Non-Incremental Career Transitions with Asif Makhani #45

Asif Makhani, CTO @ Handshake shares about making non-incremental career transitions, unique opportunities at startups, and exercising influence at mid-stage companies. Plus Asif shares questions to help you gain clarity before your next transitions AND how to attract & retain senior engineers at smaller companies.

"When you have the ability to take a step back, you begin to think a little bit more philosophically about your journey. And it's not just incremental thinking. When it's incremental thinking it's about, 'what's next in my career.'

But when you are able to take a step back, it's about... 'What impact do you want to leave behind? When I look back 10 years from now, will I be happy? Will I feel a sense of fulfillment?'

I think that line of questioning really gives you the courage to be able to break away from an incremental way of looking at next steps."

ABOUT ASIF MAKHANI

Asif has over 20 years of engineering experience with a focus on search engines and edtech. He is currently the CTO of Handshake, the largest career platform for college students and recent graduates. Most recently, Asif was the head of Google Image Search and prior to that, he was the Sr. Director of Engineering for Learning Solutions at LinkedIn, leading the Lynda.com online learning technology organization and launching LinkedIn Learning.

Asif was the founding member and engineer of A9.com (a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com), creator and GM of Amazon CloudSearch, and the Head of Search at LinkedIn. Asif is passionate about scaling high performance organizations, developing leaders and coaching early talent

SHOW NOTES

• What Asif learned from starting A9.com at Amazon (2:45)
• The unique opportunity of early stage companies & lessons from Amazon Cloud Search (6:26)
• How do you exercise influence at a mid-stage startup? (9:02)
• Successful transitions, why it’s essential to capture your early perspectives, & Asif’s favorite relationship building question (13:25)
• Asif’s lessons from taking time off & how that gave him clarity with his next career transition (17:56)
• Why Asif made the transition to Handshake (22:47)
• Questions you should ask to help you gain clarity before your next transition (25:39)
• How to attract and retain senior engineers at a smaller company (30:03)
• Rapid Fire Questions (39:49)
• Takeaways (43:29)

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