Thank you, Microsoft! & Hi to Politics!
After spending close to 16 years at Microsoft and total of 18+ years in IT industry I have decided to switch to a different area of work. I want to spend rest of my life in making positive contributions for improving quality of political organizations and politics in India and around the world. Hence, I will be joining a political party from the first week of March. I have resigned from Microsoft!
I am grateful to Microsoft
I have a deep sense of gratitude for Microsoft, its leaders, and awesome colleagues I worked with. Microsoft has been my second home for 15+ years and my second love. It has helped me grow as a person, instilled right set of values, skills, culture and has helped me grow as a leader. Microsoft also gave me opportunity work in Redmond, USA for 6 years. This helped me develop broader context around diverse cultures, societies and experience some of the advancements in technology, civic facilities and government systems.
It helped me also become financially independent by the age of 40. I joined Microsoft in July 2007. I have witnessed its share price grow ten times in 15 years. I also experienced company reinventing itself and going through a meaningful cultural change under Satya’s leadership.
My linked-in profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahesharali/
Thank you, Mohnish Pabrai,
I am also incredibly grateful to Mohnish Pabrai. I met him through his Dakshana foundation in India. I volunteered for this foundation for couple of years. I am JNV school alumni, and his foundation is working for JNV school students. His books, talks and advice helped me to make some right choices along the way on investments.
All these decisions have played important role in achieving financial independence. I also owe it to my wife who also worked for 15+ years in IT. We both worked in US for 6 years. Last but not the least, me and my wife feel fully contained with lifestyle we maintain currently and don’t have any interests upgrade it any further.
No, I am not getting fired or having mid-life crisis!
I am not bored with IT or having a mid-life crisis or getting fired. People who are friends with me know that this has been my dream from 2014. About five years ago I had almost taken the plunge to join a political party and pulled back in last minute. :-)
I really love and have lot of passion in the work I do at Microsoft. I have spent 15+ years in building “Engineering systems” at Microsoft. I worked for about 10+ years in Bing and Bing Ads. From last 5+ years I have been working with Teams mobile clients. If it was not for larger social good like politics, I would have happily continued my work at Microsoft.
“Engineering systems in simple terms can be described as machine that helps build other machines”. It is a complex system which helps thousands of engineers work on product or code base. It includes build systems, compute infrastructure, automation SDKs, automation runners, lot of tools which help to detect issues in the software code, pull request guard rails which guards the quality, CI and CD work flows which gradually takes code to production with many automated and manual checks along the way. It helps accelerate the journey of code from developer’s computer to customer’s devices. Teams like Bing ship multiple times to production and Teams mobile clients ships twice a month to store. This is also referred as “Release velocity”. It is a melting pot of complex software systems, culture and processes. I really love working in this field and have gratification of making meaningful contributions to the teams I worked with.
Why politics?
My family has history of being politically involved. My mother served as Panchayat member for two terms and as a chairman for one full term in Dhupadal/Ghataprabha Gram panchayat in Belagavi district of Karnataka. Many of our conversations at home revolves around society, politics, administration, social issues, social work etc. I have grown up watching my both parents serve and struggle. Finally, when election campaign costs became too high they moved away from active politics.
I am also grateful to Indian taxpayers who helped to subsidize my education. I got free education till 10th standard. I got very high-quality education though Navodaya Vidyalaya samiti’s Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Kothali-Kuppanwadi (Belgaum Dist) from 6th to 10th grades in a residential school at ZERO COST. In current cost terms, it is at least 25 lakhs rupees worth. My PUC and Engineering education was also highly subsidized because of trusts and non-profits run by the society.
I owe to Indian society, donors, taxpayers, my teachers and parents. It’s my turn to make some meaningful contributions back to society. Lot of my friends suggested me to start a non-profit to serve. However, I have higher ambitions. I see politics as an instrument to make very high scale social impact. Political organizations are at the epicenter of how we drive change and improvements in society. If we can substantially improve overall quality of political organizations around the world, it will do social good of higher magnitude. Hence I have decided to pick up this domain to spend rest of my life.
I understand it is a tough, hard and long journey. I don’t want to have any regrets latter in my life for not trying this out.
What is the plan?
At very high level here is my 25+ years roadmap. I will work with political organizations for many years till I develop intuitive understanding of the challenges and functioning of these organizations. I will evolve my thinking around solving some of the hardest problems we face in political organizations. Technology will be one of the important dimensions when I try to find solutions for these problems. I will start authoring blogs, books and start series of talks on this subject in few years from now. I plan to start two organizations latter when I feel I have developed enough context.
#1. An open software organization which develops software services and products for political organizations in India and around the world. Digitalization helps drive changes in faster and meaningful ways. It makes systems more transparent and creates level playing field. It should eventually help reduce operational costs and increase crowd-based funding of political parties\leaders. If done rightly it may help us make political career accessible to many talented and well intended people.
#2. A nonprofit organization which helps groom next generation political leaders from all types of moderate ideologies from left to right. Something like Toast masters but with political leadership leaning.
In short term I am planning to spend time and learn from upcoming Karnataka state elections in May and central elections in 2024. I plan to spend significant amount of time in helping improve overall voter turnout in Bengaluru for next few years.
I hope along the way I will meet likeminded people and collaborate on all the above ideas and goals. To be honest I have more questions in my head than answers on what needs to be done at the moment. I just have some rough ideas like I described above. When I really get on the ground, I will go with zero assumptions and baggage. I will cross check my assumptions and see if these even make sense. After few years I think I will have more clarity on how to bring more positive changes in political organizations.
Lastly, I would like to recall what great DR B R Ambedkar said.
“However good a constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot. However bad a constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are called to work it, happen to be a good lot.
…The Constitution can provide only the organs of State such as the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depends are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics.”
Jai Hind!
Mahesh Arali
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NammaMaheshArali
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