UPenn and Head of Research, Algorand Foundation. [Episode 28]
    • From Israel: Episode featuring 3 distinguished Computer Scientists (Tal Rabin, Moshe Vardi, Regina Barzilay). [Episode 27]
  • India Segment: 3 Episodes
    • Interview with Pratima Rao Gluckman, author of book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech”, and immigrant from India, and leader in Silicon Valley. [Episode 26]
    • IIT Madras, Computer Science Batch of 1998: Interview with 7 graduates from that batch (comprising about 25% of the batch). 4 PhDs + 3 Masters. 3 entrepreneurs, 3 industry long-timers, and 1 Professor (host). [Episode 24, Episode 25]
In case you missed it | Season 1

Season 1 featured 13 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

  • Credits
    • Music Credits for Podcast
    • The caption picture at top of page is of a Southern Magnolia flower, taken in Vacherie, Louisiana, USA. Pic taken by Indranil Gupta. 
 The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!
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indygupta Written by:

Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign