This one’s gonna be brief and echoes 2 Less Obvious Ideas to the younger me. I am assuming that you already know the hygiene factors: Make few promises. Keep most of them and exceed few of them atleast. Get to like the top 5% in the skill of effort estimation for your own work at the very least. And so on. Contribute to Developer Ecosystem Improving any part of the developer ecosystem is useful and visible at the same time.

This is primarily for my future self. These are observations based on my own experience of 2 years at Verloop.io and helping a few companies hire for similar roles. Do Seniormost hire first: Start by hiring the senior most person you’re going to hire. E.g. start by hiring the ML Lead (assuming you already have a CTO) Have a means to tell that your investment in data science is working out or not Closest to User first: Hire the person who will consume the data to build for the user first Sourcing: Begin sourcing early and over-emphasise two channels: Referrals and Portfolios Typically, in India - expect: ~2 months to close a full time role at early career (0-3 years) and ~3 months to close a mid career (3-7 years) and 6+ months to close a senior hire If a developer has open source code contributions in the last 2-3 years, consider waving off the coding or algorithmic challenge to speed up the interview process Pay above market cash salaries In 12-18 months from now, when your ML Engineer will have internalised all the requirements, company culture and built a bunch of important tooling - she would get an offer which is 2-3x of today.

Question from a friend: I am interested in knowing how did you come to this decision of moving to SWE from DS/MLE. Since I’ve been asked a variant of this question quite a few times, I thought it would be good to share my answer. What kind of research did you do to get to this decision? I spoke to a lot of people who were both big companies and startups.

You learn a well-paying skill and years later - it comes back to hurt you in unexpected ways. That’s an Anti Skill. Consider this hypothetical: You start your software engineering career and build a reputation as someone who is good at iOS development. Each year, the money you make keeps improving as you keep getting better at it. The downside? You’ll find it hard to get job offers outside of iOS development [1]

Bulk of this is borrowed from notes made my teammate and friend at Verloop.io’s NLP/ML team of our conversations. I’ve taken the liberty to remove our internal slang and some boring stuff. I want to build a community around me on NLP. How can I get discovered by others? Broadly speaking, the aim in forming connections can be split into Long Term and Short term. A short term aim would be where you can receive something immediate out of the connections or a particular connection itself.

This is a 3 part essay. Part 1: Talent In my teenage years, I first understood that the kind of family you’re born into gives you access to certain kinds of wealth e.g. money, network, habits/knowledge and social capital to do things you want. Most people in my peer group and even among the adults I could speak to, used these resources to make their own life materially more comfortable.

This quick entry is partially inspired by a similar entry from Manas Saloi. Ofc, other folks have offered their opinions on Basecamp and earlier Coinbase. The woke mob is shitting on Jason and DHH, but I strongly agree with Basecamp’s new policies. IMHO a company is supposed to create an environment where people come and do their best work without having to align to one side of the political spectrum.

What I’m doing now Work: After almost 6 months of full time Machine Learning consulting/career break, I’ve moved to a role away from the data science field. I’m now working as a Software Engineer at Sundial.so. Last Updated in December 2021 from Bengaluru, India The concept of now page is from Derek Sivers

A useful metaphor to think about character of a person is their financial “net worth”. Like your net worth, this does not mean that you have that much cash to spend. It is a sum total of something. Net Worth is the Sum Total of the Assets & Liabilities Character is the Sum Total of the Decisions you Own: Good and Bad Like your Net Worth can be negative due to a large liability e.

Talent Cooling Kills Startup Growth Evaporative Cooling of talent occurs when the most high-value contributors to a community realize that the community is no longer serving their needs anymore and, therefore, leave. Then something remarkably interesting happens: When that happens, it drops the general quality of the community down such that the next most high-value contributors now find the community underwhelming. Each layer of disappearances slowly reduces the average quality of the group until such a point that you reach the people who are so unskilled and unaware of it that they’re unable to tell that they’re part of a mediocre group.

A fail resume is, as its name suggests, a list of rejections and setbacks. This concept originated in academia, but can be applied to improve one’s career, resilience, and approach to challenges in any walk of life. I’ve organized my setbacks by year (starting with 2016), and what constitutes a “failure” (or fail) here is based solely on my own judgement. It’s important to not only list the failures, but also learn from them, so I will add reflections to some of them (in progress).

Don’t just network with people your own age Beware the whiz kid syndrome. Smart, young people have a habit of forming communities of other smart young people and feeding off each other’s energy. Argghhhh. Are you not just making mistakes made by older people again? Make original mistakes Youth enclaves can actually be restrictive. In fact their networking should be about meeting useful mentors and career champions who can open doors and fast track careers.

I wanted to drop by and wish you a very Happy Diwali! This is an annual email that I write to say thanks to mentors, friends, allies - everyone who has chipped in sculpt a better me. So that is what I’ll begin with: Thanks a ton for being there for me! Also, checkout the 2018 edition of the annual email in attachment if you’re curious :) Moving onto the least comfortable piece, talking about myself:

ये जो लोग-बाग हैं, जंगल की आग हैं Ye jo log baag hain, Jungle ki aag hain The people, are jungle fire क्यूँ आग में जलूँ... Kyun aag mein jalun Why should I burn in the fire? ये नाकाम प्यार में, खुश हैं ये हार में Ye nakaam pyaar mein, Khush hai yeh haar mein Defeated in love, they're happy in defeat इन जैसा क्यूँ बनूँ... Inn jaisa kyun banun Why should I be like them?

How are you? I send these letters every year. This is a way for me to send thanks to all the mentors and friends who’ve been part of my journey so far. And I wanted to drop by and say Happy Diwali :) What is up with you? Is there something I can do for you? For what is up with me? Health & Wealth Health Since the beginning of this year, I have tried ‘building better healthy habits’.

In the first few pages of the book Born Standing Up, Steve says something poignant: One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years. He was someone chasing something external: fame, glory, money or a version of these. Yet, in his dusk years — once he had achieved some of those, he valued his struggle more than his fame and glory. For Steve, it was not about achieving these, it was, as I have come to call it: a good fight.

There is a invisible binding thread among most BITSian’s - optimistic, easy going, but somewhat pragmatic. The sky is the limit, but most of them realize flying in hot air pockets is easy - it’s the takeoff that hurts. I guess there is a flavour of cheerful pragmatism that is uniquely BITSian. You can get ice cream and ice cream shakes anywhere - but Sharma’s MNB is uniquely BITSian. I am no longer in BITS Pilani.