It’s almost a month of learning AI and building software along with AI. From understanding prompt engineering, evaluations to implementing RAG and awaiting fine-tuning opportunities, it’s been both exciting and humbling. As a solo developer using Cursor to build projects from scratch, here are my observations about the reality of AI-powered coding. The Trust Balance There’s a constant juggle between …
A trek with Vasudha was long pending, given the number of treks she has done so far. All this while, I’ve been mostly hiking in and around Bangalore. A real trek needed the right time and the 1 week off given by HackerRank ended up the right spot. What made this trek a little crazy was instead of going ahead …
It is hard to imagine a life without Google Maps (I’ve lived that life, though can’t remember how I survived navigation before Google Maps). Yet, the journey of how this product came to life is a story of near-failure, unexpected turns, and innovation. In Never Lost Again, Bill Kilday—former marketing head at Keyhole and a key figure in the Maps …
Found this good list while browsing the internet as the ‘Subtle Rules of Software Engineering’. These kinds of lists float around often, but this one felt especially thoughtful and more practical. Lists like this are both inspiring and… a little maddening. The advice is good. But like most software engineering principles, they occasionally pull in different directions. For instance: “Always …
I got this email from Danish, one of the early engineers at HackerRank. I’m writing this email to you to ask you whether you’d be interested in a “Blog Questions Challenge”. It’s basically a set of questions you’ve to answer in a blog post and it works like a chain. So I’m currently writing the post and then I’ll tag …
As a founder, people often think my life is all about planning, strategy, and business. And yes, a big part of it is. But what surprises people is the simple, everyday things that make me happy—things that don’t really have a “purpose” but bring me joy. For example, I love collecting stationery. New notebooks (muji tops the list, mnemosyne is …
A few months ago, I wrote about my decision to start reading fiction, inspired by a conversation between Tim Ferriss and Claire Hughes Johnson. The idea of reading fiction to build empathy was an out-of-the-box idea (at least for me). However, what makes this experience even more unique is that I read this book in a physical format—something that has …
There are a lot of books that talks about building a team/company. There are books that talks about planes (something I’m forever fascinated about). Very few books can teach you both and this is it. Skunk Works by Ben Rich is a fascinating book (don’t even remember the number of times I’ve listened to this one). It shares behind-the-scenes stories …
A topic that has been something I’ve been talking a lot to the rest of the company. These are the builders who don’t just write code—they design experiences, solve problems, and ultimately solve customer’s end to end problem. The role of a product engineer extends beyond traditional software development. They bridge the gap between technical capability and user-focused design. Unlike …
For as long as I can remember, I have read only business and professional growth books. Fiction never made it into my reading list when I was thinking about work or learning. You can check out my full reading list here: https://sp2hari.com/books. It’s all about learning and growing in my career. The only fiction book I have read is The …
One of the values we’ve recently added at HackerRank is something close to my heart. Like our other values, this one had taken on different forms in the past, but the current version resonates with me far more: we call it “Truly, Madly, Deeply Care.” In the past, we used the phrase “Customer Delight” Amazon has their version: “customer obsession.” …
Git is a powerful tool and I’ve been using it for years. But there are few commands that make me feel like a power user. I use the basic commands like git add, git commit and git push everyday, there are some advanced commands that can significantly workflow and troubleshooting process.
There was a lot of chatter among my team members about how great two picture books they read. Here are all the picture books I have read and my favorite parts. Big Panda and Tiny Dragon This story is about two friends, a big panda and a tiny dragon, who travel together during the changing seasons. This is one of …
Back to writing blogs again… and hoping to continue the tradition going forward. Back in 2023, I had a bet with many of my friends. The deal of the bet varied with different people, but the core was this. Both the parties involved will write a blog once every month (published on the first full weekend of the month). If …
I promised myself that I wouldn’t do a year-end wrap blog post in December. I lived up to the promise. I promised myself that I wouldn’t write about resolutions, plans, or goals for 2024 and I’m going to fail on that promise. I’ve always believed Jan 1 is yet another regular day in the calendar and it shouldn’t be considered …
Building a team or a company gives one a chance to make a lot of decisions at various stages. If you are lucky, some of them will be two-way doors, but most of them are one-way doors. Here are a few I can think of that I had to decide or think about at some point in the past (10+ …
We had our leadership offsite in the US this week and one of the lines mentioned in the culture session is still on top of my mind. Companies only have strong or weak cultures. You can’t classify them as good vs bad culture. For example, you can have a culture where you treat everyone as a family. Salesforce is a …
I’ve been wondering about this for a while and still can’t understand my/human behavior. I’m a grown-up adult, who knows about responsibility. I know I’m responsible for my own career, growth, etc. I give enough advice to others about extreme ownership and how they should own their career growth. I also understand how doing just the bare minimum might not …
Even after fully going remote more than 3+ years ago, I still have a lot to learn about being productive in meetings. Zoom fatigue is real and sometimes jumping meeting after meetings makes it harder to focus on the right thing. Before the meeting Installing Meetingbar. Probably the single most productive step I’ve done to make it easier for me …
This started as a tradition with one of my colleagues (Radhika Balaji) where we started sharing one new thing to learn every day. This got triggered when Radhika shared how she used to learn new things every day when she was in school and stopped this during board exams. Post the board exams, she never started the habit (for at …
Life update: We bought a new place last year and moved to this place a month ago. Second-order effects on the life update. Life was easier for the last few years. Walking from home to the office used to take exactly 12 mins. Traffic or no other external factors couldn’t change anything this number. In fact, I could step out …
These two books got into my reading list mostly because of Vivek. The number of times he mentioned instances from this book, I had to know what the Starbucks story is all about. And I’m glad I did read these two. I expected a simple and smooth story about Starbucks. Didn’t expect so many ups and downs within the company. …
Probably the right title for this blog post should be “Regionalist”, but somehow the word ‘state-ist’ was the word I created and have been using for a long time. When I was assigned my room in the college hostel (back in 2004), each room was supposed to have 5 students. The 5 students in my room were assigned like this. …
Recently, we (me and Vasudha) went for a short trek (around 75 km from Bangalore). We found an agriculture shop selling fertilizers and pesticides on the way back. We have a small garden at our place, and Vasudha has written a great post about it here at https://ideaweb.me/blog/from-cacti-killer-to-gardener/. We’ve been using natural organic pesticides so far, and this is the …
An amazing book. The story is exciting, a lot of good life lessons to learn and of course, listening to the book in Trevor’s voice. If there is one book which should be read via audible instead of physical book, this must be it. Top things I recollect from this book.