#40 Career Podcast Featuring Vidhya Rammohan, Senior Product Manager at Intel : Women in Tech.

On episode #40 of the 2B Bolder Podcast guest Vidhya Rammohan,  Senior Product Management Leader driving product definition through launch for Intel talks about her roles and responsibilities, and how she was able to transition from application engineer to product management. She shares her background and unique superpowers that have helped her transition into the most fulfilling role of her career.  Vidhya's transparency is refreshing and so enlightening to other women looking to understand the various paths that exist in tech.  Don't miss the career tips covered in this podcast.

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Vidhya Rammohan's Career Tips for Women Transcript

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Transcript

Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you, encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation.

Hello there. Thanks for tuning in. I'm joined today by Vidhya Rammohan. She is a senior product management leader driving product definition through launch on Intel Xeon products. She has experience across driving product requirements, product planning, skewing strategy, go-to-market and customer enabling for products providing cloud computing, high-performance computing, AI, and enterprise data center solutions. She is a design engineer leader with experience developing custom networking ASICs. She is an active leader in ROAR SC, which is a network of senior diverse new Intel employees sharing their experiences integrating into Intel. And when she is not working, she loves hiking, traveling, and keeps active by chasing her two boys. Vidhya, thank you for being here.

Vidhya Rammohan (Guest): Thank you for having me. I am super excited to join the session.

Mary Killelea: Okay, well, this is awesome because I haven't had anyone focused on product management before on the show, so there's a lot to learn here. Let's start by, can you share your story from your career, where you started, if you have the early jobs that you had, and then we'll talk about kind of your current role.

Vidhya Rammohan: Sounds great. So I sat a little bit in the, you know, from my educational background. I got my bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in India, and I got my master's degree in computer engineering at the University of Cincinnati here. So, my first job out of college was as a customer design engineer with LSI. I'm based out of Bay Area, and it's a very interesting role because the team, what they did was they did custom ASICs. They developed custom ASICs for other customers, big customers like Cisco, Bracket, and which was a great opportunity for me because even though I was focused on design, it allowed me to have these customer interaction and customer interfacing skills, which in the long term helps me even in my current role. And I stayed with the team for about seven to eight years, did a couple of different things in the team. It was a small team, so it gave me the opportunity to try my hands at different things, try design, try verification. Eventually, by the time I left, I was a design lead leading a huge project for Cisco. And at that point, I felt like I'd done this for a bit, and I wanted to see, A, wanted to work on products beyond networking. B, also the thing that I loved about my job then was the design part was great, but I loved the customer interfacing. So, I wanted to see more on the product side of the world and see other products beyond networking.

So I moved to Intel, took up a role as an application engineer with Intel Custom Foundry, which was a fantastic opportunity for me because it allowed me to interface with A, customers beyond networking, because we would, as Foundry, you just work with anybody who makes ASIC. B, so it gave me that, and because I wasn't as focused on just design and as an application engineer, I don't know if you've had an application engineer here in the podcast before, but an application engineer, your role essentially is to make sure you solve customer problems. So, it really helped, it allowed me to really use my customer interfacing skills, use their technical background by not being bogged down by design and such. So application engineer is a really cool job for anybody who likes interacting with people and still wants to be technical. So a pitch in there for application engineering. I did that for a little bit in Intel Custom Foundry. I led an ease of use effort where I was leading an effort where we were improving productivity for our custom foundry collaterals, methodologies, design, so that our customers could improve their design time.

And as somebody who had worked with external foundries, it gave me a very unique viewpoint because I knew the pain points our customers were talking about and I understood Intel's technology. So I had that perfect amalgamation of, I know what you are talking about, I know how this works, let's see if we can meet midway. Did that for three years. That was again great. And at this, around this time, I started getting interested in data center and just everything that goes in data center and I love that world. And I did want to move into product management as well. What I learned about myself was I like broader roles, which allows me to do several things at a time instead of going deep into one particular thing. And product management allowed me to do that. So I moved into my current role, which is a product manager for Xeon products.

Mary Killelea: What a great journey. And I love the fact that throughout it, you kind of discovered strengths of your own and kind of kept leading you towards something that made you happy and showcased your strengths. So let's talk about your role today and some of the responsibilities.

Vidhya Rammohan: So as I mentioned, my current role, I'm a product manager for Xeon products. And my responsibilities today, it starts from product definition, which is essentially taking requirements from our customers, competitive analysis, and just technology roadmap and building product requirements on this is what the product needs to be, building those requirements. Then taking the product through the planning process, which is essentially now that we built these requirements, working with engineering to see technical closure, can you go build that product? It's great that you want these features, but can we actually go build it? And in that specified timeline, because when you define the product requirements, one of your requirements is also when do you want your product to be released? You do not have infinite time. So there is a specific timeline. So, taking it through the planning process of, okay, can we go build this product through these requirements? And as you're getting that feedback, a lot of times you'll get feedback saying, we cannot do it in this time.

And then as a product manager, you're making that trade-off analysis. Is this feature worth holding my product for another quarter, or would I just drop this feature and deliver my product that one quarter? So you're making those trade-offs and you close planning. And when you close planning, you essentially have, it very clearly defines saying, this is my product. These are the features. The engineering team has clear plans of this is how we are going to go implement it. And you have a clear schedule of this is the timeline in which you will go launch your product. So I own that for my particular product. And once we close planning, then I own the skuing strategy, which is essentially how do I take my product and showcase it in different ways, different variations of the product and the go-to market for it. Now that you know you're building a product, how would you go to market with it? Which are the vendors that you need to enable, the ecosystem that you need to enable. And as working with your customers, making sure you are educating your customers on your product, the value that it brings, making sure you are continuing those customer touch points to make sure you're still building the product that they want. Because sometimes with, especially with hardware products, the life cycle, the product life cycle is long. It can be two to three years. So when you are defining the requirements, you're trying to predict something three years into the future, right? You're trying to predict this is what my customer will need three years into the future, which as you can imagine, it keeps changing. So you keep refining, changing, optimizing your product. So I own all of that for my Xeon product.

Mary Killelea: That's incredible. So I want to ask you what a typical day looks like, but I don't know if there is such a thing.

Vidhya Rammohan: I'm going to say it's a lot of meetings. I think some people might say, oh, that's anybody who works in Intel. Intel has a lot of meetings, but especially a product manager's role, because you're working with so many stakeholders. It's a lot of meetings, but the fun thing about a product manager's day is that your day can be made of varied meetings, right? So, I will start a meeting with a technical discussion about why a particular feature, what is the solution we are trying to build and having that discussion with the architects, bringing in the market viewpoint. My next meeting could be with finance, talking about revenue, the volumes. The third meeting could be with ecosystem, trying to make sure working with somebody who is enabling our ecosystem, trying to make sure I have the ecosystem enabled for my product. And I could end the day with something, working with an execution lead, talking about, okay, are we still on schedule? Or it could be a discussion with the customer where they are coming back saying, okay, you are doing this, but I need X or Y or I need more than what you're offering and trying to, again, having those discussions and trade-offs. So that's something I love about my job, which is that it gives me variety. I'm never bored.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome. So, obviously you work at Intel and it's a huge corporation. What are some of the pros to working at a big corporation? How have you navigated it? Because there's a lot to navigate.

Vidhya Rammohan: That is, there is. I will accept that. I will also start with being transparent, but I've only worked in medium or large companies. So I do not know enough about the startup world, but I love being part of Intel. I'll be honest that when I joined Intel, it was, I came from LSI, which is a medium-sized company. When I joined Intel, it was overwhelming because for the first time I felt like I was a drop in an ocean and trying to find your place in this huge organization is really hard. So that's one of, in fact, like one of the networks that I'm part of, RØDE, is all about helping new senior leaders who join Intel and helping them navigate the Intel culture, trying to share BKMs on how do you integrate into the culture? How do you deal with some of the things? Because when you join a company at a senior level, it's not just about doing your job. It's about influencing people. It's about building that network. It's about making sure things are done. And so which is why you definitely, I needed that support group and that group has been a lifesaver for me.

But coming to the point, right? Like the fact that Intel had something like that, which helped me survive my first year in Intel, I will honestly say I wouldn't have survived without that support system and that group. A company like Intel has a fantastic mentorship program. I found amazing mentors who helped me get to this stage in my career, who helped me make this, who guided me as I was trying to make a transition from being an engineer to a product manager. And the last thing that I want to pitch here is Intel has this program called DOT or they call it Gig now, which is essentially what they try to do is if somebody is going on a sabbatical or leave or maternity, whatever it is, they will open up an opportunity for those two or three months as a coverage. And anybody in Intel can apply to the job. And if they feel like your experience or your skill sets matches what they are looking for, you go and do the job. It could be a 50% thing, it could be a 100% thing. But as somebody who's wanting to explore something else with their career, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to A, go figure out if this is truly what you want to do. Sometimes you do a DOT and you realize, this is not what I want to do.

Mary Killelea: That's so great about that gig or DOT opportunity. You get to sample something and see if it fits or not.

Vidhya Rammohan: Exactly. B, if you find that you do like it, you build that network and that is how you're going to find your next job, which you want to transition into. And you built that resume and that experience for yourself, where you now show that you can quickly ramp into something. You've shown results in like two months, three months, whatever it is. So it shows anybody who is hiring somebody who's transitioning, they're taking a chance on you. This is a great data point for them, right? As you're making your case stronger for any hiring manager who's looking to hire. I'll be honest, I have not heard of any other company which has something like DOT. I have friends in the area, I talk to different people. I haven't heard something. As far as I'm concerned, it is one of the coolest things.

Mary Killelea: Sorry, you mentioned networking and I want to touch on that because I think some women struggle with not knowing what to say or oh, I couldn't ask them to spend time with me while I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do. What advice do you have for someone who's seeking out mentorship, but not really sure on how to go about it?

Vidhya Rammohan: I would suggest that A, be transparent, right? Do your homework, be transparent, do your homework. You may not know exactly what you want and you don't have to, but you need to have a high level idea of where you want to get to and that's all people are looking for. Honestly, I found people are really kind. They are very interested in helping somebody else and they want to help you if they can. People will make connections and just put yourself out there and I know it's easier said than done, but it's your career, right? You have to be your champion. Nobody else is going to take that first step for you. Once you take that first step, people are going to reach out and they are going to lift you up and they are going to pull you along, but that first step, it's got to be all you and making yourself vulnerable is hard. It's super hard and as I was making this transition, I can truly tell you, I spoke to about 70 people. I would just reach out to people and I'd say, I'm looking to make this transition. What advice do you have for me? And people gave me 30 minutes, 15 minutes and don't take more than 15 to 30 minutes. I would say that would be the one guidance, like be respectful of other people's time.

Mary Killelea: What is it about tech that you love so much?

Vidhya Rammohan: I love the fact that tech is all pervasive, right? Today, tech is changing the quality of people's life. It's made the world a smaller place…

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's pretty amazing. It really is when you think about the reality of the end results of the innovations and the life-changing things that happened that are affected by technology. It's pretty amazing.

Vidhya Rammohan: It is. I mean, surgeons do remote surgery. Can you imagine something like this 10 years back? But here we are.

Mary Killelea: Well, I think that's important for women or everyone, really…

Vidhya Rammohan: Absolutely. I completely agree with you…

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. So, I want to talk about your career strategy…

Vidhya Rammohan: Think about your career as a long term game, right?…

Mary Killelea: Those are great, great pieces of advice…

Vidhya Rammohan: That's such a great question…

Mary Killelea: That is such great advice.

Vidhya Rammohan: Baby steps, right? Next month can be two questions…

Mary Killelea: And just really simplifying it…

Vidhya Rammohan: Yes, absolutely.

Mary Killelea: When you reflect on your career, what are you most proud of?

Vidhya Rammohan: I am actually really proud of making this transition…

Mary Killelea: Who have been your role models or source of inspiration over the years?

Vidhya Rammohan: My personal role model is my grandma…

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful…

Vidhya Rammohan: For you and for others…

Mary Killelea: Yeah, absolutely. Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome?

Vidhya Rammohan: Every day…

Mary Killelea: I love that.

Vidhya Rammohan: So and we all need to tell ourselves that right…

Mary Killelea: I so appreciate you being transparent…

Vidhya Rammohan: In all honesty, I would tell my 20 year old self to chill out…

Mary Killelea: I can second that.

Vidhya Rammohan: Right, which it's always a hindsight is 20-20.

Mary Killelea: Right.

Vidhya Rammohan: And more importantly, don't be afraid to fail, right?…

Mary Killelea: Yeah. Right.

Vidhya Rammohan: But it's better to fail when you are young…

Mary Killelea: Yeah. It helps build your perspective…

Vidhya Rammohan: To me, it means going after things that you want…

Mary Killelea: Oh my God. You have been so inspiring today. How can people connect with you?

Vidhya Rammohan: I am so grateful you had me on…

Mary Killelea: Fantastic. Well, enjoy your evening and thanks again.

Vidhya Rammohan: You too. Thank you so much. It was wonderful talking to you.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number 2, little b bolder.com.