Sangeetha Swaminathan

To everyone on H-1B feeling anxious right now I know the new order has created a lot of worry. But please — don’t panic. Many news articles and LinkedIn posts are jumping straight to conclusions without really digging into the actual language. The executive order has a lot of “in-between the lines” details, and it will take time for lawyers and experts to interpret what it truly means. For now, many are advising not to travel outside the U.S. until there’s more clarity. And to those posting random takes without expertise — please don’t spread unnecessary fear. It doesn’t help anyone Let’s hold off on reacting to every headline and wait for trusted updates from legal experts. We’ll all get a clearer picture soon. Update : The White House Press Secretary has now clarified a few key points: 1️⃣ This is not an annual fee — it’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition. 2️⃣ Current H-1B holders outside the U.S. will not be charged $100,000 to re-enter. Their ability to travel remains unchanged. 3️⃣ This applies only to new visas in the next lottery cycle, not renewals or current visa holders. This should help clear some of the confusion. Still, let’s keep relying on official sources and legal experts instead of jumping to conclusions. #h1b #executiveorder

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Utilizing advanced machine learning techniques, I analyzed data from Visa applicants to develop a predictive model aimed at streamlining the visa approval process. This model identifies key factors that significantly influence Visa status, allowing for tailored recommendations on which applicants should be certified or denied. The integration of data-driven insights enhances decision-making efficiency in visa approvals.

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To my colleagues and connections affected by the recent layoffs at Atlassian — my thoughts are with you. Layoffs are never easy, and I know many incredibly talented, hardworking people were impacted. If you are navigating a transition right now and need a connection, a referral, a sounding board, or just someone to review your resume or LinkedIn profile, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m more than happy to help however I can. One resource that made a huge difference for me personally was working with Staci Kae Brookover for resume and LinkedIn consulting. After she helped refine my resume, optimize my LinkedIn profile, and gave me practical tips on how to work with the LinkedIn algorithm, I started getting recruiter calls and interview requests left and right. I truly believe her guidance played a major role in helping me land my current job. If you’re actively job searching, investing in how you present your experience can make a big difference. An investment in your job search is an investment in your future. To everyone affected — you’re talented, capable, and your next opportunity is out there. If I can help in any way, please reach out. You have my support.

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I was one of 4000+ impacted by the Block layoff today. When I first joined Block in 2023 I won a hackathon at a pivotal time right after a week long SEV0 and presented a system that would give us the ability to know when an incident was happening in real time. Previously Square relied on sellers to report issues and this system was scaled across the entire org in 2024 and caught many SEVs within minutes. This week was also a hackathon, and I built a system that I was so excited to demo. It was an evolution to observability that went from humans responding to monitors to agents responding to monitors and mobile app crashes. I created a team of agents that could proactively and reactively find issues by querying our logs, metrics, and traces and autonomously fix issues, and respond to mobile app crash reports. The orchestration layer would launch an investigation and fix an app crash without any human intervention. It was a project that I stayed up till 3am working on because I was genuinely excited. And the crazy part is it actually worked.. not like 10% success rate but I was seeing 60-80% success rate. Maybe I could write a blog about what I learned along the way in creating this system and the fun challenges I solved. From deciding what should be deterministic and where LLM-as-a-judge shines, to how I orchestrated multi-agent workflows that leveraged review gates and iteration loops, and how I created an eval framework to fine tune agent instructions. Not sure what’s next for me, I might stay in the mobile observability niche or branch out and try something new outside of mobile or I might go all-in and build my own products. I’m going to take some time to rest and reconnect with myself and see what opportunities are out there. My DMs are open, and I’m open to new opportunities. When one door closes, another one opens 🫶

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By the time I had spent a few years in Amazon’s larger data platforms, I had seen the same pattern enough times to stop ignoring it. Velocity slows down long before anyone calls it a slowdown. The signs are subtle. Teams ask for more clarification than usual. Similar design questions keep resurfacing. Dependencies start feeling heavier than the work itself. That usually points to one of two things: hidden complexity or hidden disagreement. Treat either one as an execution problem and the organization gets louder, not faster.

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If you are an SF engineer at $150K, you are likely Level I. Your H‑1B chances just dropped by 48%. The new H‑1B Cap Weighted Selection Final Rule is here. Random lottery is gone. Wage‑weighted selection is in. Data. Under the old system, everyone sat at about 35% odds. 118K out of 336K registrations in FY26. No advantage for higher wage levels. The new rule rewrites those odds: → Level I: 15.29% → Level II: 30.58% → Level III: 45.87% → Level IV: 61.16% For Level I, odds drop nearly in half. For Level IV, odds more than double. A $150K SF engineer is often Level I on OES. → Early career people, Lower salary but important roles, they get hit the hardest here. There is more. Registrations must now include: → OEWS wage level → SOC code → Work location Later the petition must prove that wage level was correct on the day of registration. USCIS can deny, revoke, or block amendments if it looks like you changed terms to game the lottery. The logic from the government is clear. → Higher pay, higher odds. → Your economic value now shapes your chance to stay. If you are an employer, start planning before the next window. If you are a worker, learn your wage level and study other paths, not only H‑1B. I will keep sharing data as more details come out. Hi! My name is Sumit Gupta, I share data, AI, immigration updates and make you a smarter immigrant!

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Why does an E3 level SWE at Meta make only ~190k/year, while an E8 level engineer makes over ~$2M/year, even though both engineers are ICs and spend the same time at work? I have spent the last 5 years at Meta as an IC. I joined with a little over 15 years of experience, and I’ve worked with many solid engineers in this time. Here is how I think about that compensation jump. 1. Same hours, completely different “unit of work” An E3’s unit of work is usually a task or a ticket. An E8’s unit of work is a multi year problem for the company. E3: “Implement this service, fix this bug, write this feature.” E8: “How do we cut infra cost by 20 percent across this product” or “How do we make this platform safe to scale to 10x users.” One person is paid to execute. The other is paid to decide what is worth executing in the first place. 2. Radius of impact E3 usually impacts a file, a service, maybe a small team. E8 shapes whole orgs and product lines. If an E3 ships something great, the impact is great but local. If an E8 ships the right platform, hundreds of engineers become faster and the company saves or earns millions every year. Comp tracks the area of the circle you influence. 3. Risk and downside protection At junior levels, mistakes are usually contained and reversible. At senior staff levels, a bad call can burn tens of millions or damage the brand. E8s are paid for judgment under ambiguity. They decide which bets the company should not make, which migrations can wait, which “shiny idea” is going to kill reliability. You pay more to people whose good judgment protects you from very expensive failures.  4. They scale themselves This can happen in a few ways. 1. Delegation with ownership They define the shape of the problem, then hand large pieces to other senior and mid level engineers while keeping the bar and direction clear. 2. Knowledge that travels They write RFCs, public comments, FAQs, wikis, internal posts. One answer helps hundreds of people who will face the same issue next quarter. 3. Tools over heroics Instead of unblocking people manually all day, they build tools, libraries or guardrails so others can unblock themselves. One well designed tool can save thousands of engineering hours every year. This is what “scaling yourself” actually looks like. The company pays for that multiplier.  5. Ownership of the “uncomfortable problems” Junior engineers usually work inside a well defined box. E8s take ownership between the boxes. They pick up problems that:  Span many teams and no one really “owns”  Require aligning leaders who disagree  Have product, infra, legal and security angles at the same time Most people avoid those because they are messy, political and slow. Very senior ICs lean into them. That is where a lot of value sits. Continued ↓

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I spent an incredible day at #Mosaic2026, presented by The Technology Tribe. The agenda was packed with insightful sessions, but one specific takeaway from Dale Vaz really stuck with me. ​He spoke about the importance of "Strong opinions, weakly held" as a vital characteristic for Individual Contributors (ICs). ​It’s a powerful reminder that while we should lead with conviction and deep technical expertise, we must remain humble enough to pivot when new data or better ideas emerge. In tech, being right is less important than getting it right. ​Thanks to the organizers for a stellar event! ​#Mosaic2026 #TechConference #EngineeringCulture

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🚀⚡️The Nova Act service on AWS is now live. Check out our no-code playground at nova.amazon.com/act to get started (no setup needed) 🚀 We’ve built the fastest way to go from prototype to production for UI automation workflows like QA testing, form filling, and data entry. Last week, we launched a SOTA model, new AWS service, and a frictionless developer experience. Our suite of tools supports the full developer journey: 1. Prototype in the no-code playground at nova.amazon.com/act 2. Build & iterate with the Nova Act IDE extension + SDK 3. Deploy, manage & operate your agents directly on AWS through the console A great builder experience is what will ultimately unlock adoption and scale for AI agents. Most agent builders require you to assemble primitives, wire tools, and manage infrastructure resulting in heavy lifting with slow payoff. With Nova Act, we took a different approach centered on accessibility and velocity, bringing everything you need into a single, integrated system. At the heart of the experience is the act API: act("book me a flight from BOS to SFO") Your agent moves through the browser, reasoning through each step — no scaffolding or specialized expertise required. We shaped Nova Act by obsessively iterating with customers every day. Those customers like Hertz, 1Password, Automation Anywhere, Katalon, First Orion, and Sola are now running the world’s first UI automation agents at scale in production. I’m incredibly proud of the team for bringing our agents vision to life from prototype to general availability in under a year. Their dedication to DevX for our customers from engineering to solutions shows in every detail of these tools! Can’t wait to see what you automate with Nova Act 🤗

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When Claude Code Joined Our Team in the Middle of a Tech Scavenger Hunt Yesterday, our randomly assembled team of four engineers joined an intense tech scavenger hunt at InMobi Encore2025 - packed with coding challenges and technical riddles. The team: Me (Staff Engineer – Frontend) An SDE2 – ML An SDE3 – Backend Another Staff Engineer – Backend One puzzle stopped us cold: two giant parquet datasets (~750K rows each) hiding a riddle about bids, floors, installs, and a “final pattern” buried deep inside. My teammates? Instantly spinning up Databricks, notebooks, pandas. Me? No relevant setup. No DS tools. Just sitting there, watching the clock tick, feeling like dead weight. 💡 The Lightbulb Moment "Why not try Claude Code?" I dropped the datasets and riddle in with few more lines of instructions. And while we were still stuck on the first step, Claude tore through: Filtering down to iOS/Android Checking bid floors Finding the winning ads (render + click + install) Merging on impression_id Revealing a Fibonacci sequence in time_to_install Answer: 34. “Guys, just enter 34.” Suspicious stares. A pause. Then… Correct! That single AI-powered leap saved us 10-15 minutes and flipped the game. From that point on, Claude became our fifth teammate. Takeaways: In tech, the boldest move is often trying what looks unconventional AI can be a genuine partner in problem-solving Resourcefulness > perfect setup And sometimes, success in uncharted territory comes from being willing to try what others dismiss I may not have written a line of pandas, but being open to AI meant I could unlock value my team didn’t expect. PS: We didn’t win the contest, but we came very close — only to be tripped up in the last round that required us to actually run around the office for the answer. Turns out, AI has its limits 😉 #AI #Engineering #ProblemSolving #Teamwork

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Grateful to be part of AWS She Builds Tech as an AWS Insights Speaker. ☁️ Had the opportunity to contribute an article on designing an end-to-end serverless data pipeline on AWS - covering the journey from raw data to actionable insights using services like S3, Glue DataBrew, SageMaker, and QuickSight. Do give it a read if you’re exploring data engineering, machine learning, or serverless analytics on AWS. #AWSSheBuildsTech #WomenInTech #AWSCommunity #DataEngineering #MachineLearning #Serverless #Cloud AWS UG for Women In Tech India

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Amid new H-1B visa curbs getting implemented this year, the major US tech firms-Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet) closed 2025, collectively hiring over 32,000 new employees in India. FAAMNG companies reported an 18% YoY uptick in hiring in specialised roles in India, with another 3,000-5,000 active job openings. https://lnkd.in/gynKeext

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Imagine you're sitting in an interview for an L5/L6 Software Engineer role at Google, and you're asked this question: "Design Uber for a metro city." Here's how I would break it down if I were the one being interviewed. There are lots of aspects we can cover here, but I'll only cover the high-level design. Btw, if you’re preparing for system design/coding interviews, check out our mock interview tool. You can use it for free here: https://lnkd.in/gpCn7t2T  1. Requirements The classic pain points in ride-hailing apps: - Matching is slow because the system can't efficiently find the nearest available driver from a pool of hundreds of thousands in real time - Consistency is fragile because concurrent ride requests can accidentally assign the same driver to multiple riders - Location tracking is expensive because millions of driver pings per minute overwhelm traditional databases Functional requirements - Rider inputs a start location and destination, gets a fare estimate and ETA - Rider requests a ride based on that estimate and gets matched with a nearby available driver in real time - Driver receives a ride request notification and can accept or deny it - Driver navigates to the pickup location, then to the destination, updating status along the way - Drivers periodically send their current location so the system knows where they are Out of scope (worth mentioning to show product sense) - Multiple car types (UberXL, Black, etc.) , we'll assume one tier - Ratings and reviews for drivers and riders - Scheduled rides in advance - Surge pricing algorithms - Payment processing Non-functional requirements - Low-latency matching: under 1 minute from ride request to driver match (or a failure message) - Consistency of matching: a ride is matched to exactly one driver, and a driver is never double-booked across rides - High availability outside of matching: the rest of the system (fare estimates, location updates, navigation) should be up at all times - High throughput in surges: the system must handle hundreds of thousands of requests within a region during festivals or special events Rest of the breakdown: https://lnkd.in/gieR-EqR

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Current Hiring Trends and Challenges for H-1B Visa Holders In today’s job market, many companies in the U.S. have increasingly narrowed their hiring focus to prioritize U.S. citizens and green card holders. This shift is especially noticeable in mid-to-large enterprises. Additionally, economic uncertainty, budget constraints, and evolving immigration policies have made many employers hesitant to take on the perceived administrative burden or risk associated with sponsoring foreign workers. As a result, qualified professionals on H-1B visas are frequently overlooked, with their resumes not even being considered despite strong skills and experience. What Can H-1B Professionals Do?

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💡 Tip of the Week for H-1B Professionals Impacted by Layoffs If you are on an H-1B and recently got impacted, there may be a way to extend your job-search timeline. Last year, I saw this happen to someone impacted at Amazon. Despite strong experience and active interviews, the 60-day grace period ran out before an offer came through. Due to timing and lack of awareness of available options, they had to leave the US. That situation stayed with me and motivated me to share this information more broadly. Here is an approach many professionals follow: 1️⃣ Convert H-1B to B-2 status during your grace period. 2️⃣ The H-1B → B-2 change of status can be filed with the help of an immigration attorney, or you can file it yourself using a standard template. 👉 Feel free to DM me if you need a reference template. 3️⃣ This can provide up to 6 additional months to continue interviewing without the 60-day clock pressure. 4️⃣ After securing a role, your new employer can move you back to H-1B. Sharing this in the hope that others do not lose opportunities simply due to lack of information. Wishing everyone strength and success during their job search. Happy job hunting. For more practical tips around job search, interviews, and navigating transitions, follow me for weekly insights. (Not legal advice. Please consult an immigration attorney for your specific case.)

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🔥 “𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲.” That one line almost broke me early in my PM career. I developed a '𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗔𝗜/𝗠𝗟 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺' which needed vendor and engineering team and cross-functional owner collaboration. On paper, I was unblocking bottlenecks, driving execution, and pushing delivery forward.The leadership delivered a direct message about operations work when it was time to demonstrate impact by stating “𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗹𝗲.” But one project turned that thinking on its head. 💡 Instead of stopping at technical fixes, I partnered with 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚.We dug into the ripple effects:  1. The vendor delays resulted in the company missing the holiday launch window.  2. The optimization of models directly affects the BOM costs which results in higher costs.  3. The rework cycles operated in the background to exhaust budget allocations. The numbers were eye-opening: The company achieved an 18% decrease in rework expenses through process improvements at the vendor level.  • 3 weeks shaved off time-to-market, securing a seasonal launch  • The execution system produces more than $20M in revenue because it links operational activities to business results. That project didn’t just deliver a technical win — it reframed how leadership viewed product execution. Suddenly, “ops” wasn’t background noise; it was a 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿.The recognition (and promotion) I received came from showing how 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗔𝗜/𝗠𝗟 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 = 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲. The real lesson? 👉PMs and TPMs don’t just own delivery; we engineer ROI through trust, partnerships, and execution that protects revenue and margin. I will always be thankful to my coach Shilpa Kulshrestha-Murdering Mediocrity who made me look at delivery metrics from a business perspective. PMs, TPMs and tech leaders who read this should investigate if they have ever felt invisible in terms of business impact. Connect process → efficiency → revenue. That’s where the hidden ROI lives. I have created slots on 𝗧𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 to assist others in creating their own impact story by converting “behind-the-scenes work” into career-defining ROI. Let’s connect, link: https://lnkd.in/gQN3KvYn

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At 3 AM on a Wednesday, Amazon needed me. I wasn’t even on that team anymore. Back when I was an SDE at Amazon, a Sev-2 had hit one of our services. Many customers were impacted. The team had been chasing it for hours. Still, they called me. I rolled out of bed, opened my laptop, and joined the bridge. The tricky part was that the fault started a week earlier. A code change had shipped behind a flag, traffic ramped slowly, and the failure signature was noisy. Logs were chatty in all the wrong places and silent where we needed them most.Dashboards showed errors, but no clear line to the root. We did unglamorous things. We wrote a minute-by-minute timeline. We diffed deployments, configs, and flags across regions. We checked queue backlogs and retry storms. We sampled logs with new filters. We bisected the traffic ramp. We rolled back the smallest safe thing first. Then we added one log, in one hot path, and the picture snapped into focus. By sunrise, we had the root cause and a fix. The impact was contained. Customers recovered. What stayed with me was not the fix. It was why they called. They did not call because I am smarter. They called because, over months, I had done the boring work. I wrote runbooks when no one asked. I paired with juniors on their first on-call. I shared context so others could make decisions without me. I showed up when it was not my ticket. Trust is not built in one night. It is built in all the small days that come before it. Ownership is simple. If it affects your customer, it is your problem. Org charts are for payroll, not for 3 AM. If you are early in your career, remember this: → Document the weird corners when you discover them. → Add one useful log where it hurts, not twenty where it is easy. → Keep a living checklist for rollback, not a static wiki page. → Teach one person the thing you just learned. → Read your dashboards when things are calm, not only when they are red. At 3 AM, you will not rise to the occasion. You will fall to the level of your habits. Build the right ones while the house is quiet. That’s how you earn trust that lasts beyond teams and ownership that outlives org charts. A few days later, this moment turned into an accolade from the team..  a reminder that trust is built long before it’s tested :)

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One year ago, I left the Bay Area, wrapped up nearly 8 years on US work visas (TN + H1B), and moved back home to Toronto. Living in the states as a skilled immigrant came with a constant hum of uncertainty around visas, but also lead to incredible opportunities early in my career that I don’t know if I would have found elsewhere. Our motivation for moving was primarily for personal reasons, but we asked ourselves many questions before pulling the trigger: > Can we find fulfillment and growth in our careers beyond the first role when we land? > What will our financial picture look like if we made $X? And spent $Y? > What does life outside of work look like? With family? And friends? > Is {healthcare|rental market|the TTC} really as bad as people say it is? For Canadian tech expats who are asking themselves similar questions especially in light of the recent announcements related to H1B, I’m happy to share my experience navigating the change and maybe some tips I learned from the whole process to make it less daunting 🇨🇦 #H1BNews #TorontoTech #LifeInToronto #Canada #CanadiansAbroad #H1B #TechToronto #Engineering

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