About Nirali

Since I graduated in 2019, I've worked in Big Tech. In my 5+ years of experience I've been promoted 4 times, from Intern to Staff (director-level). Along the way, I've learned the process of getting in, standing out, and moving up - even at the largest of companies and amongst the youngest in age. I've discovered a very basic formula to move up in title, pay, and respect. Naturally my formula is best positioned to boost aspiring Big Tech program managers to their greatest heights, based on my deep role-based experience as a program and project leader. However, I wondered if the general formula was really limited to excelling in just the occupation of program management or if it could be applied more widely to assist more seekers of professional growth. As the program manager role is so cross-cutting across companies, I've connected with stakeholders spread across engineering, product, design, revenue, marketing, and more, and confirmed that the application, skills, and promotion development process I've laid out is applicable to all fields. I've helped many individuals across different disciplines leverage this formula to define their career goals and attain them. This formula does not include being the smartest in the room or working the most hours. Instead this formula includes fundamentals like prioritizing building personal relationships, delivering on the things you said you would do, being the first to raise your hand at opportunities to offer help when someone's in need, staying unwaveringly focused during times of organization or prioritization change, and publicly sharing your wins as learnings to your team to enable all to grow with you. All of these tenets have one thing in common: committing yourself to connecting with and helping others everyday, through the highs and lows. The professional world is filled with great adversity, today more than ever. With a tough job market, complex projects, interpersonal team disagreements, management churn, lack of promotion, unfair compensation, or layoffs - it's hard to keep going, or prior to that, even know where to start. On top of that, we may also experience personal adversity along our career journeys. I've certainly been there (read more below). From my experiences, both professionally and personally, I hope to teach others the basics of how to boost their own career trajectories to higher advancement - even, and especially, through difficult times.