There is a widespread notion in the tech industry that most of the day-to-day operations of a software engineer doesn’t involve optimizing code, rather it is providing reliable functionality for the piece of code you write that in turn manifests itself in a feature. And mostly it is true. Now providing reliable functionality means that your code shouldn’t break when exposed to the unknown actions of the user and should also account for conveying meaningful messages in case it observes them. ...

There is a growing voice inside me that acts and talks like an entrepreneur but isn’t one. He lives and operates in a realm where he is friends with fellow entrepreneurs like Chamath, David Sacks, Kunal Shah (just to name a few). He feeds off Shark Tank India and Silicon Valley to supplement his entertainment diet. He dunks, valuates, re-evaluates public and private markets, government bonds, crypto narratives and everything that can be valued from an armchair. He reads Stratechery, popular VC Substacks, free Economist articles and listens to The All In With Besties, My First Million, Time Ferris show and hopes that satiates the ever-growing needs of his thought leader personality. ...

More often than not, you’ve hit the dead-end of trying to explain a system/convey-your-opinions to a person who has neither shared culture nor experience w.r.t you. I didn’t notice this strange phenomenon that was playing out in my career ventures. You see all this while, up until my under-graduation, I was always out with somebody with whom I shared something in the cultural aspect. But now, I am left alone in the Sub-sahara African desert with nothing but shared technical vocabulary(which itself manifests in different forms). ...

Crack this nut, and boom you’re on top of the corporate career ladder and way above your peers. Of course, it doesn’t merely apply in the narrow use case of professional life but also in the grand scheme of things of the universe as well, the life. It’s not that easy to acquire this skill though, i.e Switching between Specialization and Abstraction. You need to adopt a lot of reading-the-room kinda strategies to pull this off, which is harder given the context of Pandemic enforced Zoom meetings. Feeding of the subtle clues that our fellow human beings toss off in the air and switching gears isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. The initial attempts may resemble throwing darts in a pitch black room insulated from sunrays. ...

I decided that from now on I will stick to the process of compulsive note-taking. Since my college days, I have felt that the lack of note-taking has bitten my chances of executing an impactful project and has also been holding me back from having an anxious-free life. For the past few days, I have applied this always-novel strategy to meetings especially and it really works like a charm. First, it channels your focus on the thing that is happening in the present moment which in turn leads to faster lookups in the future. ...

The one thing that I liked most about this book is the writing style. It’s so subtle, neurotic pleasing, and sarcastic. This book has probably the best climax I have ever read till now. It is shame that I watched martian before reading the book. The world that the author built with primitive biology, physics, chemistry concepts is over the roof. There is no complicated scientific jargon where you have to rub your head against a rock. Ofc I didn’t get my head around time dilation.

Everything in the world that has been created is based on the world view perceived by the creator excluding those which portray universal truth like fundamental science(fundamental chemistry and physics). And more often than not understanding deeply a product in a category is a gateway to the inner workings of the creators who are working under the same shed. I can attest to this notion in the field of programming languages. All those single and multi-threaded, functional and object oriented, static and dynamic language comparisons are not the best use of my time. Rather than trying to keep the foot on all these language boats, it is wise to learn one deeply, understand what the author is trying to convey which in turn helps me to understand or appreciate other languages. This advice was given to me by my senior but eventually, I had fallen prey to shiny object syndrome and it really sabotaged my progress. ...

For the past year, many of my thoughts and actions have been majorly towards one goal. That is for inclusion. Never have I felt this much urge to feel included. I go to a specific subreddit to find tribes that radiate my vibes. Even in the programming languages or frameworks, I yearn to be are the result of their communities. I am even learning a new language just to understand the system programming streams of youtuber. ...

There is something about meditation that produces an indescribable experience. To weed out the constant noise around meditation is the way forward. There are mainly 2 phases which the practitioner goes through while meditating. The first one is Distillation and the latter phase is Nirvana. In Distillation your brain gets bombarded with a constant stream of thoughts and your eyes hesitate to close. This is the most difficult phase as the brain is resistant and does not want to confront those thoughts. Mostly this phase gets over within 20 mins. And what comes hereafter is a purely blissful experience. ...

Have ever thought, even in your wildest dreams, that you will be paid to borrow some money? I know it sounds dumb but it actually happened in Europe. Now before we go into the details of why Europe implemented negative interest rates it’s crucial to understand the concept. When an economy is in a deflationary spiral i.e where prices are tanking to everyday lows, profits are down, decreased spending there has to be some sought mechanism to boost public spending. Which effectively means that people need to borrow at lower interest rates. If the circumstances are dire then the central bank has to step in and decrease the rates below zero. You might ask why would the banks be willing to lend to loss in the first place. Well, it turns out that private banks park their money at the central bank to earn small interest which the central bank then lends to the government. Remember that the incentive to deposit is to earn some interest. But as the interest rates have tanked you have to pay the bank to store your money. I know it sounds scary!. So why would a bank deposit when it has to cough some of its own money ?. Hence lending in the short term is the only way banks can survive in the deflationary cycle. ...