• Matt Phillips is an assistant VP in AT&T's benefits department.
• He shared 5 tips for making the most of your employee benefits.
• He touched on how to avoid redundant dependant coverage and utilizing HSAs.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Matt Phillips, 45, the assistant vice president of benefits, health operations at AT&T, from Dallas. Business Insider verified his employment with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The benefits enrollment process is a two-way street. My department spends a lot of time on our package, but employees also need to understand and engage with those benefits so they can make the most of them.

I've worked in the HR benefits department at AT&T for over 10 years. We spend a lot of time trying to educate and inform employees on what they need to know about their benefits.

Prior to that, I worked as an actuarial consultant, where I consulted on post-employment benefits, such as pension and retiree health, and also worked for a nonprofit.

Since joining AT&T in 2013, I've worked in multiple areas of our benefits department, including in strategy and in running savings plans. Five years ago, I moved into my current role, overseeing all health and well-being operations.

Here are some of my top tips about benefits enrollment for employees:

1. Ask yourself key healthcare questions and consider virtual options

Asking yourself key questions can help you pick the best health plan during enrollment season.

For example, do you want to pay more or less now for your health plan?

Choosing a high-deductible plan that's cheaper in terms of what comes out of your paycheck exposes you to higher out-of-pocket costs throughout the year. I think a good idea is to pair a plan like this with an additional ancillary medical plan, like a critical illness, hospital indemnity, or accident insurance plan.

For example, my son runs cross country, and in 2022, he fractured his tibia. There were significant costs for urgent care, imaging, and a specialist appointment, but through my accident plan, I got a payment from the insurer to provide more financial security at this time.

Also, virtual care has come a long way. I often hear employees say they don't have time for preventive check-ups with primary care physicians. However, it's possible to establish an ongoing relationship with a primary care physician virtually, so I'd encourage employees to look into virtual benefits options.

This can also include virtual mental health counseling. If you feel you don't have time in your day to go see a therapist or coach, you may be able to do it over the phone.

2. Go beyond a medical plan

I spend a lot of time telling employees not to just focus on their medical plan but to ensure they're taking advantage of all the other benefits available to them.

For example, at AT&T we offer employees a robust legal plan. If you may need to do something like write a will or set up an estate plan, a legal plan can help provide services around that.

My family has also benefited from an elder care planning service under my benefits plan. The company paid for a professional to come and meet with my wife, her cousin, and me about making a plan for caring for my wife's aging aunt.

While you do have to specifically enroll in something like a legal plan, companies may give other benefits to all employees automatically. Our dependant care and mental health benefits are given to all employees without a need for enrollment, for example. Ask the HR or benefits person at your company what you're entitled to that you don't even have to enroll in.

3. Max out your 401(k) contributions and use retirement planning tools

My advice for those thinking about retirement is to make sure you're not leaving any free money on the table.

Look into your company's 401(k) match and make sure you're maxing that out.

Many employers also have a retirement planning tool that can help you. We have an online one where you can say, "I want to retire at this age, I want this much money in retirement," and it helps you build a plan for how much you should contribute to hit that goal by the time you retire.

People should also be thinking about healthcare expenses for retirement. That's likely to become a larger share of your out-of-pocket expenses once you leave a company, especially if you retire before you become Medicare-eligible. Make sure you speak about this with your advisor and think about leveraging a Health Savings Account for that.

You don't lose your HSA when you leave a company. You can contribute tax-free, interest is tax-free, and if you use it on qualified healthcare expenses, it comes out tax-free. Plus, your employer might offer to contribute to or match your HSA contributions as part of a benefits plan.

4. Avoid redundant dependant coverage

When both spouses work and have children, it doesn't make sense to cover the children under both benefits plans. You'll end up paying double out of your paychecks but not necessarily getting double the benefits out of it.

If one parent's insurer agreed to cover or make a payout for a claim, then the other parent's insurer likely wouldn't, on the basis that the family has already received coverage and potentially a payout for the claim. Insuring dependents under both parents' plans could cover potential gaps in one parent's coverage, but it's often not worth it.

Instead, parents should compare potential costs under each plan and pick the best option.

5. Reach out to people in your company who can help you

There's usually someone in your company you can contact to talk about benefits options. If it's not your direct HR person, because you're at a really large company, they will have hired resources to help you. Call that phone number, download that app, or chat with that person.

Your company will hopefully have invested in those resources to help you navigate the process; you just need to reach out and take them.

Are you a professional or consultant with advice for employees to maximize their employment? Email Charissa Cheong at [email protected]

• Aaron Goldsmid, head of product at Deel, has previously worked for Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter.
• Early in his career, Goldsmid said he over-indexed on emulating senior leaders.
• He also said he focused more on hitting OKRs than investing in relationships.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Aaron Goldsmid, a 44-year-old from San Francisco about mistakes he made early in his career. Business Insider verified his previous employment at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I had a somewhat atypical journey into tech. My parents were Broadway performers, and I was the first person in my family to go to college.

I became interested in computer science in high school and broke into tech straight after studying computer science at Columbia.

Through the college recruiting process, I got a job at Microsoft in 2002 and spent nearly six years there, largely working in the security space.

During the 2010s, I held tech roles at Amazon from 2011 to 2012, Facebook from 2012 to 2014, and Twitter from 2014 to 2015, as well as working at several smaller companies.

I've been fortunate to work at some of the most iconic tech companies during interesting periods. I've taken tools from each opportunity and now apply them to my current job as the head of product for Deel, a payroll and HR platform.

Because my parents didn't have 9-to-5s, I sometimes struggled to determine how to succeed in the corporate world. I didn't have anyone telling me about things like checking boxes to get to the next level in my career and how frictional relationships can impact the workplace.

Now that I have two decades of career experience under my belt, I understand how to avoid some of the mistakes I made early on and plan a career more intentionally.

Mistake 1: Thinking one job ahead instead of two

When I informally coach folks about careers, I usually advise them to think two jobs ahead.

Instead of thinking about what you dislike about your current job and whether your next role will solve that, think two jobs ahead. I tell early career techies to ask themselves how their next role will get them to the role after that.

After leaving Microsoft, I moved from Seattle back to New York, where I grew up. I wanted to secure a job in the city, and because the tech scene wasn't as mature in New York in the early 2000s, I took a role at NBCUniversal, helping build their video streaming service.

I did good work in that role, but I'm not sure it necessarily advanced my career. I then joined a startup because they gave me a very fancy title, but I ended up leaving before completing one year because I felt there were problems at the company, and I realized I'd chased a title instead of thinking things through.

As I advanced in my career, I knew I needed to focus on the skills I needed to acquire rather than the prestige of a position.

When I joined Kiva, a microfinance nonprofit, in 2018, I didn't view it as a permanent job. I took the job to gain skills outside a product and engineering capacity.

During my time there, I learned about business development and communicated with UN officials and central bank leaders. Not only did I get to experience the challenges faced by other teams, but I also got to know different contours of the product, business, and customer experience.

When I moved into my next role, a general manager at the communications company Twilio, I had a broader scope of experience and could operate more effectively.

You can accelerate quickly into a senior role, but taking a less fancy role and diversifying your experience might mean your upside long-term is much higher. If you're thinking two jobs ahead, evaluate what opportunities will help you more in the long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Mistake 2: Not investing in relationships

Early in my career, because I didn't know how corporations worked, it was easy to think that everyone in a company was aligned and felt the same way, which is foolish.

When I worked at Twitter on their growth team, my job was to play in other people's sandboxes and tweak things. The company was having a difficult growth time, and we had to be hyper-focused on hitting our OKRs. This sometimes came at the detriment of my team's relationship with the rest of the product engineering org.

We had to step into other team's territories and move quickly. I felt I needed to hit a goal at all costs, and the problem was "at all costs." We often weren't on the same page as that team and had to go back and repair relationships afterward. In hindsight, I needed to do a better job of explaining why we were doing something from the outset.

Not everyone is trying to achieve a company's mission in the same way, and so by investing in relationships, you can more clearly communicate how you align with others in a company. Even if they don't align with you, they'll respect your process.

Mistake 3: Over-emulating senior leaders

Early in my career, I didn't have a role model in the corporate environment, so I questioned what "good" looked like and how I should show up.

Folks who are early in their career will often look at people who they think are successful and think, "I want to be just like them."

But sometimes, early-career workers have a hard time distinguishing the reasons for a person's success from their bad habits. They might not know things that the company has been willing to work around or that hold that person back.

Early in my career, I over-indexed on emulating senior leaders. For example, I'd see some of them making sweeping statements like "This is the future, or, this isn't the future." They can get away with that because they've proven themselves, but I'd do the same, and it would fall on deaf ears. I hadn't yet earned that level of credibility and still needed to "show my work" before I earned that trust.

As a senior leader at Deel, I'm very conscious about how I present myself to early career folks. In larger meetings, I remind myself that there will be people on the call who view my role through a limited set of interactions. I don't want to pass on any bad behavior or shortcomings for them to emulate.

Do you have a career story you want to share with Business Insider? Email [email protected]

Silicon Valley is the undisputed global tech hub. The small corner of California is the birthplace of Apple, Google, and OpenAI — companies that have, for better or worse, changed modern life.

Far away, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, another tech hub has been finding its footing in the international market. The city of Bengaluru is the startup capital of India and shares similar DNA to California's Silicon Valley.

Bengaluru grew into an IT hub in the wake of the rapid expansion of its electronics manufacturing industry from the 1940s to the 1960s. Back in the US, Silicon Valley was home to the semiconductor industry in the 1950s and owes its name to the silicon transistors produced there in the 1960s.

By the mid-1980s, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft had a presence in the Valley, while in Bengaluru, large companies like Infosys and Texas Instruments moved in.

Bengaluru is widely referred to as the "Silicon Valley of India," producing tech unicorns and housing offices for companies like Amazon, Google, and Dell. After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk shut the company's offices in Delhi and Mumbai but kept the Bengaluru office. Earlier this year, Virgin Atlantic launched daily direct flights from London to Bengaluru.

However, the city's status as a tech metropole is under pressure as rapid growth tests the local infrastructure. Estimates place the current population at roughly 14 million, compared to 8 million in 2010.

Heavy traffic, water shortages, and rising property prices have led to online speculation that Bengaluru may be crumbling and debates about whether another city will emerge as a new tech hub in India. During a water crisis earlier this year, some tech companies in Bengaluru had to tell employees to stay home.

Business Insider spoke to four current and former Bengaluru residents in and outside the tech industry who shared their experiences of how India's "Silicon Valley" is holding up under the pressures of rapid urbanization and whether they believe it can maintain its place as a global tech hub.

Vikram Chandrashekar

Vikram Chandrashekar, 50, was born in Bengaluru and has worked at Oracle for the past 27 years. He told BI he is happy for the job opportunities Bengaluru's status as a tech hub has brought, but is nostalgic for the city of his youth.

A lake he visited when he was younger, across from a guava and mango orchard, has now been replaced by housing.

Chandrashekar said the IT boom drew people to the city, bringing a larger airport, a more diverse culture, and better internet connectivity. He is also grateful to the startup ecosystem because he has access to new services and products faster than the rest of the country.

He said local people have benefited from job opportunities, but they still complain about the issues urbanization has caused. Chandrashekar doesn't plan to leave his hometown and thinks creating other tech hubs in India to redirect the growing population is a solution.

Read Vikram Chandrashekar's full story here.

Dhruv Suyamprakasam

Dhruv Suyamprakasam grew up joining his dad on business trips to Bengaluru and Hyderabad, another large tech hub in India. When Suyamprakasam became a founder himself, he moved to Bengaluru twice.

However, the founder said the city wasn't a golden ticket to success, and Suyamprakasam decided it was better to build his startup in his local city.

Suyamprakasam first moved to Bengaluru in 2010 after launching a medical startup with his relative.

It turned out to be a mistake. Suyamprakasam said Bengaluru's tech ecosystem's "fail-fast" mentality put too much pressure on their medical startup. He also felt excluded for being from a smaller city, not speaking Hindi, or not having studied at India's top engineering school.

Suyamprakasam said access to talent and venture capital are huge advantages of Bengaluru, while smaller cities can offer lower costs and more space.

Still, Bengaluru doesn't compare to Silicon Valley's vast capital and power. The founder said Bengaluru can be great on its own merits, but it needs to start being more inclusive.

Read Dhruv Suyamprakasam's full story here.

Batool Fatima

Batool Fatima, 50, moved to Bengaluru nearly 25 years ago from Hyderabad. Like Chandrashekar, the founder of a local nonprofit organization saw the city known for greenery and lakes change before her eyes.

Fatima said she is concerned that the city may not be able to support further population growth and that residents must work on improving the city's problems.

She said more intellectuals and non-tech workers have moved to Bengaluru which has been beneficial. But there have been reports of tensions between locals and immigrants who don't speak the language.

The influx of people has also caused environmental strains, including a recent water crisis. Fatima said the shortage disproportionality impacted high-rise buildings, a telling example of the lack of planning around urban growth.

The philanthropist said she wanted companies to invest in solutions to protect Bengaluru's natural resources, like funding wetland wildlife reserves. She also said community action, like residents collecting stormwater drainage, is more helpful than complaining about the government.

Fatima said developing nearby suburbs could reduce the strain on the city's center and allow the tech hub to continue to thrive.

Read Batool Fatima's full story here.

Spencer Schneier

Spencer Schneier is from New York, but spends half his year in Bengaluru and the other half in San Francisco running a tech startup.

The pandemic opened Schenier's eyes to the idea of leaving the US. In 2020, Schneier worked with two Indian cofounders and joined them on a trip to Mumbai and Bengaluru. While traveling, he decided to launch a startup from Bengaluru to help businesses expand overseas.

Schneier told BI he chose the city because it gave him access to customers, other founders, and small businesses to learn from. He said the Indian startup ecosystem was more conservative than the US, but the next generation of investors is really promising.

Now Schneier spends half his time in San Francisco and half in Bengaluru. He loves the Indian city's moderate climate and generosity. The tech CEO said he struggles with traffic and bureaucracy in the city, but feels he is part of a larger trend of people moving to India to start businesses.

Schneier told BI he believes the appeal of Bengaluru's talent density and local generosity will gain popularity.

Read Spencer Schneier's full story here.

In the tussle between economic growth and sustainability, can Bengaluru have it all?

Bengaluru has undergone significant changes in its transition from a serene "Garden City" to the Silicon Valley of India. Residents said the rapid urbanization has brought both opportunities and challenges.

The opportunities — a booming tech and startup industry, jobs, and diversity — draw people to the city and keep locals living there. But residents BI spoke to are keenly aware of the tradeoffs, pointing to environmental degradation, rising costs of living, and traffic.

The tension between Bengaluru's growth as a tech hub and the cost for its inhabitants lies at the heart of the city's future.

Harini Nagendra, a professor at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, said, "There's a city which is growing, and there's obviously the economic prosperity it brings, but there's also the ecological degradation that you see everywhere."

Nagendra echoed Batool Fatima's suggestion of a collaborative solution with companies and residents maintaining their local environments.

Narendar Pani, an economics professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru, said the city's growth also hinges on education – better education in urban planning and the ongoing strength of city's educational institutions.

"When people look at Bangalore's future, they think about roads and water," he said. "Water is important, but I think more than the roads, a much more critical element is education."

He, like other residents who spoke to BI, expressed a cautious hopefulness that Bengaluru would solve its problems and continue to grow.

"I belong here, so I would like to think the ideas will come," he said.

• Batool Fatima moved to Bengaluru, "India's Silicon Valley," nearly 25 years ago.
• She said the city felt like a dream when she arrived but now it's struggling with urbanization.
• After a water crisis this year, some people are leaving Bengaluru but Fatima plans to stay.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Batool Fatima, 50, about environmental issues facing Bengaluru, the city known as "India's Silicon Valley." The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in Hyderabad. Like Bengaluru, it's one of India's tech hubs.

I moved to Bengaluru in 2000 after I got married because my husband lives there. I also visited frequently as a child because my father used to work there.

It was like a dream city for us then. It was more advanced than Hyderabad, with wider roads and a lot of greenery and lakes.

Over the years, the rapid expansion of certain industries in Bengaluru, such as IT and ITES, fueled significant construction and population growth. The landscape changed in front of our eyes. Development has had a positive impact, creating opportunities for both locals and migrants.

But Bengaluru is dealing with water scarcity issues and some people seem to be leaving the city because of problems with infrastructure. Rather than leaving, I want to work on solutions. The community must come together to prioritize sustainability and the city's natural resources to preserve its future.

People who've moved to Bengaluru help to sustain the city

I've been working in the nonprofit sector since 2011. In June 2024, I started my own nonprofit, Sheya Foundation. We're invested in equitable access to healthcare and education, and I'm also very interested in climate issues.

Bengaluru is seen as an IT city. It's an aspirational city to live in because it's known for its pleasant climate and career opportunities.

With the development of the city's tech sector, a lot of intellectuals have moved in, many who care about the city and climate. However, there have also been environmental and economic strains.

There's an economic strain on people who don't work in IT and don't make high salaries. With wealthier tech workers in the city, the cost of living has risen dramatically, and houses have become more unaffordable. I'm seeing young people dropping out of school to start work because of the impact of higher costs on families.

Other people who aren't IT employees have moved to the city to work in industries serving the tech community, such as hospitality and schools. These people are helping to sustain the city.

There have been some tensions between local people and those who've come from elsewhere because of cultural differences. Recent reports suggest a rise in confrontations between locals and people who don't speak the language.

I'm not from Bengaluru and haven't encountered any negativity myself. But I speak Telegu, which many local people also understand, so I feel at home here.

I'm concerned about water scarcity in the city, but there are solutions

Water scarcity has become a particularly visible issue in Bengaluru.

The number of lakes in the city has decreased significantly in recent decades due to urbanization. Too many high rises are coming up too fast, and I don't think there's enough planning going into water facilities to sustain residents.

Bengaluru dealt with a huge water crisis earlier this year. It particularly affected people in high-rise buildings because the buildings are over-reliant on borewells that dried up during the crisis.

The water crisis didn't affect me too badly. Where I live, there's only one borewell for our group of villas, so we agreed to ration it and only use the water for half an hour per house each day. Since June, we've had good rain, so we no longer need to restrict ourselves.

The water issues seem to have calmed down across the city. But we'll have to see if there'll be a year-on-year impact during the summer months.

We need to be ruthless about not encroaching on our lakes. If we're going to be lax on this aspect, people are going to leave. I've read on the news that some people left during the summer because of a lack of water.

I'd like to see companies investing in solutions for Bengaluru. For example, they should work with the government to develop vegetation wetlands.

Residents also need to assess what we are doing to treat water as a precious commodity instead of complaining about what the government isn't doing. The community has to collaborate with the government by doing things like looking into stormwater drainage for their houses.

We need to work on solutions for the city rather than try to create a new Bengaluru elsewhere

Public infrastructure has struggled to keep pace with Bengaluru's growing population. I feel the city is bursting at the seams and may not be able to support further population growth.

But that doesn't mean I want it to stop developing as a tech hub. Bengaluru contributes significantly to India's GDP and helps generate high-paying jobs. Maintaining it as a tech hub allows players in the tech ecosystem — multinational companies, startups, research institutions, and a skilled workforce — to continue collaborating, driving innovation and job creation.

The state government has been developing nearby suburban regions like Yeshwanthpur and Bidadi, which can reduce congestion in the city's core while enabling Bengaluru to continue excelling in tech. In my opinion, that's a more viable solution than relocating the IT sector to other regions in India.

It's not going to be easy to move a tech hub from Bengaluru to another city. When I visit, Hyderabad, my hometown, which is also known for IT, there are similar issues there in terms of traffic, water, and property prices.

I want to keep using my foundation to build community awareness. I love Bengaluru, and I'd rather stay here and work on solutions than leave.

Want to share your story? Email [email protected]

• When Vikram Chandrashekar was growing up in Bengaluru, it was quiet and full of natural beauty.
• Chandrashekar said urbanization is a good thing, but it changed the city too quickly.
• He enjoys living in a tech hub, but said locals are struggling with the pressure on infrastructure.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Vikram Chandrashekar, 50, who was born in Bengaluru, India, about how the city has changed over his lifetime. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Bengaluru has become known as the "Silicon Valley of India," but it was once known as a "Garden City."

I was born in Bengaluru and have lived in J.P. Nagar, a neighborhood in the south of the city since I was seven. Back then, it was a remote area with a lot of trees and gardens.

There was a huge lake with a guava and mango orchard across from it. We used to get off the school bus, grab a mango, wash it in the lake, and eat it.

Now, there are houses where the lake used to be, and the majority of the orchard is gone. As the tech sector developed in Bengaluru over the decades, there was a lot of urbanization. As a result, there's less greenery on the streets and more high-rise buildings.

Urbanization is good, but it transformed Bengaluru too quickly and too soon — the city's been catching up ever since. It's left some people feeling frustrated about things like traffic, housing costs, and this year's water crisis.

I've witnessed Bengaluru's transformation into a tech hub

Bengaluru used to be a place where retirees wanted to live. It was a quiet place with a relatively moderate climate.

There's a long history of science and tech development in Bengaluru. The Indian Institute of Science and Raman Research Institute is here. We also have a decadeslong history of aerospace research and electronics manufacturing.

In the 80s and 90s, IT companies like Infosys, Wipro, and Texas Instruments moved into Bengaluru. In the mid-2000s, the startup ecosystem grew as it became more accessible and normalized to start a business.

IT created a lot of job opportunities, just like it did in Silicon Valley. Today, there's a large startup ecosystem and community of venture capitalists. It's probably the best place to launch a startup in India, which means more people have come to the city, creating a need for more space, public transport, and residences.

It also created a lot of urbanization, which gave people more access to resources. We had a larger airport, restaurants with various cuisines coming into the city, and affordable internet access due to more competition between companies.

Because of the startup ecosystem, we get new services and products faster than other Indian cities. I've benefited positively from urban development in these ways.

There are benefits and drawbacks to Bengaluru's transformation

I'm employed in the IT sector. I've been working at Oracle for the past 27 years, and my current role is solutions architect.

People in Bengaluru have undoubtedly benefited from the job opportunities created by the tech boom, but I think local people are split on the effects of urbanization.

It's common to see negative comments about Bengaluru on social media or people complaining to their friends. I think the three biggest issues they raise are the water crisis, housing prices, and traffic.

Traffic is definitely an issue. Public transport isn't sufficient as it stands. Before the pandemic, I'd take the metro to work four days a week because it made me less angry than driving in traffic.

Residential pricing has increased from what it used to be, but so have housing prices in other cities. I'm living in a house that belonged to my parents, so I don't have to pay rent, and this isn't an issue for me.

Bengaluru has had long-standing issues with water. There are too many people and a limited water supply due to a decreasing number of lakes. Earlier this year, there was a very bad water crisis because it got very hot and there was little rain.

People were consciously trying to conserve water, and the government brought in water tankers for people to get water at a price. I've never struggled with water supply in the past: I have access to a well, rainwater harvesting, and facilities to store water from the public supply. But this year, I noticed the public water supply was running out more frequently, so even I had to buy water a few times. It was a bad feeling which made me see how the city was changing.

Things have definitely improved since the summer, and hopefully, people will be more prepared for next summer.

I support carpooling, using public transport, and rainwater harvesting to address infrastructure issues in Bengaluru. We should also plant trees for the next generation. Tree roots can help absorb rainwater when there's flooding, so it's important to conserve every tree.

Creating other prominent tech hubs like Bengaluru is a good solution, but progress has been slow

Despite the concerns people have, I don't think people are leaving Bengaluru.

Jobs are a big reason why. There are opportunities in tech and other industries serving that community, such as schools, public transport, and cooking.

There are problems, but they're probably not as bad as social media portrays them to be. I'm frustrated by the traffic and water crisis, but I'll probably continue to live in Bengaluru.

For many years, people have talked about creating alternate cities to Bengaluru within the state, or cities like Hyderabad or Mumbai replacing it, but I feel progress on this has been small.

The solution probably lies in creating other cities like Bengaluru that can distribute the load across various places, but even in other countries, this doesn't happen. One or two cities always take most of the burden.

There are cities near Bengaluru, like Mysore and Mangalore, that could be developed and house more tech parks, but people have to be willing to move there. I think companies have to move first so that good infrastructure, like schools and jobs, can develop, incentivizing people to move. Why not create more Bengaluru's across the country?

It's going to take a long while for anything to change, so I still think Bengaluru will continue to be "India's Silicon Valley."

It would be like trying to move the capital city.

A whole ecosystem would need to be shifted, and that's not going to be easy.

Want to share your story? Email [email protected]

• Tiya Gordon worked in design before she pivoted to cofounded It's Electric, a climate tech startup.
• Gordon launched the company in 2022 after struggling to find an accessible EV charger in Brooklyn.
• She shared how they raised $11 million in grants and investment from prominent investors like Uber.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Tiya Gordon, 45, the founder of electric charging startup It's Electric. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a New Yorker and a staunch believer in public transportation. For most of my life, I never owned a car.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, all the forms of public transportation I used daily were unsafe.

I had to think about how I could transport my then-five-year-old and how I would reach family members if something terrible happened.

I considered getting a car for the first time. I made this list: It was written in Sharpie on a piece of grid paper, and it said, "New?" "Used?" "EV???" However, I had to immediately eliminate electric vehicles from my potential options because, in 2020, there was no accessible place to charge them in Brooklyn.

I realized there was a lack of infrastructure to transition to EV cars and that was the seed idea for my company.

Although my career was in design, I pivoted and cofounded a climate tech startup called It's Electric in 2022. We're focused on scaling electric vehicle charging in densely populated cities.

We're now a company of 10 people and we've received $11.8 million in funding and grants. Uber invested in our seed round. My best advice is to find simple solutions to big pain points and prove your work with receipts.

We found a simple solution for electric charging

When we started building It's Electric in 2021, my cofounder and I conducted research to determine what was preventing EV chargers from being deployed quickly and at scale in US cities.

In a city like London, there are a lot of lampposts that have been retrofitted into curbside chargers because they can handle 220 to 240 volts of electricity. In the US, the power feeds in our lamposts are typically much lower, at 110 volts.

If we wanted to have lamppost chargers, we'd need to upgrade the utility main and corresponding interconnection agreement, load analysis, transformer, submeter, and customer connection box.

We discovered that one asset in cities, that has plenty of power ready to go, is buildings, which we can use to power public chargers.

If a library, home, or commercial building agrees to power a public charger, we share revenue with that building to give them passive income as an incentive. It's a very simple idea. We say it's not deep tech, it's shallow tech.

Running a pilot helped get investors on board

Our business started with just us two founders, but after we raised a $2.2 million pre-seed round in May 2023, we hired our first two employees.

During our pre-seed stage, multiple investors told me that our idea was so simple that it must not work, or surely someone else was already doing it. We had to prove that a simple solution could be effective.

One way we did that was by getting our pilot off the ground in 2023.

We secured our partnership with Hyundai after winning their EV Open Innovation Challenge. Winners were selected based on their potential to expand market access to electric vehicles.

We knew we needed to test in the real world and in a notoriously hard-to-open city. So we approached the New York City Economic Development Corporation to ask if we could pilot our technology on their buildings in the Brooklyn Army Terminal. After much work, this became our first pilot and was crucial to landing investment.

Our work on this pilot was so successful that EDC launched a brand new program based on our pilot.

Have receipts and discuss your wins

Our pilot demonstrated that our solution offsets emissions, and we could collect data from the demo to show it was scalable, low-cost, and quick to install.

The pilot meant I could provide investors with proven results. We'd gone beyond what investors expected of us, which placated their queries and also attracted investors we hadn't yet spoken to.

Having a small-scale demonstration of your solution is more helpful in pitching to a large corporation than trying to sell a concept. It meant we were able to demonstrate a Series A level of progress at a pre-seed level.

So many investors said, "If it is so simple and such a good idea, then why aren't others already doing it?" My answer was, "Because no one else is doing it, we are the first." My advice to founders is to be tenacious but make sure you have the receipts.

We talked about our wins, such as prize nominations and media acknowledgments, to show investors that, by the jury of peers, our solution is winning.

Uber invested in our seed round

In July 2024, we closed our $6.5 million seed round, which was co-led by a Nordic fund, Failup Ventures, and Uber. Now, we're a team of 10.

Our involvement with Uber began when we met representatives from the company at a conference. Everyone thinks of companies like Uber as big corporate giants, but we started our partnership with them by chance. It wasn't a sales or business meeting; it was just two optimistic people working in transportation who had a great conversation.

A big challenge to Uber's zero-emissions goal is that Uber drivers live in cities and don't have garages, so it's really hard to charge electric vehicles. We provided a cheap, fast solution for urban drivers to charge electric cars. Uber needed more drivers to adopt electric cars to reach its goals, and we pitched ourselves as that stepping stone. A series of productive conversations helped us build this partnership.

Having Uber support our solution has been a great validation for our startup. It's also meant we've had access to smart people on their team to understand different policies and how we can help meet city goals.

My advice for founders who want to develop relationships with established companies is to try to solve problems for other people. Don't say you want a partnership because of what it can do for your startup, but put yourself out there as the problem-solver for a larger corporation. You want to find their pain point and point out that there isn't a solution that's already in the market.

• Pushkar Singh is an L6 engineer at Google. He's been in the ads AI space since 2017.
• Some engineers in the team he manages have Ph.D.s, though Singh doesn't have one himself.
• One way he stays competitive in his field is by volunteering to review research papers.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Pushkar Singh, a 31-year-old Google engineering lead in California, about breaking into and staying competitive in the AI field. Singh's employment and salary have been verified with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Google is a very big company that solves all kinds of problems. I've found my niche here.

I joined in 2015 as an L3 engineer straight out of college. I started in Google Docs but moved to the ads AI space in 2017. I liked the high impact and high stakes in ads; if you make a mistake, you can cost companies and advertisers millions of dollars.

I worked my way up the ranks to become an L6, known as a staff software engineer, with a base salary of $252,000. With my bonus and stock grants, I'll receive over $519,000 in total compensation by the end of 2024. I'm an engineering lead on a team powering two of Google's big ad products. Part of my job is working on AI models that power core features behind these products.

I lead a team of 13 other engineers, many of whom have doctorates, even though I don't have one myself. In my experience, it's more common to have a master's or Ph.D. than just a bachelor's in the AI and machine learning field.

Here's how I got an AI job at Google without a Ph.D. and how I stay up-to-date in this rapidly developing industry.

I thought about getting a Ph.D. but was offered a job at Google before I got the chance to

I grew up in India, and for my bachelor's, I studied computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. I'd always been interested in computers, so it felt natural to me to pursue this for my career.

Two years into my degree, I asked more senior peers at my university how I could make the most of my summer break. They suggested I find a research internship.

I cold-emailed 30 to 40 professors I wanted to work with, and finally, one academic at a university in Japan let me work on their research project. This got me into the AI and machine learning world and the research mindset. The following summer, I did a different internship, also in machine learning. I wanted to go into machine learning because it was a rapidly developing field being used to solve hard problems like spam reduction.

With my research experience and high college grades, a Ph.D. felt like a natural future step for me. However, I became interested in competitive coding as a hobby during my degree too, and I became quite good at it.

I participated in a coding competition organized by Google. The company noticed me and asked me to interview with them. It led to a job offer. My interviewer even offered me a job on his team because he really liked me.

Instead of going on to do a Ph.D. after graduating in 2015, I started working for Google in Bengaluru that year.

Now, I manage a team of other engineers, some of whom have Ph.D.s

My first Google manager, who interviewed me, briefly mentioned he liked my research internships and strong competitive coding background. He put me on a team working on an AI model for auto-capitalization in Google Docs. I also worked on improving the spellcheck.

In 2017, after being promoted to an L4 engineer, I requested a move to the US with the company. Silicon Valley and computer science are synonymous, so working there was a dream for me.

Since the move, I've been working on developing keyword-less ad technology. I built the first models for keyword-less targeting in PMax, and for my work, I received a Google Ads Tech Impact award. I also launched the final URL expansion and received another company award.

Since moving to America, I've received two promotions and am now an engineering lead for a team of 13. I'm responsible for choosing which projects my team works on to have a positive impact and help them progress in their careers.

Several people on my team have a master's, and multiple also have Ph.D.s. You can be a Google engineer without a master's or Ph.D., but from what I've seen, most people in the AI and machine learning field have these qualifications, showing how competitive the field is.

My first manager at Google gave me AI work without these qualifications, and while I don't know exactly why, I think having top grades in my bachelor's and two research internships helped.

You can thrive and get promoted in AI without these qualifications because the field is changing rapidly. Your degree can give you a headstart, but to stay relevant, you need to regularly upskill. Without that, even a Ph.D. recipient can become irrelevant.

I make active efforts to stay competitive in my field

A couple of methods have particularly helped me stay up-to-date in my industry.

The first is being part of a research paper reading group. Every two weeks, my team and I, and some other folks outside the team, meet. One person is tasked with reading a research paper in two weeks. At the meeting, they'll present the paper and talk about its new findings. The group critiques the paper and brainstorms whether we can use the research in our work.

I've found this is an efficient way to keep the team up-to-date. There are so many research papers out there, but this is a collective effort.

The second thing is volunteering to review research papers. When new papers are developed, research conferences need people to volunteer their expertise and assess how novel they are. This means I can read papers before they're published and also give back to the research community.

I've been doing these two things for years. They've helped me develop my expertise, and I think they've played a part in helping me get promoted at Google because people recognize I'm very dedicated.

Job opportunities in AI are exploding. If you're someone who's excited about new things and problem-solving, then I think it's a good field to be in.

Do you have a career story you want to share? Email [email protected]

• Aissatou Guisse, who moved to the US as a child, sends $250 to relatives in Senegal each month.
• In the past, she's felt guilty about saying no to additional requests for monetary support.
• After she had a child of her own, Guisse decided to set boundaries around her financial giving.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Aissatou Guisse, a 31-year-old Microsoft employee in Atlanta about the pressure to send money home to relatives in Senegal. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up seeing my parents sending money back home to our relatives.

We're from Senegal, but we moved to the US when I was eight years old. My dad got a green card in the lottery and moved to America in 2000. Once he got here, he saw that educational opportunities were better, so he decided to bring the rest of us along. Our family, including my mom and siblings, moved to the US a year later.

Once we'd moved abroad, family members in Senegal expected my parents to help out financially if needed. I wasn't aware of the details at the time, but I think my parents contributed toward things like medical bills and plane tickets for other relatives.

I was raised in Ohio and went to university there before getting a tech job. In 2019, I moved to Atlanta, and in 2020, I got a job at Microsoft, where I now work in compliance and security.

It wasn't until I started working that the responsibility of sending remittances became more prominent in my life.

Over the years, I've found that pressure and not feeling able to say no to requests for cash has made it hard for me to save and budget. After I had a child of my own, I decided to set boundaries around how much money I send to relatives back home.

I send $250 a month to my family in Senegal in addition to one-off payments

I started financially supporting relatives around 2015. My mom was sending money to my grandma in Senegal every month, even though she had stopped working. When I started working, I had a conversation with my mom, and we decided I'd take that duty off her hands. My company subsidized my housing and travel costs, so I didn't have to change much about my spending at the time.

My grandma has since passed, but I still send roughly $250 a month to that household. I have an aunt, uncle, and some cousins living there. My aunt and uncle don't work. She's older, and he has eyesight issues. They use the money I send to buy groceries.

I also make one-off payments when needs arise, like when someone is sick and needs a prescription or when someone's getting married.

In 2023, 10% of Senegal's GDP came from remittances sent from the diaspora. There are money transfer agencies on every corner in Sengalese neighhorhoods. All the families I know in Senegal with relatives abroad have received money from those family members at some point.

The cost of living has gone up in Senegal, and job opportunities are few and far between.

I have several friends in the US from Senegal who send money home monthly. One friend finances her brother's education.

The remittances I've sent have sometimes been linked to cultural pressure

Other people don't always understand how remittances factor into my life.

I once talked to a financial advisor about my expenses. I showed him my Excel sheet, which included payments to relatives back home. He told me with my paycheck, I should be able to max out my Roth IRA and created a plan involved saying no to supporting my parents. It's hard to work with advisors when their logic goes against the cultural challenges you're facing.

Another time, I was balancing my Excel budget when my Brazilian friend peeked over my shoulder and asked about the things I paid for. When I explained, he said it was stupid.

I know people in other cultures send money back home, but Senegalese culture is particularly focused on not getting other people's hopes down. I've been able to build the regular monthly payments into my budget, but one-off requests from family members have made me feel guilty about saying no.

It's meant I've lacked disposable income, not met savings goals, and can't properly budget.

Even now, when I want to take a vacation, a voice in the back of my mind says I could use that money to help someone.

I eventually decided I needed to put my own needs first

Having a child of my own inspired me to make some changes.

My daughter is going to be two soon. Raising a child comes with additional expenses, and I started thinking about the future and building wealth in the US.

The $250 I send to relatives in Senegal monthly is about 3% of my monthly salary, so it's not a significant portion, but it becomes a bigger concern when I factor in other expenses now that I no longer work for a company that subsidizes some costs and have a child.

I decided I needed to be a bit selfish, not just for me but for my family, by setting realistic boundaries around what I could give to relatives in Senegal.

I now try to stick to a budget as best I can. My siblings and I also opened a bank account and we each throw $20 in there a month. If someone calls from back home, we can send them money from that account, so no one feels the burden alone.

I still send the monthly money to my grandma's household, but for other things, I do a critical case-by-case analysis of whether the payment is necessary. I once said no to a relative who asked for a $2,500 loan. I want to set the expectation that I don't want to be in the business of just giving out money because I have other responsibilities to take care of. But it isn't easy to set boundaries while maintaining friendly familial ties.

My advice for others in my position, with relatives abroad and goals they want to accomplish, is to not feel guilty for putting yourself or your family first.

Do you have a personal story about financially supporting or depending on family members? Email [email protected]