When Chess, Meditation and Engineering Intersect: An Interview With Sowmya Hariharan

Sowmya Hariharan is a senior software engineer at Google. She is a multi-passionate creative with varied interests.

As a teenager who loved chess, she has won many championships, including a couple of Asian medals. She is also a certified coach for founders, executives, and other passionately creative people like her. As someone who is trained in the field of mastering energy, she strongly believes that we as humans are capable of so much more than we have dared ourselves to imagine.

We asked Sowmya about her career in software development and experience in companies such as Google and Apple and how hobbies help you grow professionally.

How did you start your engineering career?

I used to play chess as a teenager. It made me fall in love with the process of solving problems and thinking strategically to solve puzzles. While studying Electrical and Electronics Engineering as an undergrad, I quickly realized that computer science is my passion and took as many computer science-related courses as possible, including some online Stanford courses.

Soon after my graduation, I did my Masters in Computer Engineering and taught myself how to build iOS apps. I ended up doing three internships to get hands-on, real-life experience shipping products that made an impact.

During this time, I also participated in a lot of hackathons, got a couple of scholarships, and got invited for interviews at Apple, Google, Meta (Facebook at that time), etc. Apple was at the top of my list at that time, so when I got an offer from Apple, it worked out great for me.

What trends in software do you follow? What in the industry are you most interested in today?

It’s hard to ignore the AI wave. Now that the ‘artificial intelligence genie’ is out, I am interested in figuring out how to leverage the power of to further human performance.

We have already started to see some AI-based tools that are focused on helping people deeply reflect on their day-to-day lives, figuring out thinking and behavioral patterns, and using those insights to fill the gaps between where one is and where one wants to go. Such journaling apps and coaching apps will play a significant role in enhancing our performance in the coming years.

The intersection of AI and education is another plane of interest for me. Leveraging AI to create adaptive lesson plans to optimize for personalized learning as opposed to the general cookie-cutter learning model that is followed in most, but not all, schools is a big area.

Personalized education, which focuses on the particular learning style and personal interests of each learner, is easier to implement now that we can leverage the power of AI. AI can also be used to come up with well-crafted challenges that have the optimum challenge-skill ratio and are inductive for getting into “flow”. Taking education to the next level and focusing on peak performance backed by the computing power of AI excites me. As a flow state coach for high achievers, using these tools to help folks get into their flow-passion cycle is an area of passion for me.

Tell us about your hobbies outside of technology. How do they help you in your work?

When I was young, I was interested in pretty much everything under the Sun. As a kid, I was trying to be a part of every sports team in my school. I was interested in playing basketball, table tennis, and relay races. I was also very interested in being a part of the music clubs, and I took a lot of classes on piano, classical dancing, and many other things.

One day, I fractured my arm during a practice basketball game before a regional match. That’s when my parents decided to hire a chess coach. My instantaneous love for chess and wanting to get better at it made me forget about all my other interests and devote myself to the mastery of chess, going so far as to become a professional player and even winning many state and national champion titles in India as well as an Asian team gold medal and silver medal.

That love for learning still drives me in how I do my work, whether it is work I am doing professionally or work that I am doing on a volunteer basis. When learning becomes fun, pursuing excellence becomes fun, too.

In addition, for more than 13 years now, I have had a strong meditative and energy practice. My passion for it has only been deepening with each passing year. These practices also help me dive deep into neuroscience, understand how the subconscious mind works, and leverage that understanding for an optimal life of fulfillment and high performance.

At Google, I have had instances when an entire app’s design will take shape in a meditative session, and all I had to do was to translate what I saw into a mock frame and then translate that into a fully fleshed-out app. I cherish both the super analytical left brain and the wonderfully intuitive right brain that loves exploring the mystical dimensions of life. I personally appreciate all aspects of being human.

Tell us about the most significant projects you’ve worked on

As an accessibility engineering leader at Google in general and a Payments Accessibility Tech Lead in particular working on delivering an accessible framework, conducting training and workshops for Google engineers, and designing educational courses for engineers, product managers, and quality assurance engineers so that everyone involved had a good understanding of the accessibility needs of Google’s vast, diverse user base has been one of the most significant projects I have worked on.

At Apple, I got the opportunity to manage workshops like "iOS and macOS App Extensions" for the students and the upcoming engineering community. Via those workshops, I got the chance to help aspiring engineers learn about good software engineering practices with both Objective-C and Swift, the intricacies of macOS and iOS app architectures, and great debugging thinking models.

At Big Nerd Ranch, I got to be part of the team that worked on the exercises and content flow for the second edition of the “Objective-C Programming” book. It was one of my first projects where I got to intimately understand a programming language and then use that in an immediate project where I got to ship impactful, real-world projects.

It’s those projects where there is an element of teaching and purposeful creation that are still close to my heart long after the projects are completed.

What legacy do you hope to leave in both the tech industry and beyond?

I like the idea of combining the powers of the coaching and the tech industries to help people master their energy. In the age of AI, it’s forever more important to become energetic powerhouses where we are in tune with our creative impulses and deeper needs and continue the process of technological advancement with a sense of social responsibility.

My vision is to create a platform that empowers people to fully realize their strengths and learn how to engage them both in their day-to-day lives and also in achieving their larger goals.

I have used my ability to consistently get into the creative flow state to achieve some major milestones in my life.

Utilizing the surge in creativity helped me win chess championships, then later get my dream job at Apple and then at Google, and every other time, I had to start from the beginner’s line. I am excited about leveraging that strength and creating frameworks that teach people how to tap into the creative flow to be better founders, creators, employees, CEOs, and leaders overall.

There is a lot of magic in combining the strengths of the left brain and the right brain. When the power of the analytical brain backs the mystical gifts and when we learn how to get them to co-creatively work, there are a lot more possibilities that we start to see about our future. Those possibilities excite me the most.

Advise young women who are starting in this field

Mentors who care about fast-tracking your learning path and peers who are as passionate about the areas as you are will be your advantage for pursuing the things you love. Do not leave this to chance. Make sure to find mentors on the topics you are interested in and learn to use the power of co-creative collaboration. Two or more brilliant minds working on a challenge with a shared end goal and shared risks will always produce far superior products than anyone could on their own.

Always try to be curious about the world you already know and the one you have yet to explore. The path of creative fulfillment is the path where you constantly take on challenging projects that excite you and get you out of bed every morning.

So, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of learning to optimize for that early on. This might take time, so there is no need to rush to reach the end state where an intelligent mind has met its passion. Knowing which things take time and learning to be patient with the process will take you a long way. Learning how to play to your strengths while being aware of your weaknesses and pulling in resources when you need to will make this process more fun.