Personal
Notes
Personal writing by Chandra Lanka — on craft, career and the things that do not belong in a service brochure. Separate from the engineering work on purpose.
On moving countries — and what you actually pack
You spend weeks deciding what furniture to sell and what to ship. You agonise over boxes, cubic feet, insurance riders.
On Being Far From Home
There is a particular moment that happens to people who have lived far from where they grew up for a long time.
On reading — and what I had to stop doing to do it better
I read a lot — always have. But for most of my career, I read in the same way I approached most things: with efficiency as the primary goal.
The imposter thing doesn't go away. But it changes shape.
I spent a lot of my early career waiting for someone to notice I didn't know what I was doing.
What I listen to when I'm actually trying to think
People ask about productivity systems and I want to talk about music instead.
Work-life balance isn't a policy. It's a daily practice that most workplaces make harder than it needs to be.
There's a version of the work-life balance conversation that stays on the surface — flexible hours, remote work, unlimited PTO.
On Deep Work in an Open-Plan World
The kind of work I find most valuable — designing something genuinely difficult, thinking through an architectural problem, writing something that requires sustained attention — does not…
On mentorship — what I got wrong for years
Not malicious — inattentive. I gave advice generously, answered questions thoroughly, connected people to opportunities when I could.
On Conferences: What's Worth It and What Isn't
I have attended a lot of technology conferences. KubeCon, AWS re:Invent, Google Cloud Next, a number of smaller specialist events.
On Giving and Receiving Feedback
The feedback conversation is one of the most consistently handled poorly in professional settings.
On Saying No
Saying no is a skill that most people in professional settings are systematically trained against.
25 years in tech — the things nobody puts on a resume
The resume version is clean. A line of titles, a cascade of technologies, a set of outcomes expressed as percentages.
On Accumulating Knowledge at 25 Years In
At some point in a long career, your relationship with learning changes.