Surabhi Gupta | Director of Engineering @ Airbnb

About this video

An Airbnb engineering leader shares her career journey from computer science studies through Google to her current role, emphasizing how she navigated a major promotion opportunity while starting a family. She reflects on the importance of not over-optimizing life decisions, building strong relationships with managers, and remaining flexible during periods of change.

Key takeaways

• Avoid over-planning major life decisions like timing a promotion with starting a family—what feels like perfect alignment rarely is, and flexibility often creates better opportunities than rigid optimization
• Your manager is critical to career advancement; invest in that relationship by ensuring they understand your definition of success and can advocate for you when opportunities arise
• Disagreement and tension with your manager are normal and can be productive if you work backward from shared values to understand what matters to both of you and the team

Episode details: published November 2, 2017 · 4K views · 9:46 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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