Nandan Amladi’s  background is quite similar to mine. He did his bachelor’s in electrical engineering and pursued a masters in computer engineering. After completing his masters, he worked in the software field for a few years before going on to pursue his MBA. What fascinated me most about Amladi was his versatile education graph. Switching from engineering to business is a difficult transition but also very worthwhile in the end. I was very interested in knowing what pushed him to get an MBA whether it was his boredom of working in the technical field or his desire to become a leader in his field. During my dinner conversation with him, I found him to be a very ambitious man who is passionate about pushing the boundaries in digital technology.

Even though Amladi is the vice president of the software sector in Deutsche Bank, his engineering knowledge is still intact. I was impressed by the length at which he spoke about the integration of computer  hardware and software in the banking industry and provided us with his outlook on the growth of cloud computing in the software sector. Amladi also stated that he and his company keep a track of startup companies that are coming into the public space in order to predict the outcomes of these businesses. His awareness of the startup and tech culture around him suggested that he was a man who was very much involved with the progress of software technology in the coming years. By advising us to dive into startup culture right after  graduation, he showed us the value of starting one’s own business  instead of heading straight to industry. He told us from his experience that switching to the business field was the best decision he made because he became less constricted by the demands of his jobs and more free to explore new opportunities in software. As an electrical and computer engineering major, I was inspired by the way in which Mr. Amladi carried his work throughout the years; moreover, I was inspired to see that he hadn’t lost touch with his engineering roots.

There were two main themes throughout the dinner conversation with Nandan Amladi, Vice President of US Equity Research on Cloud Computing and Software at Deutche Bank. The first was the incredible speed at which computing is changing and the repercussions of that evolution within the tech and finance industry. The second was that for students who are interested in careers in business, having some degree of technical literacy is essential.

Mr. Amladi explained the factors he examines when evaluating a software company and deciding whether to recommend buying stock in the company or not. Although the criteria themselves are fundamental business concepts such as cash flow, product differentiation, etc., there has been significant change in the technology itself and the business models by which technology companies operate. For example, cloud companies such as Oracle, Amazon (A.W.S), and Microsoft (Azure) have changed what layers of the stack they control from the hardware at the bottom to the software on top.

Presently, to understand the complex business models one must also understand the technology offerings, how they operate, and how they fit together. In the second main theme of the discussion, Mr. Amladi stressed the importance of having technical literacy. He himself switched from the purely technical side to the business side of things by getting an M.B.A. but emphasized that several of his colleagues at Deutche bank have formal degrees in business and learned the technology aspects on the job. To illustrate the interconnectedness of technology and business, we talked about an anecdote in which a start-up founder needed to hire a CTO but didn’t know what questions to ask in the interview to determine whether the candidate was qualified.

What was most interesting to me was the strong parallels between Mr. Amladi’s perspective and Michael Belkin’s, a Rose House guest two weeks ago. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Mr. Belkin got an undergraduate degree in business and then an MBA but as he started his technology start-up, he realized that he also needed technical skills and couldn’t just rely on others to execute his vision. He took programming classes and ended up developing a passion for computer science. So while Mr. Amladi and Mr. Belkin have had quite different career paths, their similar advice attests to the validity of each other’s perspective on today’s interweaving technology and business climate.