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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Speed Starting from the early age, speed has been a great fascination. Given dad was a math teacher, I wanted to become a mathematician when I was at school (though I’m not sure even now what mathematicians do). I still remember the quote that fascinated me the most “speed and …
New year comes with a lot of excitement, energy and resolutions. Logically it doesn’t make a lot of sense to celebrate new year. After all, the new year is an arbitrary line that was drawn by a few Romans way way back. And it is not like we grow smarter or …
Working as the CTO, there are lot of assumptions people make about me. One is that the CTO is supposed to be super rich. The running joke is that whenever we go out for a restaurant for team lunch/dinner and if there is a delay, someone or other would recommend …
I was listening to this podcast from Farnam Street (https://fs.blog/knowledge-podcast/best-of-2021/), mostly because I thought it is a shortcut to read all the good podcasts from 2021. Little did I know I’ll learn so much about trusting people and the right framework on when to trust people and when not to. …
We have this principle at HackerRank to treat people as people and not refer them as resources. This is from an excerpt from email Vivek to the entire company On that note, I would like to remind everyone of the nomenclature we use in the company. Refer to people as …
