Vaibhav Krishna is an Engineering Manager at Blinkit. He joined us in February of 2019 in the Infrastructure team. His primary domain is in Infrastructure stability and improving the platform features. He’s also involved in improving our systems, practices and people.
Tell us about your background and your journey in Blinkit so far.
I’ve done my masters in Electrical Engineering (Telecommunication Systems) from BTH, Karlskrona, Sweden. Came back to India right after college and kicked off work after a short break. I was very fond of the Cloud space (luckily, it was also one of the core of my education), and I started as a Cloud Services Engineer. My career at Blinkit has been crazy; my understanding of tech, platforms, systems, people has accelerated at warp speed. I attribute it totally to the opportunities I was provided with, and to the amazing peer group I was able to learn from.
Right now, I’m focused on improving our infrastructure platforms’ resilience and drive our team to build great capabilities into it.
Why did you choose to work in tech? What drove you?
Albi (Blinker’s founder and CEO) used to say, “Tech is a great equalizer,” and I’ve always resonated with it. I believe we can drive phenomenal changes using technology. It’s also very fun for me, by writing a couple of lines of code or with a couple of button clicks, we are able to do some very powerful computing. The irony of this ability is that tech enables itself.
What excites you the most about your field?
The size of impact I can create with my work is very exciting. The work can be systems, team cultures, building something or whatever — going through the journey and the end result creates a really good impact, and in a lot of cases on me too :)
While solving a problem, what is the principle you always adhere to?
I try to stick very close to the ‘theory of constraint’ — by identifying the bottleneck in the system and solving it. If you are working on anything else other than the bottleneck, you are not really improving the system because it is choking on it however smooth the other sections are.
What are your views on the future of technology?
I am not a very great visionary per se. However, I do believe it’s a very fluid ecosystem. Its evolution is going to be at an even higher rate and I genuinely believe that it will come even closer to our lives, at closer touch points.
What do you love the most about your role at Blinkit?
The challenges I face are real, and so is the impact. There is clear visibility from the output of my work. I get to see my work in action and thousands of touch points it has influence on, and that is very rewarding.
What is your experience of diversity in the tech industry?
Again, I’ll quote Albi’s “tech is a great equalizer” philosophy here. Inherently, it’s a platform without any discrepancies. I was able to interact with some great folks doing really killer things irrespective of background, and that has been made possible thanks to the kind people who helped build these ecosystems. The technology industry can only thrive when everyone has access to it and this, in turn, makes sure that, with access, everyone grows.
How do you strike the life-work balance?
I have some very strict rules I follow (like lunch breaks, no work emails on phone) and I have hard stops and non-negotiable zones. This is not the same as not stretching when required. Of course, there are times when I am up for super late hours in the night; when there is an incident or something has to move to prod with a big business impact. What I am doing later in terms of bringing in more stability also contributes back.
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