Terms I learned this year
Yak Shaving Yak shaving refers to a task, that leads you to perform another related task and so on, and so on — all distracting you from your original goal. This is sometimes called “going …
Theme for 2021
I was recently asked this question and made me think what I want What do you want your theme for 2021 to be? Think of one work that you want as your constant theme for …
Setting up raspberry pi & touchscreen display
This is a step by step guide to build a raspberry pi with the touchscreen display. Before we get started, this is the final result of the setup at my work table. Step 1 Install …
Thank you generator
This task/project started with a simple comment from our team. Mindy (who is the EA to Vivek) shared this comment in one of the internal Google documents. It was very unusual to get a coding …
3 weeks of Masterlife
It all started with a simple post while scrolling LinkedIn. This sounded very interesting when I read the post. I liked the five categories of sleep, diet, exercise, mind, and productivity. Also, the fact that …
Leap of faith
Building early-stage products require a big leap of faith on the ideas/products which don’t exist. In fact, I think there is some level of “stupidity” needed to build products at a very early stage. Of …
Three management principles
Three management principles I read while browsing the internet (of course over the past few years). I had this WOW reaction when I read about these for the first time. While it totally makes sense, …
RIP Tony Hseih
Never got the chance to meet him in person, but Delivering Happiness is the one of the best books I’ve ever read. The pure energy and passion about listening to the story from the founder …
WordPress Setup
I set up my first website using WordPress way back around 2007 or 2008. I was amazed by the simplicity to install WordPress. My website was up and running within 2 minutes. Even now, the …
Time Tracking
I’ve always wanted to track how I spend my day working on various projects. More often than not, I’m usually wondering how my day or week just got over while I feel nothing significant was …
X factor
I’m a huge fan of planes, learning about accidents of planes (both Air Crash Investigation and National Geographic Investigation are my favorite). Among all the aircraft crisis, of the best is the landing of the …
Doing things that don’t scale
Startups are all about doing things that don’t scale. In fact, there is an interesting and famous article by Paul Graham on the same topic. http://paulgraham.com/ds.html. If you are an entrepreneur or planning to start …
10 types of people
I’ve enjoyed the above quote when we were in college. It sounded geeky and fun to share the quote from partially technical folks and make them go in awe. It sounds super silly now though. …
Experiments with digital detox
This whole idea triggered from the blog post from Ishani about Digital Detox. Especially I liked the Ted talk What I Learned from 10 Years of Digital Detox. I can’t believe someone could do this …
Sapiens
This book was recommended by Geetanjali & Manas. We decided to read a book every month. This is a massive book. It took me two months to finish this book. This is a totally different …
Resume
Last week, I had to find the resume I created when I was in college. It was funny and weird to look at it after so many years. In fact, since this was something I …
Three principles
Meaning of Life This is something I (and I’m sure many others) have been pondering for many years. We all already know the answer to the question for “The answer to life, meaning, and everything”. …
AWSome Builders
This is my first tech talk after a long while. It was fun to have an open conversation about the various steps we took to scale our infrastructure and reduce the cost. The discussion was …
Happy Teachers Day
Happy Teachers Day to everyone out there. Coming from a family of many many teachers and inspired by dad, I was very sure I’ll become a teacher later. While that surely didn’t happen, I still …
Growth
All good companies (including ours) focus on growth and make sure they allocate a budget for their growth. Without a clear focus on growth, it is impossible to run a successful business. The term “growth …
Atomic Habits
This book was first recommended by Ishani while she was reading this. In fact, I loved this book so very much that I completed this book even before she did. Months later, I recommended this …
Johnny Gaddaar
The main reason for me to write about this movie is a talk I’ve watched by Max Levchin. I’ve uploaded the 3-minute video where he talks about picking the right co-founder. The entire talk is …
Neutral State
Startups are crazy! Things look so positive one minute and everything goes to negative next minute. Same way, things look so fucked up one minute, and then there is the ray of hope. In a …
Advice for a junior software developer
Every year, I work with a smart bunch of college kids during their summer/winter internship at HackerRank. While I’ve learned a lot of things from them, they usually ask for feedback/advice at the end of …