How to Pass the Amazon Bar Raiser Interview (From an Amazon Interviewer) - w/ Utkarsh

In 2022, Utkarsh Bajaj graduated from Purdue's MS in Business Analytics program into a job market where four offers was normal. Today he works in applied AI at Amazon, sits on the other side of the interview table, and says landing a single interview call is now the hard part.(If your inbox has been quiet for weeks, that line probably stings. It stung me too.)In this episode of Ready Set Do, Utkarsh breaks down the Amazon interview loop from the inside. He explains how to spot the Amazon Bar Raiser before you walk in, and why that one person carries half your outcome.Then he tells the story of an Amazon coding interview he was certain he had failed. The interviewer who ran that round later ended up on his team. What that person told him changed how Utkarsh thinks about technical interviews for good.So what does an Amazon interviewer look for in 2026? Utkarsh doesn't soften it. A generic answer about using AI for writing tells him you're two years behind.He digs into every number on your resume. And he keeps meeting engineers who ship code fast but can't explain the system underneath it. If you're prepping for SQL and Python rounds or grinding LeetCode, this stretch will reset your priorities.Next, we get into how he actually learns. Utkarsh hates token maxing (and he explains exactly why). He learns with NotebookLM and a backlog system he built himself.Before he automates anything, he asks one question. Is this problem deterministic or not? We also cover the AI projects that impress interviewers, which matters if you're eyeing the move from data engineering to AI engineering.The second half gets personal. Utkarsh lost the H-1B, relocated to Toronto, and started posting on LinkedIn as a way to hold onto what he was learning.He set himself a 100-day challenge. His first post got zero likes. He walks through what building in public has returned so far, plus the part nobody admits: posting becomes an addiction you have to manage.We close on the question hanging over every tech job search in 2026. Is AI a bubble, and what happens to AI jobs next?If you're figuring out how to get a job at Amazon, or your next move in tech, this one is for you.Chapters:00:00 Amazon Bar Raiser on Why Candidates Get Rejected01:33 Purdue MS Business Analytics to Applied AI at Amazon05:56 Tech Job Search 2026: Then vs. Now11:41 Amazon Interview Loop Explained: Who Is the Bar Raiser?17:34 Amazon Coding Interview: What to Do When You're Stuck21:32 What Amazon Interviewers Look For in 202626:04 How to Learn AI Tools the Right Way (Stop Token Maxing)31:55 AI Projects That Impress Interviewers36:52 No H-1B, Moved to Toronto: Building a Personal Brand41:57 How to Start Posting on LinkedIn (100-Day Challenge)48:08 What LinkedIn Posting Actually Gets You53:55 Is AI a Bubble? The Future of AI JobsSubscribe to Ready Set Do on YouTube and Spotify for new episodes on careers, tech hiring, and AI jobs.

Picture the 2024 job market from the inside. You finish a one-year master's, open LinkedIn, and every analytics role already has a wall of applicants ahead of you. (If you searched that year, you just felt your shoulders tense.)Samridhi Vats got through anyway. She went from a chemical engineering degree she did not pick, to two years of work in India, to the Purdue MS Business Analytics program, to Business Analyst II at Amazon.How did she land it when almost nobody was getting offers? She built a system, and on this episode of Ready Set Do she hands the whole thing over.It starts with applying to fewer jobs on purpose. Her 50 percent job description rule decides which roles earn an application at all. Then she goes where most candidates never look: venture capital portfolio pages, full of companies that had not posted on LinkedIn yet.She also maxed out her weekly LinkedIn connection cap. Her honest read on what that cold outreach returned is a job search strategy for 2026 worth stealing.From there we get into the Amazon business analyst interview itself. The BA2 process runs in two stages: a SQL phone screen, then a five-round Amazon loop interview.If you are prepping business analyst interview questions, save her six-step method for Amazon leadership principles answers. It includes a ranking step almost nobody does. She also keeps AI out of the first two steps entirely (yes, even in 2026).Then the moment every candidate dreads. What happens when an interviewer starts tearing apart the numbers on your resume? Samridhi explains how to defend them.We also look at the job itself. She compares a day as an Amazon analyst in 2024 with today, now that her team runs personal agents and MCPs. That raises a fair question for anyone chasing data analyst jobs in 2026: do analysts need AI skills to get hired now?Thinking about a career switch to analytics? Her chemical engineering to data analytics story covers the foundational skills that mattered and how to learn anything without a course.Then the big one for international students. Is a master's in the USA still worth it in 2026 for Indian students? She gives her honest answer, plus how many years of experience you should have before you go.She closes on the skill she ranks above SQL. Hold your guess until 53:58.Preparing for an analytics interview right now? Bookmark everything from 19:26 onward.Subscribe on YouTube and Spotify.Chapters:0:00 Episode Preview1:11 Purdue MS Business Analytics: What the Program Covers6:35 Is the Business Analyst Degree Too Broad in 2026?9:52 SQL, Python, Statistics: Foundational Skills for Analytics Roles12:18 Job Searching in a Brutal Market13:36 Targeted Applications and the 50% Job Description Rule15:31 Finding Jobs Beyond LinkedIn: VC Portfolios and Cold Outreach18:02 How the Amazon Opportunity Happened19:26 Amazon BA2 Interview Process: Phone Screen and Loop21:31 How to Prepare for Amazon Leadership Principle Questions (6 Steps)28:01 How to Defend the Numbers on Your Resume32:57 Day in the Life of an Amazon Business Analyst35:28 How AI Changed Analytics Work at Amazon38:09 Do Analysts Need AI Skills to Get Hired Now?41:08 From Chemical Engineering to Data Analytics47:39 How to Learn Anything Without a Course in 202648:53 Is a US Master's Still Worth It for Indian Students?52:15 How Many Years of Experience Before a US Master's?53:58 The Skill That Matters More Than SQL57:30 Connect the Dots: Experimenting Your Way Into a Career

Thirteen hundred applications. Thirteen callbacks.At one point, that was Bharath Vemula's job search math. Today he's a Meta engineer working on the company's model training stack. (The twist? He never applied to Meta. Recruiters found him on LinkedIn.)So what was on that profile? We pull it apart, along with the LinkedIn habit that got him headhunted. If you've ever wondered whether anyone reads your headline, this one's for you.His path runs through four years as a software engineer at Goldman Sachs in India, then Verily, the Alphabet moonshot company, where he worked on privacy and data governance. Then Meta.We go deep on the Meta interview process as it stands now. Two DSA rounds, a system design interview, a behavioral round, plus the AI coding round that's been added since.Is LeetCode dead in 2026? He says no. His reasoning is worth hearing even if you hate grinding problems (and yes, most of us do).Then we rewind to 2022. Bharath came to the US for his MS at Purdue with the whole plan already mapped out before he left India.He turned down Columbia over the fee and picked Purdue for the assistantship odds. A research role in a cyber safety lab funded most of his master's, and he finished in eighteen months. His one rule? Walk out with zero debt.Study abroad folks, take notes. This is the international student playbook most people wish they had on day one.We also get into where big tech jobs are opening up next. His bet is ML systems engineering and AI infrastructure. He thinks the compute wasted across big tech data centers is one of the biggest openings for engineers right now.In the back half, we get EB-2 NIW explained in plain terms. How a green card NIW petition skips PERM, what USCIS looks for, and why he started it as protection against tech layoffs before it became the whole plan. For any Indian engineer in the USA, it's an H-1B alternative worth understanding.Plus his side research on AI agent security, how agents change the economics of social engineering attacks, and how to build a research profile without a university behind you.We close on the big question. Is AI a bubble, and will it take your job? His answer is more specific than yes or no.If you're deep in a software engineer job search right now, watch the 1,300 applications chapter twice.Subscribe to Ready Set Do on YouTube and Spotify, and find every episode at readysetdopodcast.com 🎧Chapters:00:00 Intro - How We Met At Purdue03:06 "I Never Applied To Meta" - The Interview Process05:55 What Is Verily? Inside An Alphabet Moonshot07:48 The LinkedIn Habit That Got Him Headhunted11:04 How He Landed His First US Job At Verily13:16 1,300 Applications, 13 Callbacks, 9 Offers16:03 What Actually Counts As A Signal On Your Resume18:26 Can You Build A Specialist Profile In 3 Months?19:31 The Plan He Made Before Leaving India21:00 "I Don't Want Debt On My Head"22:26 Why He Turned Down Columbia25:16 Does Any Of This Still Work In 2026?26:52 ML Systems Engineering Is The Real Opening29:38 What He Actually Does At Meta32:47 Agentic Cyber Warfare And Attacks At Scale34:47 How To Do Research Without Being In College36:38 EB-2 NIW Explained: How It Skips PERM40:07 Is AI A Bubble? A Meta Engineer's Take42:10 Why He Doesn't Believe AGI Is Here43:49 Will AI Take Your Job?

Akash prepared full time for India's UPSC civil services exam for two years. Eight to nine hours a day, two attempts. He didn't make it. Then he gave himself three days to decide on a third try, and barely slept through any of them.He walked away. (Spoiler: what came next was far messier than "UPSC aspirant becomes software engineer in the US.")Why is UPSC such a trap? Akash calls it a black hole for India's youthful years. The exam is binary. You clear it, or you leave with zero.He shares the four questions to answer before another UPSC attempt. He also names the sunk cost trap that keeps aspirants coming back long after they should stop.At 24, he held a metallurgy degree from IIT BHU and zero coding background. He weighed CAT and GATE against the GRE, said no to an MBA, and chose an MS in CS in the USA.How do you build a CS profile from nothing? He co-wrote a machine learning paper with a professor back at his IIT. He also covers how to explain a two-year gap on applications. Then he applied to 17 US universities. One admit.Would you guess the next part from Instagram? Fear of failing a course on an F1 visa. No return offer. A layoff. $100K in student loans. (The Grand Canyon photos leave that out.)For international students job hunting in the USA, he breaks down 20 to 30 applications a day and what a real referral looks like.If you're sitting on a decision you've already spent years paying for, this one is for you. Subscribe on YouTube and Spotify, or visit readysetdopodcast.com.CHAPTERS00:00 Why UPSC Is India's Biggest Time Sink02:39 How He Ended Up Preparing For UPSC03:52 The Back Bench Book That Started Everything04:38 Quitting Consulting After One Year05:57 What Is Actually In The UPSC Syllabus06:33 UPSC Stages: Prelims, Mains, Interview07:32 Why UPSC Is Not Like Engineering Entrance Exams08:29 "I Don't Wanna Gamble My Entire Youth On An Exam"08:40 A Day In The Life Of A Full Time UPSC Aspirant09:25 Why IIT Killed His Study Habit10:51 How To Train Yourself To Study For Long Hours11:24 The Two Hour Study Shift Rule11:50 Why He Never Context Switched Between Subjects13:59 Does UPSC Prep Give You Any Job Skills?14:38 Why UPSC Is Binary: One Or Zero15:38 "A Black Hole That Sinks India's Youthful Years"17:04 What Happens To Those Who Don't Make It17:15 The One Thing UPSC Prep Actually Gives You18:31 Most Aspirants Don't Have A Strong Enough Why18:59 Government Sponsored Ivy League Study20:02 4 Questions To Ask Before Another UPSC Attempt21:25 Do You Even Want The Life UPSC Gives You?22:45 The Sunk Cost Trap23:39 What Finally Made Him Quit UPSC24:32 Three Sleepless Days To Decide26:48 "Am I One Foot Away From Water?"28:00 CAT vs GATE vs GRE After Undergrad29:32 Why He Said No To An MBA30:11 "My Last Chance To Learn A Hard Skill"33:09 Why Computer Science34:38 "Without UPSC I'd Never Be In Software Engineering"36:20 How To Explain A Two Year Gap On Applications37:43 MIS vs Computer Science: Picking A Major39:51 How To Build A CS Profile From Zero40:27 Publishing An ML Paper To Prove Capability42:37 US Admits Are A Numbers Game43:32 17 Applications, 1 Admit44:00 The Rejection That Became An Admit45:10 The First 3 Years In The US Were Brutal46:17 "What If I Fail A Course On An F1 Visa?"46:33 No Return Offer, Then A Layoff47:11 100K In Student Loans47:22 The Grand Canyon Story vs Reality48:23 When The American Dream Actually Starts50:55 Job Hunting Is A Numbers Game: 20-30 Applications A Day51:40 What A Real Referral Looks Like53:18 Worst Case, A Referral Gets You Feedback54:31 What's Next: Entrepreneurship On A Visa55:32 Climbing The Wrong Mountain56:35 The One Takeaway From This Episode

A week before we recorded this, my nephew asked why I'd started posting on LinkedIn. He'd just finished college and started his first job, so I gave him the textbook answer about networks and opportunities.(I watched it bounce right off him.)Fair enough. If you're a new grad deep in a graduate job search, "build your network" sounds like homework with no due date. So I brought in someone who could answer him properly.Shoaib Ahmed is a LinkedIn ghostwriter who has written over 20,000 posts. His first job out of university came through a LinkedIn DM, and he later used the platform to build a million-pound business. (So yes, he's earned an opinion.)Why does LinkedIn personal branding matter more now that AI writes half the feed? Shoaib's answer surprised me. The flood of AI slop is your opening. When every post sounds the same, a real voice gets noticed fast.For personal branding beginners who don't feel like experts yet, he covers what to post anyway. And this isn't a founder-only game. Employees build a personal brand too, and he explains how.Then we get into the business side. Clients say they want one thing and actually want another. Impressions are a vanity number. You need reach and conversion, and one without the other stalls out.His LinkedIn profile audit covers the banner, the offer, your ICP, and the proof. Sell the transformation instead of the service. Make your ideal buyer feel seen. Let testimonials and case studies do the bragging.If your profile still reads like a résumé nobody finishes, jump to 00:37:13.If you're a student figuring out how to use LinkedIn, or you want to get hired on LinkedIn without sounding like a robot, this is the career advice I wish I'd handed my nephew. His closing line stuck with me: your LinkedIn profile is not for you. 🎙️Chapters00:00:00 - Preview: LinkedIn personal branding from a 20,000-post ghostwriter00:01:14 - Why LinkedIn personal branding matters in the AI era00:03:07 - How LinkedIn helped Shoaib build a million-pound business00:05:30 - Why AI slop creates an opportunity to stand out on LinkedIn00:07:55 - Should you use ChatGPT or Claude to write LinkedIn posts?00:11:02 - How did Shoaib turn LinkedIn into a personal branding business?00:13:31 - What do LinkedIn personal branding clients actually want?00:15:06 - How to measure LinkedIn growth beyond impression00:17:51 - Does LinkedIn personal branding have to start with the founder?00:20:14 - Should you chase the LinkedIn algorithm, carousels, and trends?00:22:17 - Why trust is the one thing AI and viral posts cannot replace00:24:11 - The 90-minute research call for finding brand stories00:25:53 - Why transformation stories build more trust than tips00:27:03 - How to use AI to turn your life story into content ideas00:28:30 - Real AI founder example: building a five-pillar content strategy00:29:47 - Content pillar 1: the founder journey and lived experience00:30:26 - Content pillar 2: the AI-native future of business00:31:32 - Content pillar 4: venture building, leadership, and scaling systems00:32:06 - Content pillar 5: podcast clips and AI thought leadership00:34:23 - Why campaign-based posting beats waiting for inspiration00:37:13 - Live LinkedIn profile roast: what needs fixing first?00:38:44 - How to optimize your LinkedIn banner around your offer00:40:33 - How to clarify your target audience and ICP on LinkedIn00:41:26 - How to make your ideal buyer feel seen on your profile00:43:13 - How to use testimonials, case studies, and proof on LinkedIn00:44:43 - The three-part LinkedIn profile audit: outcome, audience, proof00:46:41 - Your LinkedIn profile is not for you — the mindset shiftConnect with Shoaib on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shoaibahmed21/Grab his free LinkedIn profile checklist (details at 00:45:55)Ready Set Do: readysetdopodcast.comSubscribe on YouTube and Spotify.

Shrey Shah never applied to Microsoft.Microsoft executives watched him give a talk on AI coding workflows, then reached out. Meta came knocking not long after, asking for something similar.Here's the part that stings a little: that wasn't luck.It traces back to a decision he made years earlier, when senior engineers around him said going all in on AI-assisted coding would hurt his career. He ignored them. He was building with agents before agent jobs existed, and using Cursor before most engineers could spell it.In this episode of Ready Set Do, Shrey — now Senior Software Engineer, AI at Microsoft — walks through how inbound offers actually happen in tech, and what he did to make himself findable.We get into the interview loop too. Four rounds, two technical, zero LeetCode. One problem was so big he had to keep solving it out loud while talking to his interviewer. He explains why that format tests something the standard algorithm grind never touches.Then the harder conversation starts. Shrey doesn't believe in resumes anymore.His argument: every resume is now tailored by the same AI tools, every application lands in the same ATS pile, and the traditional job application is finished. (If you're applying into silence right now, you already suspect he's right.)So what replaces it? Visibility. Posting what you learn. Forming your own point of view on what you read. Building a public track record long before you need one.He gets specific about what to build, what to post on LinkedIn as a software engineer, and how he never runs out of things to say. He also breaks down how meetup and conference speaking invitations actually arrive.Then the technical gut-check. Most engineers using AI tools can't explain the difference between a skill, a sub agent, a hook, a rule, and MCP — or when to reach for which. Shrey can, and he lays out the architecture in plain language.We close on his 2028 prediction. He doesn't think AI takes your job. He thinks roles merge, everyone carries more scope, and the new jobs created won't line up with the ones that vanish.Worth your 45 minutes if the job market has gone quiet on you. 🎧Timestamps:00:00 Cold Open: How He Got Hired at Microsoft Without Applying02:10 Hired at Microsoft Without Applying — How Inbound Offers Happen03:42 Microsoft AI Interview With No LeetCode: What They Test Instead09:46 Forward-Compatible Software: Building Agents That Survive Model Updates13:29 How to Get Recruiter Inbound in Tech20:57 Are Resumes Dead? Why AI Broke Job Applications23:44 Personal Branding for Engineers: Visibility Before You Need a Job27:58 What to Post on LinkedIn as a Software Engineer30:57 How to Get Invited to Speak at Tech Meetups and Conferences34:08 Vibe Coding Mistakes Most AI Engineers Still Make36:08 Skill vs Sub Agent vs MCP: AI Tool Architecture Explained42:27 AI Job Loss 2028 Prediction: Roles Merging, Not ReplacedGuest: Shrey Shah — Senior Software Engineer, AI at Microsofthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyshahh/Host: Naman Pandeyreadysetdopodcast.comSubscribe on YouTube and Spotify.

Thirteen years at Google. Trust and Safety in Hyderabad first, then the Bay Area, then most of the back half inside YouTube — finance, then analytics, then managing YouTube inventory and monetization.Then Aishwarya Raghavan quit. No job lined up.Two months later a friend referred her to a company she actually wanted. She didn't get it. That rejection landed right as the layoff headlines were peaking, and that's where this conversation starts.Most advice about the AI job market in 2026 is built to make you feel behind. Aishwarya's take goes the other way.She says a lot of postings that say "AI skills required" mean something far more basic than you'd guess. The people who never start are usually the ones who jumped straight to AI agents, decided it was too hard, and quit before level one.(If that's you, no judgment. It was most of us.)So she walks through four levels anyone can climb. Level one is small enough to feel silly: getting ChatGPT to stop sounding like a stranger. Custom GPTs come later. Agent orchestration comes after that.Is that really enough to get hired in AI? Her answer is more specific than yes.We also get into why she couldn't just move into AI work internally at Google, even with the badge and the tenure. How to read a job description and tell whether a company has actually thought about AI or is checking a box.And the interview skill she rates above every technical signal. Fair warning — it has more to do with storytelling than with reciting the STAR method at a hiring manager.Then there's the networking habit she regrets not building while she still had the Google email. Nobody tells you that your network has an expiration date.She's now a principal product manager at Arrivia, wiring AI into a travel business full of legacy systems. Different problem entirely from YouTube creator monetization, and she's candid about what transferred and what didn't.If you're a student, or a few years into your career and quietly worried the market already moved past you, start here.Chapters below. If this helped, subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. 🎧00:00 - Aishwarya Raghavan on Leaving Google After 13 Years04:12 - How AI Is Changing Big Tech and Product Management07:14 - Product Manager Job Search Advice in a Tough Tech Market10:09 - Product Interview Storytelling: How to Stand Out as a PM13:24 - Why Product, Engineering, and Strategy Roles Are Blending16:10 - Best AI Tools and Workflows for Product Managers19:08 - AI Agents and Agent Orchestration: The Next PM Skill22:03 - Job Search Lessons After Leaving Google25:17 - Travel Tech and AI: Modernizing Legacy Product Workflows30:45 - YouTube Monetization, Creator Tools, and AI Product Strategy35:59 - Networking Without an Agenda for Big Tech Career Growth40:23 - Final Advice for PMs Building Rare AI Skills

Should an international student still move to the US for a master's right now?That's the question sitting in thousands of inboxes and WhatsApp groups this admissions cycle. Not "which school," not "what score." Just: should I go at all?Naman put it to someone who has watched this play out for over two decades — and who has no reason to sell you the dream.Professor Benjamin Dunford taught leadership and management at Purdue's Mitch Daniels School of Business, where he was academic director over the full suite of Purdue MBA programs. He also taught in Kellogg's family business executive program, and most recently at the Indian School of Business in Mohali.His answer on the headwinds international students face in 2026 is more direct than you'd expect from someone inside the system. He names what's real. Then he tells you what actually still holds up.A big piece of it: work experience. Ben is blunt that it's the biggest differentiator in MBA admissions, and the thing most applicants under-invest in while they optimize everything else.Which brings us to the 4.0. If you're chasing a perfect GPA, he'd argue you might be playing it safe — picking the courses you'll win instead of the ones that will stretch you. (Yes, this is going to sting a little. Sit with it.)We also get into why so much leadership advice falls flat. The gap between the real and the ideal. Why change is a choice, not a command. "Compliance theater" — that thing where everyone nods in the meeting and disagrees in the hallway after. And how to influence people when you have zero authority over them.Ben's research on pairing accountability with forgiveness comes up too, including why CEOs get visibly uncomfortable the moment you say the word forgiveness in a boardroom.Then there's his work at ISB Mohali, teaching 20-something CEOs who inherited Indian family businesses. How do you honor your parents and still change the thing they built? He's watched a lot of people try. 🇮🇳We close on where business education is headed as certificates and badges start pressuring traditional degrees, what AI is doing to how leadership gets taught, and the difference between advising and consulting.If you're a student, a recent grad, or early in your career and weighing a move abroad, this one is required listening.Timestamps:00:00:00 - Professor Dunford on Purdue MBA Programs and Executive Leadership Education00:03:59 - What Separates Elite MBA Students From Average Applicants?00:06:12 - Perfectionism vs Excellence in Business School00:07:45 - Should International Students Still Pursue a US Master's Degree?00:11:59 - Why Students Should Stop Chasing a 4.0 GPA00:17:09 - How AI Is Changing Leadership Education and Business Schools00:20:02 - Will Certificates and Badges Replace Traditional Degrees?00:23:42 - Best Advice for Early Career Leaders: Keep Going and Iterate00:25:44 - Why Leadership Advice Feels Too Theoretical00:28:40 - Change Is a Choice, Not a Command00:29:38 - How to Influence Without Authority at Work00:30:20 - Why Accountability Needs Forgiveness00:34:26 - Teaching at ISB and Working With Young Family Business Leaders in India00:38:53 - How Family Businesses Can Honor Tradition Through Innovation00:43:32 - Consulting, Advising, and Why Human Problems Still Need Human SolutionsSubscribe on YouTube and Spotify for new episodes.

Somewhere it's 3 a.m. and a Kubernetes pod just quietly died. A guy in a different time zone taps his card for coffee and it works. He'll never know how close that was.Keeping him from finding out is Sai Joshitha's job. She's a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Visa.Here's the part I care about for anyone sitting on an F-1 right now. SRE is one of the most underrated doors into the US tech market, and almost nobody in the international student group chats is talking about it.Everyone's fighting over the same software engineer postings. Meanwhile there's an entire discipline hiring for a completely different skill.Start with this: SRE interview loops have no LeetCode. None. Someone hands you a system that's on fire and watches how you think while it burns.Is that easier? Definitely not. It's just different, and it rewards people who like fixing things over people who ground through 300 array problems.Joshitha breaks down what the job actually is day to day — monitoring, deploying, automating, and hunting for root cause when dozens of connected systems start acting strange.Then we get to how she got there. She finished her MS at University of Michigan-Dearborn and walked into one of the ugliest markets in years, firing off 200+ applications a week before she changed the whole approach.What worked was fewer applications, aimed better, with the resume rewritten per role and real recruiter outreach instead of apply-and-pray. (We've all done apply-and-pray. It's a petri dish for burnout.)She also lays out the exact stack recruiters screen for. Kubernetes and Docker, one cloud learned end to end (not three learned halfway), observability tools like Grafana, Prometheus and Kibana, scripting for automation, plus the networking fundamentals holding all of it up.Her honest take? Knowing the tools matters way less than knowing how to solve a real problem with them.We close on where this is heading — how Visa is folding AI into on-call work for repetitive incidents, why she reads AI as a teammate instead of a replacement, and what she'd say to someone who wants a tech career but got scared off by coding-heavy roles.If you're a student, a recent grad, or someone quietly plotting a switch into reliability engineering, this is a plan you can start on Monday. 🙂Connect with Sai Joshitha — https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshithak/Chapters:00:00:00 - Sai Joshitha on Becoming a Site Reliability Engineer at Visa00:00:20 - What Does a Site Reliability Engineer Actually Do?00:02:59 - What Happens During a Production Incident?00:05:18 - How SREs Use Logs, Metrics, Alerts, and Monitoring00:08:19 - How Sai Joshitha Discovered SRE and Cloud Infrastructure00:10:23 - University of Michigan-Dearborn MS and Starting a US Tech Career00:12:14 - How to Break Into SRE After a Computer Science Master's00:13:37 - Applying to 200+ Jobs Per Week in a Tough Market00:16:11 - SRE Job Strategy: Targeted Roles, Resumes, and Recruiter Outreach00:19:52 - What Is the SRE Interview Process Like?00:23:20 - Are SRE Interviews LeetCode-Heavy or Troubleshooting-Focused?00:24:48 - Must-Have SRE Skills: Kubernetes, Cloud, Observability, and Scripting00:28:43 - Why Troubleshooting Matters More Than Just Knowing Tools00:31:41 - How AI Is Changing Site Reliability Engineering00:36:09 - Best Advice for Future SREs: Networking, AI Tools, and Programming

Picture running a resort deep inside Jim Corbett National Park. Tigers on one side of the fence, guests on the other, and a family business you never actually applied for...That was Abhinav Jindal's twenties. The business did fine. He didn't.That gap — doing well on paper, feeling hollow off it — is where this episode of Ready Set Do lives.Abhinav is an empowerment coach and a certified master practitioner of NLP and MER®, plus the founder of Cydir. He got there sideways. A manifestation course in Delhi in 2019 that he only half believed at the time. (He admits the eye-rolling was real. He went back anyway.)Then 2022. He did emotional baggage work that he says reset his business and his marriage in the same stretch. Not a slow drift toward better. A hard reboot.So what happens when a second generation business owner stops running on his father's scoreboard?We get into why New Year's resolutions fail by the second week of January. Short version: your conscious mind writes the goal, your unconscious mind quietly vetoes it, and nobody told you there was a vote.Abhinav calls that unconscious programming. The stuff wired in before you turned seven, still humming in the background while you wonder why the gym membership went untouched again. Understanding the conscious vs unconscious mind split is the whole ballgame here, and he explains it without any woo.His four steps for making change stick: clear the emotional baggage, set goals your entire system agrees with, take purposeful action, then stay present on the path. That third one is where most people fold.We also dig into how to set goals that survive contact with your own limiting beliefs — a different exercise than writing a list in January and hoping.Then there's the client story that stuck with me. A guy who quit every job right before he was about to succeed. Not once. Every single time. Abhinav traces it back to one childhood moment, and watching him unpack it is the most useful stretch of the episode if you've ever sabotaged yourself and couldn't name the reason.We close on AI. Where AI coaching and therapy genuinely help people, and where they run out of road. His read is more generous than I expected, and more specific. 🙂Call it manifestation for skeptics. Buy into it or roll your eyes at it — as a mindset coach and transformation coach, Abhinav still hands you a framework you can use, especially if you're mid career pivot and stuck between success without fulfillment and no clear next step.If you've been treating personal growth as a someday project, this one is a nudge. Finding fulfillment isn't a reward for hitting the number. Turns out it's the thing that makes hitting the number bearable.Connect with Abhinav: https://www.instagram.com/abhinavjindal.coach/Cydir: https://www.cydir.com/Chapters:00:00 - Introduction to Second Generation Entrepreneurs06:04 - Understanding Fulfillment-Driven Success11:06 - The Impact of Internal Programming16:15 - Common Pitfalls in Business Ownership21:14 - Abhinav's Personal Journey to Coaching26:27 - The Concept of Manifestation27:55 - Transformative Breakthrough Sessions30:26 - The Importance of Goals and Action32:08 - Skepticism and Openness to Change34:04 - Qualities of an Effective Coach35:51 - Unique Client Stories and Breakthroughs40:29 - The Process of Unpacking Client Issues43:22 - AI vs. Human Coaching47:33 - Future Aspirations and Impact