By the time I looked up, colleagues who started with me were leading teams, getting promoted, and earning significantly more — not because they were more skilled, but because they had done things I hadn't: built relationships, asked for opportunities, negotiated boldly, and invested in their visibility early.

I had made a mistake that's incredibly common in tech: I assumed good work would speak for itself. It doesn't. At least not fast enough, and not loudly enough.

Why I started Career Action Plan

After 13 years working in Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps — across startups and large tech organisations in Bangalore — I've seen engineers at every level struggle with the same non-technical problems: how to get promoted, how to negotiate a salary, how to find a new job without losing confidence, how to have a difficult conversation with a manager.

These things are never taught in engineering colleges. Nobody at your first job sits you down and explains how performance reviews actually work, or why the person who got promoted over you had a completely different strategy — not just better code.

Career Action Plan exists to fill that gap. Everything I write here comes from real experience — my own stumbles, the patterns I've seen in colleagues across Bangalore's tech ecosystem, and the strategies that genuinely work in the Indian tech job market.

Who this blog is for

I write for three kinds of engineers — and you probably recognise yourself in one of them:

What makes this different

There's no shortage of career advice on the internet. Most of it is written by people who have never sat in a Bangalore office, navigated appraisal season at an Indian IT company, or tried to negotiate a salary with a recruiter quoting "budget constraints."

I have. And I write from that place — specific, honest, and built for the context you're actually in. You won't find fluffy motivation here. You'll find frameworks, scripts, templates, and real examples you can act on immediately.

Everything on this site is free. No courses, no paid communities — just the career advice I wish someone had given me when I was starting out.

A note on credentials

I'm not a certified career coach. I'm an engineer who has spent 13 years in the industry, made expensive mistakes, course-corrected, helped colleagues navigate their careers informally, and decided to write it all down properly.

The advice here is based on personal experience and observation — not academic research. Always apply your own judgment, and for serious legal or HR matters, please consult a qualified professional. See our Disclaimer for full details.