We Are Nexthink: 10 Questions with Raghavendra SM

1. Tell us a little bit about your role at Nexthink.

My teams are building some of the coolest tech possible here at Nexthink – from building our own expressive language to querying our rich data pipeline, to generating never-seen-before insights for our customers to act on.

I am in Bangalore, India and have been at Nexthink for over 7 months now, helping engineering teams across many locations. I am looking forward to further expanding our engineering presence in India in 2022.

2. Can you describe your career path that led you to Nexthink?

In my past life before Nexthink, I led large, cross-geo engineering teams at startups and more established companies to build enterprise products. When I spoke to the team here at Nexthink, I felt connected instantly – at a “people” level and with the product vision, too. This is a very exciting phase in my career at Nexthink.

3. What’s your favorite thing about working at Nexthink?

It’s hard to stop at one. Can I mention three things?

• It is a good cocktail: Nexthink has a heady mix of start-up energy and proven market. Product/Engineering-wise, we feel like a series A start-up, but from a market/revenue perspective, we are well-established.
• I am still learning: At Nexthink, I have a lot of opportunities to stumble across things that I’m hearing for the first time and to learn/do something new. My learning “to-do” list is buzzing.
• The people are a real joy to work with. Approachable and open to being challenged for the good of the product.

4. What is a project or something you’ve worked on at Nexthink that you’re most proud of & why?

We have a data pipeline with humongous amounts of data from millions of devices; our success depends on the value we can generate from that data for our customers to drive their Digital Employee Experience forward.

Building our own language to speak to that data pipeline has opened countless opportunities for our customers to leverage that data and generate insights. I am very proud of my team and the engineering behind it.

5. What are you most excited about for the future of Nexthink?

We are going all out. Backed with a great vision and investment, every single team works towards getting the best possible outcomes. There are no half measures.

6. What are three words that you’d use to describe Nexthink?

Energetic, Friendly, Smart.

7. What’s your favorite vacation spot and why? Have you been recently or have any upcoming trips planned?

With COVID, my vacations have reduced to picnics mostly. But I did sneak a vacation to Maldives recently – loved the clear blue waters and all the amazing views I woke up to every morning. I also have very fond memories of road tripping in Croatia for 9 days.

8. What’s the most played song or artist on your Spotify playlist?

These days I am listening to a few Kannada classics from the 80’s.

9. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I have been very fortunate to have worked with many great managers, mentors, peers.

This is some advice I received a few years ago – going from 0 to 10 and 10 to 100 are different. You need a different game plan to be successful in these phases. It is very important to recognize this at the right times and adapt to be the best in the business.

10. If you could trade lives for one day with any person past or present, who would it be and why?

There are so many things that I am not good at but very keen to experience. Like I am not good at any musical instruments yet. I feel that being able to play an instrument like the piano or flute can connect the individual with his/her inner self (like a runner’s high, maybe). I would love to trade a day with Hariprasad Chourasia, a classical flute player from India.

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