Balki's Background

Hitesh Chudasama 0:02

Welcome back to another episode of Courier Journeys Revealed. Today's guest is someone whose career truly spans the spectrum of impact and innovation. Balkhi Khodarapu. With over 20 years in the tech industry, Balkhi has worn many hats, driving transformation across fintech companies, analytics at New Relic, elevating customer success at SupportLogic, and advancing healthcare innovation at Luvu Health. He's also taken on fractional engineering leadership roles, helping multiple companies scale, as well as succeed during critical growth Valky brings a unique blend of technical depth, business acumen, and heart-centered leadership. And we are thrilled to dive into his story. Welcome to the show, Valky.

Balki Kodarapu 0:53

Hi, Hitesh. Thank you. And hi, Han. Great to see you here and appreciate you welcoming me to the podcast, to your early episode. So excited.

Hitesh Chudasama 1:03

So Valky, I mean, based on just looking at your profile and the brief conversations we had, it seems like you had a rich career in regards to being both in, you know, doing development as well as being an engineering leader. Maybe if we go ahead and rewind back in regards to your individual contributor role, especially being an engineer, as you reflect on that career, like if you think about what went well and what are some of the things that if you can change at this point, what would those be?

Balki Kodarapu 1:33

Yeah, my first 10 years, although typical for an engineer, had some very interesting twists to them. So first of all, I studied mechanical engineering, but the first day I entered college, I promised myself I will not work in the mechanical field. So I was always obsessed with software and computers. So yeah, I followed through with that. So I did get a job at a prestigious mechanical engineering organization back in India when I graduated but I like three days later I actually cried literally cried and said I'm not doing this so my parents supported me and said do what you want to do and then I did some course work in computer science taught actually back then back in India it wasn't such an easy way easy means to get into a software job so I I taught in schools, in computer institutes to refresh my skills and extend my skills, and then eventually came to the US. It's a long story between how I did the teaching to my actual professional software

Breaking Into Software Without a CS Degree

Balki Kodarapu 2:51

career.

Han Yuan 2:51

How did you convince people to give you a shot?

Balki Kodarapu 2:56

Yeah, this is a vulnerable story, but back then, it was back in India so it was make it until fake it until you make it type of thing so I was teaching and at the same place where I learned to it was like a residency program that I went through and did a very advanced project that got commercial value so That was my actual real experience other than teaching. And when I had an opportunity to apply for my work visa, so I was able to use that experience and apply for a work visa with a larger company that brought me here. And then I started, my first real job was actually in the US based on that project I did during my coursework.

Hitesh Chudasama 4:03

Nice. Balkhi, which particular company was that, the first company that you joined within the U.S.?

Balki Kodarapu 4:10

The consulting company back in India was called Birla Horizons. I don't know if they even exist today. But the first job I joined was in a little town called Apopka. It's about 100 miles northwest of Orlando. I think not 100, not quite 100, maybe 50 miles. It's this very rural town. and there was a company that did RV dealership software and that was the company they were able to place me at so the founder this is my attachment with founders actually the founder wrote all the code for 10 years in Visual Basic and access for the database I remember I used to go down to the post office and ship our CDs on a regular basis so that's probably like now that I'm talking to you my attachment with founders and that you know sheer willpower brute force to make things happen so that I spent a year and a half maybe with that company and

Moving to the Bay Area During the Dot Com Boom

Hitesh Chudasama 5:20

So from there, you know, what was the next company that you joined and what were some of the challenges that you found going to the next company?

Balki Kodarapu 5:27

Yeah. So next, the Silicon Valley bug bit me while I was there. So it was a stark. difference in being in a pop-cuff, like 2,000 people to Silicon Valley. But there were a lot of opportunities. This was early 2000, so Silicon Valley was blooming. And another consulting company picked me up, and I joined a system-on-chip company called NeoMagic, but in their IT division. So a very small IT organization. We were pretty much building internal applications. But that was my first exposure to web applications. Until then, I was doing just desktop application. Like I mentioned, we used to ship CDs with Visual Basic and Access Code on them, database. But this was my first exposure to web applications, although internal facing ID applications.

Han Yuan 6:30

So you come from the East Coast. You arrive in the Silicon Valley, effectively at the peak of the dot-com boom. So some of our listeners may not know, but in late 1999, we had perhaps the single biggest one-day stock crash that tended to shake up the dot-com boom. And then it started to essentially collapse throughout 2000, 2001. And And the area would effectively shed at that point over the next seven to eight years, something like 45% of all the jobs in the Silicon Valley. So you come all the way over here. First of all, you took a big risk. You come to India. In your words, you faked it till you made it. Then you come to the valley right at the very top. What happens next?

Surviving the Crash

Balki Kodarapu 7:27

Yes. Yeah. You correctly know the timeline. So within months, if not weeks, I saw the industry collapsing overnight, right? So people losing jobs, a lot of the people in my consulting company, and then eventually it came to me as well. So NeoMagic scaled on quite a bit and they laid off all the external consultants, which I was an external consultant. The consulting company tried for a couple weeks, But it was slim pickings at that point. So the consulting company also said, sorry, we can't help you anymore. Along with all these challenges, I was on a visa. So you probably know it's precarious to be on a visa and not without a job. So you usually have anywhere from six to 12 weeks to find the next assignment or you're out of status. So I had very narrow timeline to figure something out. And

Han Yuan 8:32

then- get an interview, get the offer. I believe you have to start too, right? Yeah, you have to get at least the H1 transferred. Yeah, you have to start. You have to get the transfer done. By out of status, you mean you get kicked out of America, right?

Balki Kodarapu 8:55

Or you're illegal. You can stay, but you're tagged illegal at that point. So there's a lot of pressure. Yeah, yeah. And to add to that pressure, we were just married. So my wife was in... She finished her master's and she had a great job with Nautil. And I kind of convinced her Silicon Valley is the place to be. And she reluctantly quit that job, followed me to the Valley. So we were married. We were like building our home. Like we bought a lot of things, assuming everything would go well, a lot of debt. And then, yeah, so that's where I ended up. So I would say that was like the peak of my panic mode in the States. I assumed everything would go right. Yeah, but long story short, I got an offer through another consulting company. Before

Han Yuan 9:52

you go there, tell us about your state of mind. Because a lot of our listeners, some of them are out of work right now. How did you manage yourself at that time?

Balki Kodarapu 10:07

A few memories, but it was, you know, I would give a hat tip to my wife, Mansa. She's one of the bravest women I know. So she's like, don't worry about it. Like we came to like, we were not in deep debt, but all my savings up until then. And my wife had debt, actually school debt. So we're probably in like 60 to 80K in debt. And I was panicking, losing sleep. What does this mean for us? There was also some blissful ignorance even though like all of this was happening in the background of the industry collapsing I wasn't like I was in my honeymoon mode with my wife we were having so much fun like I was in this blissful ignorance sort of mode so that helped me honestly like plus yeah like I mentioned Mansa was a huge support she's the bravest woman I know she's like Don't worry about it. We'll go back to India and set up a new life. So that was helpful. Yeah, so that was my state of mind. You know, I started applying to jobs. Luckily, there was this tiny consulting company based out of LA, and they had these captive fintech clients. And one of them was an online banking software company called Corellian. based out of Portland. So I went through their interview process. They liked my personality and technical skills. So they hired me and placed me in Portland. At that point, I didn't know what Portland was or where it was on the map. I've never heard of Portland back then. But that was the only first option I had. We thought for a day or two, how can I... How can I go to a place from the valley and start my career afresh? And we honestly didn't have a choice at that point. I had to take that job or go back to India or risk looking for another role for a few more days, but it would be in days. So I took that job in Portland and been here almost 20 years now.

From Individual Contributor to People Manager

Han Yuan 12:27

So in the middle of all this, you moved into management at some point, right?

Balki Kodarapu 12:31

So in my early career, I somehow started in a technical support organization. So that was not my path, but again, because of the situation, that was the only role I had. I started in a tech support organization. It was fairly technical. There was a lot of writing code, but it wasn't like massive scale projects in a typical SaaS organization. So I feel that built an extremely good foundation for me in terms of customer empathy, leadership, and communication skills because I was in these high-stakes situations constantly. I had to build a lot of empathy for customers and their challenges. So I believe that went well. The second part, though, is I switched relatively early on in my career before building a lot of technical depth, like large-scale architectures or... a lot of front-end experience. So I became a leader because there was a gap and my leaders felt like I could do a good job. So that's a gap that haunts me a little bit even today. I've learned those skills through experiences, but if I were to go back, I would spend a little more time hands-on in scaling architecture But

Do Engineering Managers Need to be Technical?

Balki Kodarapu 14:03

long story short there, in terms of leadership, it was in a larger...

Han Yuan 14:08

Let me push on that a little bit. But how would you know if you know enough? I mean, the corpus of computer science and what you know and don't know is so vast that like, how would you know? How would you know that you're technical enough?

Balki Kodarapu 14:24

Yeah. In my case, it was a bit more specific because I'm in a tech support organization. Most of my projects were measured in terms of weeks at most, right? So maybe a few hundred hours. But in my mind, it would be multi-quarter project or a more full-fledged project where I could see that end-to-end lifecycle of SDLC from requirements to building and POC and scaling and production. That company had those projects. I vicariously learned from them, but I was not in the weeds of such projects, too. before I went into leadership.

Han Yuan 15:13

Do you think it hurt you that you didn't know it? Because it sounded like everything is fine. So it was like no harm, no foul, right?

Balki Kodarapu 15:20

Yeah, I mean, during our pre-interview, we talked about one relatively large issue telemetry company. And I struggled there partially because of that. So I landed in a role and a team that was highly technical. So we were building an agent that had micro scaling strategy that even 0.5% performance would mean a big deal. And I struggled in such a setting where a huge impact project and a product so That was when I reflected just being a superstar people skills and process oriented leader had its shortcomings for an engineering leader if they didn't have or when I didn't have the deep technical chops.

Hitesh Chudasama 16:20

Great. Thanks, Valky. Based on what I'm hearing from you is the fact that for an advice you would give to engineers that are IC engineers is to be able to go ahead and focus on various different diverse kind of projects and getting much more depth in regards to their experience before moving on to management. Would that be correct?

Balki Kodarapu 16:39

Absolutely. So I think it's still true. It's even more true today, right? So we can go on for hours talking about how all engineering leaders should be hands-on. And I would recommend if they're like tempted and getting antsy about moving to leadership, spend another six months, spend another one year to expand or broaden their skillset, either go deeper or broader Today, it's easy to, if you're a front-end engineer, see the adjacent stacks, learn more about UX or backend, or if you're a backend engineer, learn more about full stack or infra. I would highly recommend going either a bit broader or deeper or even better eye-shaped, right? So two main areas and then a lot of breadth in other areas.

Han Yuan 17:32

And maybe you can give us some insight on the downside of not following your advice. So I'm the non-technical manager leading a very technical team. Let's just pretend. What happens in those situations? Because the person who wants to play devil's advocate could say, Hannah's the boss, right? So in my infinite wisdom, just I'm just going to coach you on how to be nicer to your colleagues.

Balki Kodarapu 18:05

Yeah, yeah. What could go wrong? Yeah, yeah. Really good question. So from that experience at that telemetry company, that really reflected on that failure, I would say. And You could still do both, right? So even today, I'm not the most technical planet on the person. I could run circles around many mid-level engineers in terms of executing and getting things done, but I don't have super deep technical skills. But I get past that with a few things. So I have this simple playbook of what I would do when I join an organization. So I won't go too deep, but some of the things are I'll focus on setting up my local dev environment. B, insert myself into the on-call rotation if there's one or create one and be the first to be the on-call rotation. B, the triage person for all the bugs that come in. Usually there's no steward for such things in companies. Make sure I commit... create my first PR and make sure it goes to production within the first week or the next available release. And these are small but impactful things that I do. And I do that for a specific reason or a series of reasons. One is to build the respect with engineers who are at the ground level, right? So even today, people respect or engineers respect somebody who has some level of engineering job. So all of these things go towards that. And the second more practical reason is being at that front lines and ground level helps me understand and build empathy for the challenges, right? So in almost every situation, the setting up a local dev environment is the most painful part of onboarding experience. So going through that experience helped me find the gaps.

Han Yuan 20:16

I think that's a really important call out for the audience that sometimes people don't realize. It's not in vogue to use military analogies for business, but I do think there is something to be said about how the military works in that you have large amounts of people. They need to be orchestrated to perform high-stakes tasks. But what is different between the military and, say, a software organization is, let's say, you have a sniper platoon. There's no expectation that the leader of the platoon is the best sniper, but software is oftentimes very different because of this respect issue. You could be respected as the general, even if you're not the best soldier, but it can be a challenge in certain environments in software when you do not appear to be one of the best to do the work, even if you are an extraordinary leader. And I think that that's a really interesting call out that you just pointed out.

Balki Kodarapu 21:23

Yeah. One more important thing as a fractional leader is also now I don't even have the authority, right? So for all practical purposes, I'm the colleague to most of the engineering team. So it's even more important for me to build empathy and respect through influence and my own skill set rather than just the, I'm the CTO, you listen to me. I don't think it ever works, but even in the case it works, it's like I don't have that luxury today.

Becoming a Fractional CTO

Hitesh Chudasama 21:56

Okay. This brings up to our next transition in regards to, especially within your career itself, where it seems like you've been part of various different companies taking on leadership roles, being a full-time employee, and now you're doing the fractional roles across multiple different companies. How was that transition like? And especially if you could maybe give us maybe one or two projects that were, you the decisions that you had to make and the learnings that came as part of that as well.

Balki Kodarapu 22:29

Yeah, yeah. It's been a reflective journey for me. Maybe I'll spend some time on why I even chose this path and then maybe we can unpack any interesting areas from there. So, yeah. To paint a picture, I was in a pretty deep tech ML company before I made this switch. And I was having the best time of my life, like building products, shipping it, working closely with top rated ML engineers. But when the market shifted and the layoff happened, I felt like I was naked when the tide went away. So I'm like, man, I lost connection with the community. I wasn't actively included in the community. So that was a pivotal moment for me. Like when I was looking for a job, I had to reestablish my connections and my thought leadership. And it was painful. So that was the dichotomy of enjoying the work versus staying connected to the community. At that point, I took a role that I enjoy and get too much value from being part of a community. So I'm like, I will do this for the rest of my life. And I also realized doing that and claiming full allegiance to a startup, they're almost impossible. It could be possible, maybe, but it wasn't possible for me to spend 60, 80 hours in a startup, but also building my thought leadership. So I wanted to do something different in terms of being able to do both things and I felt this fractional leadership roles would help. That's one thing. The other thing is also during that journey, I lost my mom and that was another reflective moment about what's this life about, this typical midlife crisis. And at least for the short term, I didn't want to go into another startup and be fully dedicated to one company and make career my number one priority. I wanted to balance a little bit.

Han Yuan 24:47

It sounded like you really wanted to... You had this insight. you felt like you have things to offer and you realize that for you to be able to, you know, offer what you felt you were good at, which is, you know, leadership principles, the way to do that is to create a conversation with a community that was ongoing and effectively, you know, evergreen. And one way to do that was through fractional work. work, one of the benefits of being a fractional CTO is that you are exposed to a lot more issues in a lot of different environments simultaneously. And so that gives you a broader perspective on leadership. I am curious, for those who might be interested in becoming a fractional CTO, Like what would be some advice on how do you get involved? How do you even get your first deal? How do you convince somebody that, hey, you should make me a fractional CTO when I have full-time engineers and why should I hire, you know, bulky versus Han as an example?

Balki Kodarapu 26:12

Yeah, that's a tough one. Maybe I'll spend a couple minutes on how I felt prepared to do this, right? This is obviously hindsight 2020 looking back so I both intentionally and unintentionally was part of companies at different stages so it was not linear like not from zero to 500k 500k to 5 million it was all over the place but if I collect all of my experiences together I have pretty good experience from zero to that 40 million ARR tech companies I have a small gap between 40 and maybe 80 80 million, but then again from 80 million to IPO and beyond, right? So I have this mishmash of experiences that I can pull from the second thing is as I mentioned I love writing so for the last 15 years I've been journaling like not quite journaling but like I'm very reflective and write a lot about how I feel and what happened to me so there's I think during pre-interview I mentioned I have 2500 pages worth of notes that I can tap into and pull experiences from the other thing is I built my own startups two startups one failed one moderately successful and then I've always had one or more side hustles so that gives me like a first class view into what it takes to be a startup and a founder again I mentioned I like writing and I like staying connected with the community so that helps me like that's part of my legion I didn't do it for lead gen. I do it because I enjoy writing and helping others. The other two elements are also for the last 12 years, I had access to world-class coaches, mentors. It started at that Paytrace payments company where they gave me access to a very, very expensive and world-renowned coach. And I've never looked back. So I either pay for my own coaches or now these days I'm into peer peer led groups yeah so I've been addicted to those peer groups so yeah if you can like put all these things together that helps me be a great fractional leader I think so this is all looking back I don't know if there's a shortcut to do all of these things but I would say you know at the very least don't look up and say I need a job when you need it versus build that pipeline, stay in the community, give more than you ask for. One philosophy I have is Gary Vaynerchuk. So he has this hook, hook, right, right punch or something like that, where it's like 95% of the time you're in this giving mode. But when you need something, you ask for it and things will just happen to you. That's because the default mode is giving. So I I've been a big proponent and follower of that philosophy. Just give back. without expecting anything.

Hitesh Chudasama 29:37

This is a great detailed response to that. Balkhi, I know you write a lot about the fractional role as well as the role of engineering going forward, especially developers. If you fast forward five years from now, where are your thoughts in regards to, especially for engineers, because a lot of our audience are with engineering background, where do you see the engineering role from your perspective?

Lessons Learned

Balki Kodarapu 30:05

Yeah, I don't know about five years. It feels like so far into the future, right? A couple years, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's evolving fast. So, you know, we touched on this topic a couple times. For us as engineers to adapt, we have to adapt quickly, in my opinion. So two ways you can still be a craftsperson and evolve with this world is that one, think of more full stack, right? So I'm a front-end engineer I'm a backend cryptocurrency engineer and I want to be world-class at it. It might work, but my bet is you would be one in 1 million people to be able to do that. So I highly recommend go full stack. If you're front end, see what is adjacent UX or even one layer deeper, be the product person, put on the product lens or backend and infra specialist. That's one way to... and the other way is also be the founder of your team or organization right so think of from the outcome and impact perspective these things were always true but two years ago you could get by by saying I'm a great engineer and then I could be successful I'm rare and I can demand high compensation just by being good at my craft. It's not true today. It'll be less true tomorrow, two years from now. That's the evolution I see for engineers. You know, a lot more leadership looking outside in. And I'll pitch myself in terms of being a thought leader as well. Again, you may be doing more gigs versus, you know, join a company and assume that, you know, you'll get an exit or high compensation. There may be a world, there will be a worldview where you may have to work for two or three different companies and provide your expertise there.

Han Yuan 32:14

That is great insight. I mean, if I were to play it back, what you're saying is that you're really telling engineers to become polymaths, get broader, because the world is becoming more uncertain. And to mitigate risk... you need to have more skills. You need to know something about a lot more things because the game isn't about keeping your job. The game is about staying in the game.

Balki Kodarapu 32:45

Yeah. And to add to that, thinking like a founder. Again, as I mentioned, it was always important to be successful, but you could get by by just your key craft skills, right? So with Gen AI, that's being democratized. So you have to think like a founder or at least get very close to your product manager and think about the outcomes and impact and influence those.

Han Yuan 33:15

Do you think there will be product managers Thank you.

Balki Kodarapu 33:23

Very few, I think. Again, in my role, I help eight teams across three companies now. And the ratio at the peak of engineering management, Kraft was like, at the most, you should have five people reporting to you. And that slowly creeped up, not so slowly creeped up to 15 and 20 people, right? And in one company, I'm the only, quote unquote, engineering person on US soil where everybody else is offshore. So yeah, to answer more directly, I don't know if it's a dying craft, but it'll become a lot less hierarchical and a lot more flat, I think.

Hitesh Chudasama 34:11

Thanks, Bucky, for that insight. For the different types of clients that you work on, let's just say if there are companies that are looking for the service that you provide, what are your typical kind of clients that you work with and how do you help them?

Balki Kodarapu 34:27

Yeah, so three personas that I help with are somebody who has some level of product market fit and has been using consultants or part-time people putting their product together. I think it's risky for them to continue on that path even though they're getting traction. They have to start thinking about the scale and security aspect of things. So in that scenario, I'm the advisor where spend 10, 20 hours a month, not very much to like think one to two stages ahead, right? Not just keep building, but think ahead by six months, 12 months, 5X, 10X. So that's one. Another scenario is a small venture-backed firm that it's become pretty typical that they'll hire an agency or a team that's probably offshore and be the liaison between between the offshore team and the execs and the GTM teams onshore. So I've built a specialty of being that bridge. That engagement is typically 30 to 50 hours a month, and I've built processes, frameworks, and things like that to be successful in that setting. Third area is a bit more advanced. They have engineering leaders and principals, and they need some advice and guidance on slightly leaning more towards engineering roadmap, processes, that 10,000-foot level of what to expect next. And that also includes the Gen AI strategy, both for product, for scaling their product, as well as scaling their operations, right? It's become like two ways Gen AI is disrupting these companies, not just their how to incorporate into the product, but also to improve their operational efficiency. So those are some of the personas that I help with. And I built frameworks to help these companies Nice.

Hitesh Chudasama 36:40

What's the best way for our listener, anybody who wants to get a hold of you, especially in regards to reaching out to you for support or services?

Balki Kodarapu 36:49

Yeah, I'm fairly active on LinkedIn. I post there twice a week, like clockwork, Tuesdays and Thursdays, sharing what I learned and what my failures and successes are. So please follow and feel free to connect with me. I also recently built my website. It's called your CTO in US. So it's a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek website. So you can see the services and what I offer over there.

Wrap up

Hitesh Chudasama 37:20

Wonderful, nice. Okay, as we wrap up, if you had to give maybe two or three different nuggets of advice to our audience, especially engineers that are transitioning in this particular field, a destructive kind of world of unknown as we go through and not knowing how things will be settling going forward. What are some of the things that you would go ahead and let them know?

Balki Kodarapu 37:50

Yeah, I mean, read Hoffman's book. I forgot the name, but that was a pivotal thing for me that happened about 10, 12 years ago where the philosophy is Combine your desire, your skills, but don't forget what the market wants. So TLDR there is be adaptable, right? So the world is changing and what the world wants may not coincide with what you want to do, but you are the one that needs to be adaptable, right? So we just talked about how a front-end engineer was a desired commodity even two years ago and now you have to be a full stack engineer to be successful. So that's what the market wants. So the highlight there is see, always be in the market, understanding what the market wants and steadily move towards that. That's what I would tell engineers. That's what I tell my kids. They wanted to be software engineers and the world is shifting right under their feet right now. So I'm like, think like an entrepreneur, think like a founder, see what else is out there.

Hitesh Chudasama 39:09

Thanks for that. Because I know a lot of emerging engineers, they'll definitely be helped by that kind of advice. So I really appreciate it. Thanks, Valky, for being part of our podcast. And I really enjoyed the insights that you provided us. And I always look forward to the LinkedIn posts that you do on a regular basis. So thank you for that as well.

Balki Kodarapu 39:34

Thank you so much, Han and Hitesh. I really enjoyed this.

Han Yuan 39:38

I had such an amazing time. You're so humble, vulnerable, authentic. I think that's such a rare quality sometimes in engineering leadership and to to have this conversation with you. It's incredibly refreshing. I think you did a great job of explaining is just how important it is for an engineering leader to have respect. You may not necessarily want to optimize around being liked, But you have to have respect because otherwise the team will not follow you. They don't give a damn about your job title. And I think that's really important. So if you want to go into management and you think your job title is going to give you all the power, you're going to be dead wrong when it comes to managing engineers. You need to have that respect. And I think you really punctuated that point in so many different ways. And I hope that, you know, our listeners take away from that, just how important that lesson is.

Balki Kodarapu 40:44

Amazing. Thank you so much for summarizing those.

Hitesh Chudasama 40:51

Thank you once again, Balki.