Guest Lecture: Please learn from my mistakes!
Guest Speaker: Sujan Rachuri
Time: Thursday, March 20, 2025. 1:15pm - 2:30pm Central.
Location: FGH 134
Abstract
In this talk, I’ll cover my journey from being a CS student at Vanderbilt to working as a Product Manager at Oracle and building my own AI startup. I’ll break down what a PM does, the pros and cons of the role, and how to get into product management or tech in general. I’ll also share my job recruiting experience—what I wish I did differently, things I wish I knew, and how to navigate the process. Beyond that, I’ll talk about the importance of always learning, building side projects, and staying curious, especially with GenAI. This will be a candid and practical look at the things I’ve learned since graduating, with advice I wish I had as a student.
Outline:
- Introduction
- What do I do as a PM at Oracle?
- What does it mean to be a PM / What does a PM do?
- Pros / Cons of PM
- How to become a PM?
- How did I get into PM?
- Pros / Cons of working in Tech
- Breaking into Tech
- My job recruiting experience
- What I wish I did differently / things I wish I knew going into the process
- Importance of always reading + building + doing side projects
- Get into GenAI!
- Move to the Bay if you're serious about Tech/startups
About Sujan Rachuri
Sujan Rachuri is a Product Manager in Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, specializing in platform product management. He leads the launch of AI agents in Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management, driving initiatives across prototyping, evaluation, observability, and security. He has owned multiple releases, working across UX, development, sales, business development, and solutions engineering to bring AI-driven solutions to enterprise users.
He graduated from Vanderbilt University in May 2024 with a BS in Computer Science. Outside of work, he is building an AI-powered no-code ML model-building platform, which has been recognized as a major player in the LLMOps space and featured in LlamaIndex and Box Developer blogs. Sujan is also a big fan of Mini Bernedoodles and Call of Duty!