First Principles
Suresh Teckchandani on leading change, AI anxiety, and product versus engineering
Suresh Teckchandani, Vice President of Product and Engineering, Ancestry
Suresh on LinkedInFirst Principles is a conversation series where I ask technology leaders the questions that usually go unasked: how their teams actually behave, what they can't see, and what they've learned the hard way.
In this conversation, Suresh and I talked about how a leader guides people through big change, what's really behind resistance to AI, what product and engineering disagree about, and what happens to an integration after the person who built it leaves.
Key moments
1. Leading people through big change
Every change starts with clarity: where the team is today, and where it needs to end up. Then comes the case for change: what's in it for the business, for customers, and most importantly for employees. A leader can't be in every room, so the most important job is making the direction, the reasons, and the expected behaviors clear enough that the team can drive the change themselves.
“Conversations are going to happen with or without you.”
— Suresh Teckchandani 2. When a team resists AI
He has seen the same reaction through every wave of technology, from the internet to mobile, cloud, and now AI: people wonder what will happen to their job. A leader's work is to understand what is driving that anxiety and lay out a clear path. The change itself can't be controlled, but the response can, and choosing to lead it creates more options. Most companies born before AI are still working out how to become AI-first.
“We don't get to choose what change is coming to the industry.”
— Suresh Teckchandani 3. When product and engineering disagree
He treats product and engineering as one team working from the same roadmap. When they disagree, it is usually about priority: engineering wants to pay down technical debt, while product wants customer-facing features. He starts from common ground, delivering value to customers, has each side spell out what it needs, and then sequences the work creatively, such as a customer-facing phase first and the technical initiative the following quarter.
“That's a good conflict to have.”
— Suresh Teckchandani 4. Who owns an integration after people leave
People do good work and then move on, and what they leave behind varies: sometimes good documentation, sometimes only the code itself. His answer is to hire people who can read and understand the code, and to give them time to ramp up, because everything still needs maintenance and enhancement.
“Sometimes there's just raw code.”
— Suresh Teckchandani 5. The data he wishes he had
He would most like to see AI adoption across the company: how people in every role think about and use AI in their daily work, and how much time it saves them, so he can see how the transformation is going and where to focus.
“I think that will be a really important metric for the company.”
— Suresh Teckchandani