Meet Leela, our DevOps Engineer and Mr. Nice Guy

This time in “Meet the Team” series we’d like to welcome Leela, our DevOps Engineer from India. What better candidate could we have this Valentine’s Day season other than Leela, as he is known to be the “loving employee” and one of the most helpful and approachable team members of savedroid!

Leela has over 7+ years of experience in IT and is a great crowd leader and organizer. Not to mention, he also loves running and cycling. He regularly joins marathons with the team and is an active participant of the savedroid weekly running sessions!

Hello, Leela!

• Good morning Leela! Could you please introduce yourself in a few sentences?
• Sure! So, my real name is Leela Krishna Chava but my friends call me just Leela. I’m currently working as a DevOps engineer at savedroid. I have more or less 8 years of experience working in the technological field where I’ve dealt with all topics involved in DevOps.
• So “Leela” — why do your friends call you that, or in other words, why did you choose this as your nickname?
• Good question! I come from India and if you do some research on India, you will notice that there are a lot of traditions and I would say “astrology” involved with the culture. My parents believed in that kind of thing, so based on the time and day I was born, they’ve decided that my name should start with the sound “Lee.” That is how my parents chose my name Leela Krishna.
• That’s very interesting! And would some people think it’s a girl’s name?
• Yes, obviously. A lot of people who are named Leela (pronounced Lila) are indeed girls, so when people see me for the first time, especially in Germany, they get shocked that I’m a man. It happens a lot but once they see me, it’s all sorted out.

• We are super curious — why did you come to Germany in the first place?
• Initially, I was working in India and the company I worked for sent me offsite for a deputation opportunity to work with a company in Germany. I’ve then been here for around 2 years where I worked 1.5 years at Deutsche Post. I really like the culture and the people here in Germany. That is why I’ve decided that I should continue my stay here and look for new possibilities, and that is precisely how I ended up at savedroid.
• That’s awesome! Let’s go back to the topic of your work. You are a DevOps engineer, can you tell us what exactly you do?
• I’d say “DevOps” is a term recently invented, it exists approximately since the last 2 years. There are many definitions on the internet, but how I would define it is that DevOps is an approach: a business-driven or cultural driven approach, some will even call it a philosophy. DevOps is the manner of “how” you develop your software/ product and the life cycle of your product is directly affected by this approach. As the company evolves in a rather fast-paced way, it is necessary to deliver your products faster, in a more stable way, and be more available to the users. And to deliver your product faster, you need a good approach to deliver it to the end user. DevOps is one such business-driven approach where you can deliver your product successfully to the end users.
• And what did you study to be a DevOps engineer? Was it always your dream?
• I would say that I came from a Computer Science background and after that, at some point, I became interested in technology. In India we have software development companies everywhere, so when technology became my interest, I started looking for new opportunities in the software field. That is how I ended up as a DevOps engineer and particularly in the software industry right now.
• Very interesting. We can’t help but mention that besides being an awesome DevOps engineer, you’re also that kind of a person who is always putting others first and is always willing to help. What makes you such a “nice guy”?
• Good question again! I would say that around the time I completed my education, my way of looking at the world has completely changed. I had a very spiritual approach when dealing with people, and there are indeed some definitions that I follow in my life that allow me to do these things in my regular day-to-day life. It is easy to have certain beliefs, sure, but when it comes to actions, we might not follow them. We must believe in it so strongly that we would literally take it to our daily lives and always do it. That said, one of the definitions that has allowed me to be open-minded and be nice to others as much as possible is responsibility. A lot of people understand the definition of responsibility in a different way than I do. I look at responsibility simply as your ability to respond. Whenever something comes into my life, I openly respond to it. I believe in the saying that “Responsibility simply means your ability to respond. Your actions are limited but your response is unlimited.” There are surely many times when we are uncapable of doing an action, but your response is still up to you. That is where you have the freedom to take more responsibility and have the choice to act accordingly.
• Very well said! Because you always want to help others and you are always available when people need help, do you sometimes find that this interferes with your tasks, as we all know that your job requires a lot of focus? How do you balance this?
• When I was working at my previous company, I worked with a team of 21 members where I was assisting them directly. This means that people had to constantly approach me whenever they needed help in their task, and I would constantly be interrupted during my own tasks. What I did was, I simply tried to observe and bring a different mindset to it. As a DevOps engineer, I realized that it’s actually my purpose to support developers and the operations for people to perform at their best and deploy the application, and to make their lives easier. This perspective helped me to balance my tasks.
• It’s a job that really fits your personality then! We also heard you participated in the Frankfurt marathon together with other savedroid employees. How did you prepare for it?
• Running is a hobby that I’ve had for at least past 10 years. I really enjoy it, but I’ve always been a single runner. Joining the relay marathon with savedroid was thus a great experience! The relay marathon is an event where you register as a group and you finish the goal as a group, hence, it requires a lot of coordination and great planning on how you make the transition from one member to other. I really enjoyed doing this together with the entire team, as we also got closer because of this.
• You’ve also done the most recent AMA and presented some learnings from a recent conference to the entire company. Are you used to public speaking and is it something you enjoy doing?
• I would say, yes. I’ve mentioned before, in my journey of the life towards learning, I always think that you should be clear in what you communicate. So, whether it’s personal or professional communication, I’m a guy who tries to make my mind clear by communicating everything in detail. When I look back at my life, I’ve really improved a lot in a public speaking, so I’m looking forward to more and more in the future, giving more talks and sharing my learnings with other people. My association with Toastmasters was also one of the reasons for it.
• So, you like talking in public because you like sharing with other people?
• Absolutely! <smile>
• Great then! Thank you very much Leela.
• Thank you as well!