Technical Building Blocks: A Technology Reference for Real-world Product Development

This book offers comprehensive coverage of the various technologies and techniques used to build technical products. You will learn how technical product development is collaboratively done across multiple technical teams, primarily those in software engineering, data engineering, and AI/ML engineering. You will also be introduced to the technologies these teams use to develop features and products. 

Many roles in the organization work alongside these technical product development teams and act as liaisons between them, the stakeholders, the customers, and the leadership team. The people in these roles must understand technical aspects ranging from system design to artificial intelligence, and be able to engage in technical discussions with the engineering teams to determine the pros, cons, and risks associated with the development of a technology product or feature.

Technical Building Blocks will help you master these technical skills. The book has just the right level of technical details to neither overwhelm with unnecessary technical depth, nor be superficial.

From concepts to code snippets, authors Gaurav Sagar and Vitalii Syrovatskyi cover it all to give you an understanding of the engineer's mind and their work. Special emphasis on figures and charts will help you grasp complex ideas more quickly. After reading this book, you’ll be able to effectively communicate with engineering teams, provide valuable inputs in the system design review meetings of upcoming features and products, synthesize and simplify technical updates for cross-functional teams and stakeholders, and pass those dreaded technical interviews at your dream companies.

What You Will Learn

• Intrinsic details of the teams and techniques used for product development 
• Concepts of cloud computing and its deployment models
• System design fundamentals required to architect features and products   
• Evolution of data pipelines and data storage solutions to support big data
• ML and deep learning algorithms to build intelligence into products
• Securing products through identity and access management using cryptography
• Role and working of blockchains, smart contracts, NFTs, and dApps in Web3  

Who This Book is For

Professionals in roles who work with software engineering teams and want to build their technical muscle, such as product managers, program managers, business analysts, project managers and product owners. Also useful for those preparing to crack the technical interview for these roles.

Gaurav Sagar is a director of product management at Salesforce, Inc. and has done product management at Indeed, Amazon Web Services, and Amazon payments. He has over 11 years of experience in building both consumer and enterprise products and has deep industry knowledge of cloud computing, online advertising, ecommerce, and fintech. He has multiple patents and speaks at conferences. He is also an avid programmer and was a data scientist prior to his transition in product management. He holds a M.S. in Business Analytics and a B.S. in Computer Science. In his off hours, he loves to hike and go on short road trips, besides programming for his hobby projects. 

Vitalii Syrovatskyi is an engineering manager at Google. Previously, he was the software development manager at Amazon where he led the development of products and features for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon payment products. He has over 15 years of experience in developing technical products, managing, and building engineering teams in multiple industries, namely, search advertising, cloud computing, capital management, online payments, and computer networking. He is founder of a tech company and has firsthand experience in leading cross-functional teams and managing all end-to-end aspects of the business. He has a M.S. and a B.S. in Mathematics, and a M.S. and a B.S. in Economics. Outside of work, he enjoys exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest.