Systems thinking, Social bonding & new contracts with Jithu Gopal

Intro:

Jithu Gopal is a fintech product leader based in Bangalore, with 18+ years across engineering, consulting, and product. He is AVP Product at Scripbox and currently owns the charter of building the advisory experience that'll help a million families make confident choices about their portfolios.

Before Scripbox he co-founded Nilenso, a boutique technology consulting firm, where he built a social network, rewrote the checkout experience for a ticketing platform, and took on a few other projects.

He is curious about what creates habits and what motivates people.

Shownotes:

In this conversation, Jithu Gopal and Chitra Gurjar explore -

• Working as a software engineer and an early observer of the cost of quality in work
• Active community-based learning from Java and Ruby user groups in early career
• Building a social network , learning the “ethics” of software engineering, recognizing and applying design patterns 
• Work at Nilenso, an employee-owned cooperative-like company, applying functional programming principles
• Living the principles of “being agile”, using Test-Driven-Development to shape a problem and approach it from the outside, rather than just build, staying in the problem space
• The versions of software engineering, 1.0 and 2.0
• Indispensable systems thinking
• Shifts in Product Management, building strong foundations of working with engineering using high agency and trust 
• AI Mavens, followers, the power and tools to leverage knowledge and do way more
• Examining AI in layers for any organization or system 
• How we organize ourselves differently in the age of machines
• Keeping the “Why” in focus with organization memory and problem memory
• What “post AI” looks like - awakening consciousness and invoking agency, AI cycles bringing more value add
• Social bonding as a key to young people’s future of work and life
• Books that have had a powerful influence on him.
• For aspiring software engineers to keep building and asking about what “good” looks like

Few conversations flow back and forth in time, not unlike when you meet friends from childhood. In this episode of the Software People Stories podcast, I found myself having tremendous deja-vu moments as Jithu Gopal shared his flow of thoughts across various aspects of software engineering through his 18 plus years of work, how his interests and ways of connecting what he reads, experiences and works with have significance and relevance in the AI whorl that seems to be sweeping us with it and what habits and disciplines can hold us through as we begin to figure out new ways of working, learning and what the future might hold for our children and aspiring engineers. Listen on.