Swanand
@_swanand
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CTO, Tech Dad, Leader, Mentor, Nerd. Ex @CoLearn_ID , @DeservePlatform . Software, humor, education, careers. DMs 👍🏼
AUH | DXB | BLR | PNQ
Joined September 2008
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Pinned Tweet
Improving skills and building solid foundations is a topic that keeps coming up for discussions at meetups and conferences.
My talk "The well-rounded engineer" was built around the same idea. Here's the slide deck:
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Congrats! But this reminds me of:
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In order to deliver on 10-min food delivery promise, Zomato is embracing CI/CD. Continuous Idly, Continuous Dosa.
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2nd/3rd day on the job, a senior handed me a copy of Jeffrey Friedl's epic RegEx book and said, "Monday tak ye padh ke aaja" (by the time you are in office on Monday, you should have read this).
The guy was a legend, so I took him seriously and read as much as I could. Since
What experience in the workplace radicalized you?
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What a surprise. I'm shocked.
Gartner has published their results on return to office, and:
- Return to office mandates are a high risk. Folks simply leave
- High performers, a company's bread and butter, specially resentful about being forced to office
- No improvement in
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Ran "npm install" while on a Zoom call with Krisp on and Slack and Chrome running in background.
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IKEA store is opening on Outer Ring Road in Bangalore soon.
Has Mysore palace made appropriate arrangements to manage the heavy queue that will reach them?
I am thinking of raising capital to buy some land and start a pay-and-park service nearby.
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UPI is built on the same infra as IMPS which is built on the same infra as ATMs.
So, what is stopping developed parts of the world from building something similar?
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Slightly off-topic, but if you pick the top 2 "classic" books in your choice of field and read them 2 times, or better work through them, you'll be ahead of 99% of folks. I guarantee it.
(I saw a similar take on my timeline recently)
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When you ignore the hustle and focus on skills, good things happen. This person:
- Improved communication *and* tech skills
- Ramped up their reading and writing
- Got promoted to team lead; liking it
- Salary increased 7x (remote being a factor here)
All in < 2 years.
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When I was early in my career, "casually writing a compiler over the weekend" was a thing. It signalled that you had the depth needed to excel.
What's the modern equivalent for Gen Z? Please don't say job at a FAANG, that's a low bar.
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Career update: After spending a year as a free agent, helping teams big & small, I took charge as the CTO at
@CoLearn_ID
starting April this year 🎉
From weekly prod deploys to ~40/day, from 1 (me) in January to a 35 member team today, we've come a long way.
Plenty more to do!
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Job Opening
* Backend engineer, capable of architecting, 30-36 LPA
* 1.5 years old; raised angel, raising seed now
* Cryptocurrency space, expansion into all virtual assets
* About to hit PMF, clear evidence of customer value
* 15 months runway, including future hiring
DM me.
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What are your ESOPs worth, if any?
A recruiter told you, "Your total compensation, including ESOPs, is <so and so...>". It sounded like a nice bump from your cash component. But you still felt you were underpaid🤷🏼♂️. They were wrong. You were right. 👊🏼
In their most reductive
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Periodic reminder to check up on the following:
1. Your financial ability to comfortably survive X months without income with a lifestyle of your choice
2. Your confidence in securing a new source of income in that X months time period
3. Your ability to reach X again
X = 3-6mo
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Interviewing 4-6 YoE devs again for friends. My reaction: What the hell happened to software engineering?
- score 100% on Leetcode/Hackerrank/etc
- quite good with coding
And yet:
Struggle to describe like an engineer, a software system they spent two years working on
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Woah,
@UltrahumanHQ
's referral week is real, 5 people signed up and they sent me this! 😍😍
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When are your ESOPs worth, if ever?
This game has two levels:
1️⃣ Will the company be able to generate wealth for founders and employees?
2️⃣ When the liquidation event occurs, will you, specifically, get anything out of it?
Let's not discuss "Will the startup even succeed?"
A
What are your ESOPs worth, if any?
A recruiter told you, "Your total compensation, including ESOPs, is <so and so...>". It sounded like a nice bump from your cash component. But you still felt you were underpaid🤷🏼♂️. They were wrong. You were right. 👊🏼
In their most reductive
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One of the interns who applied to us turned in a hand-written assignment. Python code, indented properly, with pen and paper. I read through the code, it works. 👏🏼 👏🏼
I wish I had this level of meticulousness that early in my career!
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* Work with great people
* Build great software
* Make great money
Minimum 2 out of 3 must be satisfied.
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Catchphrases & workplace wisdom. A collection of pithy one-liners and phrases I often repeat and lean on, during work conversations. They are good advice, IMO. YEMD; your experience may differ.
Some are original; some s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶n̶ inherited, some through reading & research. 👇🏼
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I am working on a talk called "The Road to Continuous Deployments"
It's an experience report of how and why we went from bi-weekly releases to 50+ deployments per day.
I'll cover pros, cons, tips, strategies on tech and people, and for both legacy & greenfield projects.
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Albert Einstein once said "In the future, you'll be able to write anything that comes to your mind, attribute it to me and pass it around as wisdom"
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In the last 2 years, the biggest money waste has been buying top end customised Intel laptops for the team, before Apple shipped M1.
We bought around 15. Everyone who joined later got an M1/M1-Pro and even an off the shelf M1 has been performing significantly better than Intel.
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Practically all AWS Cost optimization "experts" I've spoken to fall flat when I tell them we don't have a single EC2 instance.
Your cost optimization strategy should be better than "spot instances" and "pre-pay for 70 years in advance".
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1. I was at a workplace where "legends" worked
2. Those same folks were actually interested in my growth
3. I was given the latitude to pursue and not just put in "billable" hours
If your workplace doesn't have any of these, I suggest you seek a place that does.
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A strong anti-pattern is when engineers claim, "I don't have enough work".
What do you mean by not enough work? Improve the code, write more/better tests, re-check your types, write a compiler, advent of code, you get the point.
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If you're a software engineer currently contemplating or planning a change, here is my hard earned insight:
Pick a place/team/company/problem space/product where the "how" is much harder than "what". You'll have an outsized impact in an environment like that.
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@kamath_sutra
@smallest_AI
CTC is 40lpa, not 80. Unless you're a publicly listed company or guarantee 100% liquidity on all vested stock at all times.
Are the 40L ESOPs per year or for 4 years?
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All the Marathi folks know that the great Pu La Deshpande accurately described social media decades ago:
आपण कोण आहोत, आपला शैक्षणिक दर्जा काय, एकूण कर्तृत्त्व काय, याचा अजिबात विचार न करता मत ठोकून द्यायचं. विषय कुठलाही असो.
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In hiring, a key specialty is sometimes taking a chance on someone who seems promising/talented but didn't do well enough in the interview loop.
BigTech is bad with this, and that is where smaller teams can shine. Prerequisite: Willingness to guide + make corrections as needed.
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When salaries getting credited on time feels like a policy, you can tell how bad the state of affairs is.
Name any employee-friendly policy in your, or any other startup/large org, that's super helpful/really cool.
Ex: Unlimited sick leaves, work from anywhere, No meetings on Fridays etc...
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Look who I ran into 🙂
I mean, if you go to someone’s house you’re bound to run into them.
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Between Google, Amazon, Microsoft's layoffs, there are 30000+ people extremely good at interviewing now out in the market.
Some of the them are in fact incredibly good at their jobs; almost at world's best level. But you wouldn't know how to figure out which ones, would you?
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If you think "I am just bad at remote" / "remote just doesn't work for me/us," then you need one or more of:
* Friends, life outside work
* Discipline
* hobbies
* better: communication skills, work culture
* purpose
* Therapy
What you don't need:
* an office and co-location
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As an engineering manager, is there a better feeling than promoting a team member and giving them a pay raise?
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Gaurav (Teammate, in an online meeting): Am I audible?
Me (pouncing on the opportunity): I can hear you, but you're not Audible, you're still Gaurav.
Everyone else: _pretended they did not hear me_
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Would be nice if Zomato added decibel levels to the listings. Like Google maps does with crowd levels.
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🙅🏼♀️ I would choose a top college over a top curriculum any day. Universities and elite institutions are for opening gates and acquiring tribal insider knowledge that you don't get anywhere else.
You can master comp-sci from anywhere.
In 2004, I had a mediocre JEE rank. Someone very wisely advised me -
"The future isn't going to be about whether you are an IIT grad or not. It's going to be about - are you a CS Grad? Get into to the best CS program you can manage".
Life changing advice from an IIT-K grad.
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In a race to hire hustlers, startups miss out on hiring folks with actual, real hobbies.
Sustained hobbies are an extremely positive signal (can indicate a load of privilege too, so caution is needed).
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What's "like an engineer"?
- describe the core product/biz problem
- translate it in terms of computational problems
- describe the solution you worked on
- describe in great detail exactly what you did
- talk about trade-offs, data flow, numbers, system characteristics, etc
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Join my Saturday coding club where we wake up and write code, solve stuff, read things.
Startup CTOs - you are a fantastic engineer, and you will always remain that, don’t stop writing code.
But instead of 10x you are now 0.10x engineer.
Sooner you realise this, better it’s for the org.
0.9x is all about Recruting, business, people, customer success, strategy!
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There's no doubt that WhatsApp for iOS has been rewritten in React Native.
Jittery UI, bugs everywhere, slow af.
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Received an application where they called themselves a “React Naive” developer and I thought dang, that’s more honesty than I asked for!
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I just reviewed your resume without needing to read it. Here's my feedback, but first a reaction GIF.
Onward to the review:
1️⃣ Repeat after me: "Adjective soup. Makes me puke". Once more for letting it sink in: "Adjective soup. Makes me puke".
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It's raining in Bangalore, but which area, which main, and which cross?
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Got into a scary situation today: We were stuck in a mini-traffic jam with an Ola S1 right next to our car 😱
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Here’s what EOD means:
When I open my inbox tomorrow morning, it should be sitting there. Acceptable even if it lands a minute prior, as long as I don’t have to ask for it again.
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#RubyConfIndia
#RCI19
Hello
@rubyconfindia
, thanks for the hearty, warm response to the talk, I am glad it connected with so many of us! Here is the slide deck, updated for offline reading:
Please do @ me :)
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Amazon's new CEO isn't Indian? How the hell will WHJ sell ads now? Amazon should've thought about that before taking such a decision.
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4.5 year old, upon being given sugarcane juice: (with utmost contempt on the face) This is too sweet. I can't drink it. *gives it to me*
Me, a software dad: *hands it back* That's not a bug, that's a feature.
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If you have 5+ years of software engineering experience and you cannot recognize most of the following terms:
SSR, SSG, CSR, ISR, ESR, SWR
Trust me, you're doing great.
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I saw "no code MBA" on the timeline. I mean, talk about stacking two useless dying things together.
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On some days, good software engineering is just the ability to bear the tedium, to not give up, and to see it done.
As I fixed a tricky logging related bug today, I felt that in force.
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No standing ovation for Travis Head? Crowd is a bit disappointing.
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Denial - We’re doing everything right, it’s the engineers that are overpaid
Anger - What the #$#}, I can hire from Europe
Bargaining - If I underpay people from Tier 2/3, they won’t mind. Right?
Depression - FML, back to Twitter threads & Big3 consulting
Acceptance - [fill this]
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Missed opportunities:
- ChaiGPT; suggest a tea for your mood
- ChapsGPT; book slots and find compatible buddies for table tennis etc
- ChowGPT; suggest suitable Asian food based on context
- CheapGPT; finds deals
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Vitamin D and protein deficiency, compounded over centuries.
Everything else is moot.
has anyone done a post yet about why India is so bad at the Olympics?
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Diwali + party games + photographer friends = photos of myself that I finally like 🪔🎲📷
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I am looking for a front-end tech lead. We're a product engineering team, and we've got great things going for us.
If you take a principled approach towards engineering, shipping, crafting UX, you'll have a fantastic time here!
Send me your portfolio + a recent snippet of code.
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Multiple small projects are great for building a portfolio (eg: message broker, video player, rate limiter)
Single complex long running project is great for building skills (eg: Create a new web standards proposal and go through the RFP motions)
Pick your fighter. And:
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Who is hiring a Tech Lead/SDE-3 level backend engineer? Someone I can personally vouch for is on the market.
Bonus: Besides being a solid, reliable engineer, they can teach your team Emacs and upgrade them for life!
Pune/Remote, can't relocate, can travel periodically. DM me.
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@SelfMadeMastery
If you lock a room yourself, from inside, you can get out. If someone else locks you in, from outside, it's much harder to get out.
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"Every time I pair with you, I learn something new"
Are you really a team lead if you've never received a similar meaning compliment?
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Goes on to show that you can build a crap app and still win subscribers. Hotstar's apps:
* No profiles support
* Cannot stop Autoplay next episode
* Cannot stop Autoplay previews
* No way to personalize content or influence discovery
* Disabled password login, OTPs only (WTF!)
Streaming subscribers in India:
• Disney+ Hotstar: ~46M
• Amazon Prime Video: ~19M
• Netflix: ~5.5M
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Indian startups:
Offer $180k, expiring in 1 week. Then when candidates choose something better, whine on Twitter/LinkedIn and create blacklisting backchannel WhatsApp groups.
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Do you use PostgreSQL routinely, but have never looked at this page: ?
Well, you can fix that now. Thank me later.
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Software Architecture can be taught in 2 parts:
1. Fundamental understanding of how software works
2. Established patterns to avoid reinventing the wheel
“System design” Interviews are mostly part 2.
"mind=blown" systems = first principles + original thinking i.e. Part 1
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The concept of having to “approve” leaves and time off should be banned.
Show me a more nonsense company policy.
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Clubhouse on Android was a big fucking mistake. Signal to noise ratio is now zero. No signal; just noise.
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At scale (any kind of scale) there's always an optimization problem lurking in the system, some unbounded queue waiting to disrupt.
This article is a great example of why you need a good handle on algorithms and algorithmic problem solving:
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- wrong config update, break prod
- drop the production database or a part of it
- rewrite something from scratch only to make it worse
- be aghast at the poor quality of code only to realize it's their own code
- write a complex regex with a cocky attitude, watch it fail in prod
What is a CHALLENGE all programmers must go through? 'A rite of passage'? 👇
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One of Shane Warne's less celebrated achievement is him getting Rajasthan Royals to the first IPL title.
IMO he was one of the best brains in the game.
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5/ 🌟 Live with bad code but rewrite for bad architecture
Poor architecture accrues tech debt exponentially because everything you do is a workaround for the core. It leads to bad code, bad deployments, bad tests, bad estimates; you get the point — a spiral of no control.
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Nothing, and I mean nothing (pedigree, background, salary, pick whatever), fires up a recruiting team as much as "a competing offer" does.
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Sprints are not a release mechanism. Sprints are a cadence mechanism.
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