{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Fit Happens: Why CEOs and Leaders Succeed or Fail","title":"Why Krishna Iyer Left Big Tech for a 170-Year-Old Railroad","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2767,"description":"He spent two decades at the frontier of tech. Then he chose a 177-year-old railroad instead.\nIn this episode, I talk with Krishna Iyer, head of software engineering at BNSF, a Berkshire Hathaway company. Krishna spent years building enterprise software at Microsoft, scaling consumer products at Amazon's Kindle, and working at the edge of generative AI at AWS, before deciding the biggest opportunity wasn't in another tech company. It was in applying AI to a foundational industry the world can't live without: freight rail. We talk about how he thinks about career decisions in decades, not years, why intellectual humility matters more than expertise right now, and what parenting has taught him about growth. This conversation covers executive search themes around fit, timing, and how leaders evaluate the right career move, even when it looks like a detour to everyone else.\nKey Takeaways:\n- Why Krishna compares AI's impact to the arrival of electricity\n- The \"power plant vs. transmission lines vs. appliances\" framework for thinking about where to build in AI\n- Why freight rail is one of the most consequential, least understood industries in the country\n- How to know when it's time to stop iterating and pick a direction\n- The \"2,000 coins\" analogy for thinking about time and weekly output\n- Why \"just delegate\" is bad leadership advice, and what situational leadership looks like instead\n- The \"heart, tree, star\" exercise for understanding what actually motivates someone\n- How three 90-minute blocks a day can change your output\n- Why intellectual humility is now a \"need to have,\" not a \"nice to have\"\nConnect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbaumgarten/\nEmail the show here: jason@fithappens.fm\n00:00 Introduction to Fit Happens\n00:38 The Fit Happens Thought Experiment\n01:30 Krishna's Path From India to Microsoft\n03:16 Moving to Amazon and Kindle\n04:03 Why AI Is Like Electricity\n05:16 Power Plants, Transmission Lines, Appliances\n05:50 Choosing BNSF and Berkshire...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/0AtGMO0HN5UCZe2_wf8pfE5Ad7xGwtuc4BOCVD_dVlA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yNTdl/MDY2MDQyMDAzMmFk/MWIzNjMwMzMwZjFh/NTRmMS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}