TLDR0 stands for Technical Leadership - Direct, Respectful, Zero Ego.

TLDR0 aspires to be a collection of notes about successful and failed technical leadership, with emphasis on directness, respect, fearlessness, technical depth, business context, and a keen focus on users.

The irony is not lost on me that a blog post titled TLDR0 will be longer versions of short notes I’ve written and will write primarily on LinkedIn.

My name is Ritendra. I've been in tech for many years (IBM Watson, Xerox PARC, Google, Facebook, Databricks, PhD in CS). I don't represent any company - the notes are about my personal experience over the years working with 100s of people at these companies, often with mixed outcomes, but invariably a ton of learning. I write in simple language — I believe in simplicity over accuracy when it comes to public communication of this nature.

I expect that reading these notes would give you some sense of how to get jobs at these places, how to be effectively and ultimate successful there, when to get out and do something different, and why not to regret if you never worked at these places despite their reputation. There are no dream companies or dream jobs in perpetuity — there’s too much imperfection out there for any of this to be a dream. All I’ve seen are specific roles being enjoyable and enriching over certain periods of time. I expect to uplift your morale through my writing so you don’t regret the past but enjoy (or at least accept) the present, and enthusiastically plan for an interesting future.

I expect to write 1-2 notes per week on average.