Sudheer Sammeta

Had a great time attending the Product Thinking and the Future of EPD(Engineering, product and Design) as an Engineering Leader event hosted by ELC today! A big thank you to ELC and Commure for organizing this thoughtful and engaging session—and to the amazing panel, including Dhruv Parthasarathy, Nissim Lehyani, James Tyack,Patrick Gallagher, for sharing their candid insights on how the traditional boundaries between Engineering, Product, and Design are rapidly evolving in the age of AI. Here are a few takeaways that really stuck with me: 🔹 Companies are shifting away from static PRDs and increasingly using prototypes as a discovery tool—validating ideas with customers early and often. 🔹 Hiring is changing: it’s less about checking boxes and more about finding problem solvers and clear thinkers who can adapt and lead. 🔹 When it comes to LLMs, everyone has their own “AHA moment.” Until then, keep exploring. You’ve essentially got the smartest person in your pocket—start using it to solve real problems. Excited to bring these insights back to my team and continue experimenting at the intersection of product, engineering, and AI! #EngineeringLeadership #AI #ProductThinking #ELC #LLM #TechLeadership #Prototyping #EPD

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18 Years of Vision: A Reflection on an Era at Adobe After 18 years at the helm, Shantanu Narayen has decided to step down as CEO of Adobe. 18 years is more than a tenure. It’s an era. When he became CEO in 2007, Adobe looked very different. Software came in boxes. Products were sold once. Updates arrived every few years. Then came a bold decision that many doubted. Adobe moved from boxed software to the cloud. Photoshop. Illustrator. Premiere Pro. All transitioned to Creative Cloud, turning a traditional software company into a subscription-driven platform. At the time, it looked risky. Today, it’s taught in business schools. During those years, Adobe didn’t just evolve its products. It reshaped its identity. Revenue grew from roughly $3B in 2007 to over $23B+ annually. Adobe expanded from creative tools into digital marketing and customer experience platforms. Its market value climbed from about $20B to hundreds of billions at its peak. But perhaps the bigger transformation was cultural. Adobe stopped thinking like a product company. It started thinking like a platform for creators and businesses worldwide. And now, as Narayen steps aside, Adobe stands at another turning point. Artificial Intelligence. Generative tools. Creative automation. New ways of building, designing, and telling stories. The next chapter will be written in AI. But the foundation of that chapter was built over the last 18 years. Leadership transitions are often described as endings. But the best ones feel more like passing the baton in the middle of a race. Because companies like Adobe don’t move in decades. They move in eras. And this was one of them. ​Shantanu Narayen's 18-year journey at Adobe is a testament to his exceptional leadership, vision, and dedication. He has transformed Adobe into a global powerhouse, and his impact on the creative and technology industries will be felt for years to come. As we pay tribute to his remarkable tenure, we can look forward to seeing what the future holds for Adobe under his continued guidance. The question now isn’t just who becomes the next CEO. It’s: What will the next 18 years of creativity look like? #Leadership #Adobe #Innovation #TechnologyLeadership #FutureOfWork

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Thanks to Anurag Aggarwal and Ravi Kiran Achalla for encouraging the development of this idea from my earlier post. In response to your inquiry about whether trust architecture guardrails could be integrated directly into application code, I took your feedback to heart and have built a solution. I am excited to announce the release of llm-trust-guard on npm. This TypeScript package provides deterministic guard checks for LLM/agent workflows, addressing concerns such as prompt injection, encoding attacks, memory poisoning, tool-chain validation, trust boundary checks, and more. It also includes integrations for Express, LangChain, and OpenAI wrappers. This release continues the direction I’ve been pursuing: - Architecture-level validation: https://lnkd.in/gdCe5nKj - Code-level guardrail enforcement: https://lnkd.in/gPw7xUuw #AIEngineering #LLMOps #AIGovernance #AgenticAI #TrustArchitecture

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When I lived in Hyderabad, one of my favorite restaurants was Chutneys. When they opened a branch in Inorbit Mall, I was genuinely happy because it was closer to where I lived. What surprised me was the scale of their waiting area. In an expensive mall like Inorbit, Chutney’s had invested in a large, comfortable waiting space with luxurious sofas, almost indistinguishable from the actual seating area. I remember thinking the investment must have been huge, but it made the experience feel effortless. People could wait without feeling frustrated, even during peak hours. I experienced something similar in a very different context a year or two ago, while admitting my child to school. For some reason, we reached the admission venue two hours early on a weekday. Only after arriving did we realize we had forgotten our documents at home. We rushed back, we got the folder, and everything worked out. Had we arrived just in time, we would have missed the admission entirely. Given how selective the school was, that would have meant losing a carefully chosen opportunity or creating a lot of avoidable stress. Much later, while reading Thinking in Systems, these two incidents suddenly connected. Donella Meadows talks about buffers as one of the most powerful but often misunderstood elements of a system. A buffer is simply the size of a stabilizing stock relative to its flows. Time, inventory, space, patience, slack, and margin are all buffers. Buffers come at a cost. Maintaining extra capacity, time, or inventory always feels inefficient. Reaching two hours early meant taking time away from something else. Chutney’s waiting area meant higher real estate and furnishing costs. But buffers exist precisely to absorb variability and uncertainty. They prevent systems from failing when reality does not behave as planned. Buffers also reduce oscillations. For example, manufacturing systems that respond to rising demand by aggressively increasing orders, only to be overwhelmed with excess inventory when demand falls. Without adequate buffers, delays and overreactions amplify swings. With buffers in place, the same system becomes calmer, more predictable, and far less stressful to operate. Whether in supply chains, restaurants, or our personal lives, buffers act as shock absorbers. They smooth fluctuations, reduce anxiety, and prevent small mistakes from cascading into major failures. Not everyone can afford large buffers all the time, but Thinking in Systems makes one thing clear: systems without buffers are brittle. Sometimes, all you need is a little margin.

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Salim FEKU not able to digest NoSQL databases are converging to PostgreSQL. Setting: A chai ki dukaan (tea stall) in Hyderabad. Salim Feku is holding forth, gesturing wildly with his chai glass. (Salim Feku sips his chai, then puts the glass down with a flourish, looking around at an imagined audience.) SALIM FEKU: Arre bhai, aaj kal ki duniya mein kya chal ra? Sab bolte, "PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL!" Kya hai re usmein? Apun bolta, woh to puraane zamane ka ghoda hai! (He leans in conspirantly, lowering his voice slightly but still loud enough for everyone to hear.) SALIM FEKU: Suno tum meri baat, agar tumko asli data rakhna hai, jo kabhi nikalta nai, jo tezz bhaagta, toh tumko NoSQL hona bhai! Yeh PostgreSQL, woh to apna aadmi, kaisa... sara din join lagate baithta. Ek table se dusra table, dusre se teesra... Arre baba, jab tak woh join lagake data nikalta, apun chai pi ke doosra dhanda kar leta! (He chuckles, shaking his head.) SALIM FEKU: Apun ke paas kya hai? MongoDB! Arre kya cheez hai woh! Tum feko usmein kuch bhi! Document feko, JSON feko, apun ka data, seedha andar. Koi tension nai. Woh PostgreSQL, usko pehle batao 'column' kya hai, 'row' kya hai, 'schema' kya hai. Arre baba, itna sochne mein hi system slow ho jata! (He snaps his fingers.) SALIM FEKU: Aur suno, jab apun ka traffic aata, haan? Croreon log aate, kya karte? Woh PostgreSQL to ek machine pe baitha rehta. Apun ka Cassandra, DynamoDB... yeh log kya karte? "Arre bhai, thoda data tu le le, thoda data main le leta," bolke baant lete. Shaana log! Sab milke kaam karte, isliye apna system kabhi rukta nai, bhai! Woh PostgreSQL ko to pasina aa jata! (He gestures expansively, like he's spreading data everywhere.) SALIM FEKU: Woh bolte, "Hum consistent hai!" Arre haan, theek hai. Lekin consistency ke chakkar mein kya, apna customer wait karte baithta! Apun ka NoSQL? Woh bolta, "Thoda late aaya to kya hua? Aayega to sahi! Customer khush hona, jaldi result aana!" Zara sa "eventually consistent" hua to kya hua? Duniya to chalte rehti na! (He lowers his voice again, for the grand finale.) SALIM FEKU: Toh bhai, agar tumko naya, tezz, bina tension ka system banana hai... toh woh puraane dimaag ke relational ko choro! Apun ka NoSQL, woh hai asli king! Baaki sab to... chillar hain! (Salim Feku takes another proud sip of his chai, looking very pleased with his pronouncement.Just then, his eyes fall on someone approaching the chai stall. His confident smirk vanishes, replaced by a look of surprise, then forced cordiality.) SALIM FEKU: (Suddenly a soft, almost meek tone) Arre! Kaun? Ismail Bhai... PostgreSQL wale!?! (He rushes forward, abandoning his lecture, ) SALIM FEKU: Aao Miya! Kaisa hai tum? Tumhari hi raah dekh raha tha main! Kaisa, sab khairiyat? Woh, woh main to... ...main to bas logon ko bata raha tha ki purani cheezo ki reliability kitni zaroori hai! Haan! Tumhari hi baat kar raha tha, bhai! Maine suna..tum bhi distributed ho gaye!!!

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The world has more people than ever before — yet small businesses everywhere are facing a severe skilled-labor crisis. There was a time when if someone couldn’t pursue formal education, they learned a trade — tailoring, mechanics, hospitality, repair, craftsmanship. That skill became their long-term economic backbone. Today, many of those hands are shifting toward short-term gig work instead of long-term skill mastery. This is quietly creating two global challenges: 1️⃣ A growing shortage of skilled labor 2️⃣ A slowdown in grassroots entrepreneurship Ask any small business owner — a café operator, a workshop owner, a hotelier, a repair shop — and you’ll hear the same anxiety. In corporate life, we manage: → One boss → HR systems → Notice periods → Built-in buffers In a small business? 👉 Every customer is your boss 👉 No notice periods 👉 Tight cash flows 👉 Zero redundancy Imagine opening your shop in the morning… And your only skilled worker has joined a competitor — while you already have committed deliveries. That’s not inconvenience. That’s existential risk. I learned this firsthand while helping in a small family-run business early in my life. It taught me: • Emotional control under pressure • Customer-first thinking • Delivery over excuses • The power of trust-based collaboration • Optimum utilisation of available resources (Going lean) • Understanding new market trends What’s even more interesting today: Even structured corporate careers are increasingly optimizing for short-term payouts over long-term skill compounding — a mindset once limited to gig work is now entering mainstream professional life. Fast money is beating slow mastery. And that shift will shape the future of innovation, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Nations are not built on convenience careers. They are built on skills, ownership, patience, and risk-taking. If you’re a: • Founder • Investor • Corporate leader • Policy builder This is a conversation worth having. Because in the long run, the world is built by people with fire in the belly — not just speed in the hands. #Entrepreneurship #Founders #VentureCapital #Investing #SmallBusiness #FutureOfWork #GigEconomy #HumanCapital #SkilledLabor #Leadership #FamilyBusiness #StartupEcosystem #Bootstrapped #BusinessOwner #EconomicShift #HiringTrends #TalentCrisis #LongTermThinking #GlobalBusiness #FireInTheBelly

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Shantanu Narayen’s 18 year tenure as CEO at Adobe is a reminder of how rare long-term stewardship has become in Silicon Valley. During his time with the company, the company’s stock increased more than 6x and its business model fundamentally changed. The most important decision of his tenure was moving Adobe from selling boxed software like Creative Suite to a subscription platform through Creative Cloud. At the time it was controversial. Today, it is considered one of the most successful SaaS transitions in the history of enterprise software, turning Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat into one of the most profitable recurring software ecosystems ever built. The respect he commands across the industry says a lot about how difficult that transformation actually was. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even posted publicly congratulating Narayen on a “legendary run,” praising both his leadership and the way he expanded what creators and businesses could do with software. In an industry that is often intensely competitive, that kind of recognition from peers is not given lightly. There are only a few CEOs in the world who truly get to define one era of software and then help set the stage for the next. Narayen did it by turning Adobe into a SaaS powerhouse. However, the next leader will have to answer a harder question. What does a creative software company look like when AI becomes part of the creative process itself? #Adobe #Leadership #SaaS #AI #Technology

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The "Chai Tapri" & API: Socho ye situation: You go to a Chai Tapri and ask for a "Cutting." You don’t go inside the kitchen, turn on the gas, or find the ginger. You talk to the waiter, and he brings the tea to you. In tech, that waiter is an API (Application Programming Interface). The kitchen is the "Server" where all the complex work happens. You are the "User." You don’t need to know how the stove works; you just need to know how to ask the waiter. When you use a travel site to book a flight, the site uses an API to "ask" the airline's kitchen if seats are available. The API brings the answer back to you. Simple language mein samjhein toh, APIs are the messengers that let two different apps talk to each other.

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Don't fall into the trap of building solutions that only fit your needs and timelines. The catalyst to truly innovate and deliver high-grade solutions is to listen and understand your customers' problems. When you understand their real struggle, it forces you to drop your preconceived notions and ideate outside the box. That's where the magic happens. ✨

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