A seven-year career break did not stop Gayathri Vaidyanathan from reaching the top

In 2010, Gayathri Vaidyanathan took a break from her career, one that extended to seven years.

She was at an interesting point in her profession, with over 12 years of experience, 10 of them in Lucent, with cutting-edge projects in an industry that was seeing exciting times.

Such a break would seem like a death knell to others, especially in a rapidly evolving sector like information technology (IT).

But Vaidyanathan bounced back, and within four years, moved to a leadership role as Director of Software Engineering at Lowe’s India.

“After my break, I had to restart my career as an intern at Target. The office was in Bengaluru, and I would travel during the weekends to be with my family in Hyderabad. I must admit that there were times when I felt whether it was worth it or whether I should give it all up and be happy in the comfort of my home,” she tells HerStory.

Doing something purposeful

Despite some of the “dark” days when she would be plagued by self-doubt, Vaidyanathan persisted. She understood and acknowledged that being a homemaker was a super demanding job, but she wanted to be authentic to herself and do something purposeful.

“This meant I engaged intellectually and was able to bring in some value proposition apart from what I do at home, for my family. It was important to do justice to my capabilities, what I trained and built my skill sets for, apart from being financially independent. Family will of course support you in the blink of an eye,” she says.

“I think it’s important that everyone identifies what makes them happy, because you get one life, and there should be no regrets. I wanted to get back to an industry where some part of me feels fulfilled,” she adds.

During her seven-year break, she was not completely cut off from technology. Vaidyanathan took up tech blogging as a freelancer and began writing about emerging technologies, which kept her abreast of what was happening in the field. She also became a certified Scrum Master, the agile methodology that was picking up. She helped school and college students with programming as well.

When she left her job at Lucent, she was a technical specialist, and with Target, she moved to a different domain, retail. While there were synergies, she admits there was a lot of learning, relearning, and unlearning to do. She believes starting as an intern accelerated her career progression.

Right from the beginning, Vaidyanathan’s career has been one of constant evolution in learning. She became the first engineer in her family after completing BE in Electronics and Communication from the College of Engineering, Guindy, in Tamil Nadu in 1998. She also has an MS in Telecommunications and Software Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

She began her career in DE Shaw India Software and moved to HCL Technologies before her long stint at Lucent.

Societal and environmental challenges

Vaidyanathan was the only other woman engineer in her first job and says the initial days of her career were quite challenging. In terms of opportunity, she emphasises there has been little bias so far, but the struggles were part societal, part environmental.

 “It was not easy for women at the time to work for 16-18 hours like they do today if the job demanded it. Access to resources or the internet was not so common. Even having internet access at the office was huge. And staying for longer hours was the only way you could have access to these,” she says.

While at Lucent, she was part of the Bell Labs’ India Product Realisation Centre in Hyderabad, doing cutting-edge work in telecom.

“We were working on building automation frameworks, and I was part of the radio access network management group and the CDMA development group, with a lot of focus on research and development. It was so good to be with people in their 50s and 60s still so passionate about research,” she recalls.

Vaidyanathan joined Lowe’s India in 2020 and is currently the Director of Software Engineering. She heads the Sourcing (Customer Promise) Engineering division, which is responsible for ensuring the brand’s fulfilment promise to customers is met. This involves tracking products’ availability across every channel, for any given customer based on a zip code, tentative duration of fulfillment, and the most optimised location to fulfill the order from.

Champion your cause

While many women are entering the tech industry, there are not many that rise to leadership roles. This, Vaidyanathan feels, can be attributed to life events where women still are the primary caregivers for children or the elderly.

“But when life events happen, there is also the question of prioritisation and time management. Sometimes, you don’t have to choose one over the other, but you could learn to prioritise. There will be days when work takes precedence, and on others, when family is important. Women should be able to make these choices without feeling guilty and be able to advocate for what they want,” she says.

“Many times, opportunities are lost because one doesn’t want to ask for help. Also, you shouldn’t be considered vulnerable because you are asking for help,” she adds.

Vaidyanathan feels women need to take up opportunities and not fear failure. Also, networking with a diverse set of people and peers brings new perspectives and learnings on how to tackle challenges in life and career.

In retrospect and from personal experience, she also believes in the importance of returnships.

“At Lowe’s India, we have a Do-It-Herself program, our flagship women’s internship program for those who want to restart their tech careers. Some programs help women come back to work after their maternity leave. There are targeted training programs for women leaders, and the company spends a great amount of time, resources, and effort to ensure that it's a diverse and inclusive environment,” she elaborates.

Vaidyanathan also mentors people with their engineering careers, and regularly interacts with them on how important it is to invest in their personal growth.

“I have quite a lot of women engineers in my team, and I always try to nudge them to come out of their shell and be champions of their cause. If you do not advocate for yourself, I don’t think anybody else would,” she says.