The best, most creative engineers are generally not seen waiting for product requirements from PMs. They are more often seen showing and convincing PMs of product requirements and features.
Congratulating
@vijayshekhar
in person for
@Paytm
’s upcoming mega IPO. What a great milestone for India’s startup ecosystem! 🇮🇳
Always great to do गप्पे with him. TIL that PayTM stands for “Pay Through Mobile”
PS: Told him I remain a pukka loyalist of
@GooglePayIndia
😀
Life Update 🧵!
After ~4 wonderful years leading Google Pay Engg in India and APAC, I am leaving Google at the end of this month.
How it all started?
1/
I see so many of my (high achiever) friends not read fiction…
Reminds me of my 20s. I had stopped reading all fiction thinking I will learn and grow more from non-fiction, and what do made-up stories have to teach us anyway.
How badly wrong on so many levels is that view!
1/ I am thrilled to announce that
@Coinbase
is sponsoring 10 scholarships for applicants from India (with a focus on women applicants) for the Dapp Ethereum bootcamp course by
@iam_preethi
, an early and ex-Coinbase software engineer herself. 🇮🇳🙏
🧵
We at
@Coinbase
welcome the Government of India’s ongoing process to formulate the appropriate regulation to create a safe and thriving cryptoeconomy in India.
Just like in Payments and Fintech, India can become a world leader in the exciting world of crypto.
What’s next?
I am excited to share that I'll be joining
@coinbase
as VP of Engineering and Site lead for India. I'll be responsible for leading and building from scratch the company's technology hub in India.
I will be hiring across India as per:
4/
Last week we were able to get most
@Coinbase
India folks from all parts of country physically together for a 2-day offsite, in a Covid-safe manner.
And oh, the fun we had together!! 🏏🏐🎶💃🏽🏸🏓🥁
Truly warms my heart to see us growing so quickly & with such camraderie.❤️🙏🏽🇮🇳
@kunalb11
(Not just startups):
1. not reliable in getting the job done
2. have valid sounding excuses for
#1
3. have always something to complain about someone or something else
4. looking for direction or guidance from someone else
5. allergic to going deep
6. habitually makes mistakes
It was special to have CS Faculty and students at my alma mater IIT Delhi host
@brian_armstrong
for a wide ranging fireside chat on crypto and web3. 🙏🏽🇮🇳
#IITDelhi
alumnus Dr.
@Pankaj
Gupta has signed an MoU with his alma mater to establish two chairs: “Nick McKeown Chair in Computer Science”
and “Pankaj Gupta Chair in Privacy and Decentralization”.
@ramgopal_rao
Press Release-
“Networkless Mobile Payments With Minimal Changes in Trusted Execution Environments” just got published
So I am excited to finally talk about this foundational work that I & a small team have been doing in Google Pay along with our Android Security team.
My <single-digit-year-old> daughter: "Daddy, how do you like your new job? But don't just compare to your old one, because that wouldn't be right comparison. Compare to how you liked your old one when u first joined that"
Me, thinking this kid could have a bright future in ML
Kids saw me browsing some NFTs and started asking questions.
Primary schooler: “oh cool, I can make these drawings. I am going to be so rich!!”
Middle schooler: “why would anyone buy these? I can just right click and save them?!”
I think they both got it 😍
Life Update 🧵!
After ~3 wonderful years in Coinbase -- across India as first employee and site lead and then back to the US as global Engineering lead for Consumer Products -- I am leaving Coinbase at the end of this week.
How it all started?
1/
What’s next?
I am excited to share that I'll be joining
@coinbase
as VP of Engineering and Site lead for India. I'll be responsible for leading and building from scratch the company's technology hub in India.
I will be hiring across India as per:
4/
The world still doesn’t get UPI.
I have had the opportunity to talk to many of the world’s leading central banks over the past year. Most of them are unfortunately trying to reinvent what
@UPI_NPCI
has solved over the last few years operating 24x7 at its huge scale in India.
Classic junior manager mistake I have made myself: influence someone to change their mind thru strong arguments on email.
However data-driven and correct the arguments are, sitting folks down, listening together and empathetically walking them thru is the only thing that works.
I am no Eth maxi, and many other L1s have uniquely interesting properties - but tbh it’s a bit ridiculous to see people writing obituaries of Ethereum.
It’s the best world computer answer out there to the trilemma of decentralization, scalability and security.
Crypto is a great vehicle for global, borderless, instant assistance for humanitarian purposes. This initiative is proof 👇🏽
Thank you
@balajis
and
@VitalikButerin
for your donations. And
@sandeepnailwal
for the initiative.
If you’ve been fortunate enough to do well this year, consider joining me and
@VitalikButerin
by donating at the addresses below.
But if all you have is Twitter, help spread the word. For every RT, I’ll donate another $50 to fight COVID in India, up to $100k.
#cryptovscovid
1/5 I am really excited to announce a new offering to all our
@Coinbase
India employees that we are calling Cikka - short for "Coinbase India Sikka"⚡️
("Sikka" means Coin in many languages in India and APAC)
Today's acquisition is a win-win for both
@AgaraLabs
&
@Coinbase
. It's amazing to see my worlds collide here with Agara, a startup I co-founded in early 2017 but later left to join Google.
I wrote up some reflections on my journey in a personal blog post:
My memories of
@paraga
are still as a bright software engineer at Twitter circa 2010. Wow, what an amazing ride to be the CEO today! Heartiest congratulations Parag and I am sure much more success is to come for you and Twitter.
Wifey is all ready very early morning to see Budget proceedings today. Partly because she is interested in Indian politics/policy but mainly because, she says, it’s the first time a woman finance minister is presenting the budget. This is why diversity at the top matters.
When the time has come to you to take the risk, you should for sure take it, even seek it.
Too many very capable people are just “settling” for too much comfort and too little risk. They run the biggest risk of a life not lived to potential.
STOP. THE. IPL. NOW
It’s not just inappropriate and insensitive but downright shameful, appalling and tone-deaf to continue the glitzy IPL.
No we don’t need thrillers in Delhi. We need more oxygen, hospitals, beds and medicines. Urgently.
#StopIPL
8 years ago in March 2013, I created a protected account
@magicrecs
to experiment with what seemed like a crazy idea at the time - push out "what's happening now" to users who follow this account as an opt-in.
A small piece of early
@twitter
history👇🏽
1/
Re the
@MightyApp
streaming browser approach being touted as the future of computing, I will stick my neck out against some of the most respected names openly backing this and calling it the future of tech.
This is a dangerous technical approach.
🧵
This is Tania, my ex-colleague from Next Billion Users team at Google. So proud of you
@taidrus
for directly influencing policy in your country and best wishes on this journey!!
Overwhelmed by the support & positive notes I have received so far by those wanting to help build
#DigitalPakistan
. We are heads down working for the next few months with all stakeholders.
Pls continue to share ideas/input on the 5 priorities at digitalpakistan
@pmo
.gov.pk
“Need your advice. Life is not ideal but guess it’s okay. But I don’t feel good exploring. My mgr is depending on me” - IC
I wonder at such times whether I should break their innocent heart by letting them know that their mgr, mgr’s mgr and mgr’s mgr’s mgr are all exploring 🤣
Exactly 4 years ago on Sep 18,2017, we had launched a new payments app called Tez (later renamed to
@GooglePayIndia
) that changed the shape of digital payments in India forever.
Wearing my Tez shirt today and sending love to former colleagues! ❤️
Just came across this (slightly dated) graph of UPI growth while making some slides.
@GooglePayIndia
was launched on Aug 17, 2017 and dramatically changed the slope of UPI adoption.
Source of the underlying graph:
Startup founders should be wary of advice from everyone but definitely reject it outright from folks who have never done or been a part of a startup before. This includes advice from VCs. In fact, the best VCs will tell this to the founders themselves.
I am a heavy note-taker and already filled my first notebook. So much to learn and absorb at
@coinbase
!
Also really glad the Coinbase swag arrived in the meantime 👍🏽
Related: by
@brian_armstrong
Who says CEOs of $1.5T+ companies can not be genuinely nice, wonderful human beings?
Exhibit A on how a leader can win hearts below.
Thanks
@sundarpichai
!
Disagree with Kunal here. The days of people working together *every day* in an office at the same coordinates in space are anachronistic and never coming back. We may be sad or wish otherwise but they are “gone with the wind”!
At
@coinbase
India, we have very happy
(1/2)
Young folks in India are happy working from their native home & saving cost of rent and getting home food.
This is a fantastic short term benefit but the cost of this is very high.
Learning being around smarter folks & absorption by osmosis and overhearing has reduced to zero.
Last week was recharge week at
@coinbase
- all offices globally were off. It really felt as if the winter holidays have come early 😀
Took on some stuff I was procrastinating on. Did extra: sleep, read, write, code, visit family and just chill. In short, recharged as intended!🔋
People tend to over focus on comp, levels, promos etc. Not saying that those are not important. But going only after them is counterproductive…
Imho the constant source of joy + growth in one’s career is simply from working with sincere, talented and hard working colleagues.
Wish me luck. I have ventured into the
@ethereum
dark forest!
Just submitted a simple proposal for feedback from Ethereum community for an on-chain, permissionless, probabilistic txn ordering method to mitigate some forms of MEV (Miner Extractable Value)
Just learnt about the term "eigenquestion" being used by a PM to mean "key question" which they picked from some blog. IMHO, using heavy technical terms to mean simpler well-known things is a disservice to all.
This is critical.
@CoinbaseWallet
’s security model is completely different - user’s keys are NOT stored in local browser extension’s storage. They are stored securely in phone’s HW SE and protected by biometrics when avlbl
Plus requiring confirmation on the phone gives 2FA.
Good time to remind you that
@CoinbaseWallet
Chrome extension keeps your keys secure on your phone with Secure Enclave hardware, instead of in the extension
Pragmatic security solution if you aren't ready to invest in a hardware wallet, but want a more secure dapp experience
Felt a wonderful sense of calm and joy visiting the San Francisco bay area offices of
@Coinbase
last few days!
It is such a beautiful space maintained so well even in these strange Covid times. 🙏🏽
At Stanford we had a poetry reading club, some 8-10 of us.
@caesars
was there.
We did a video reunion this weekend. I couldn’t help but smile the whole time seeing old buddies after all these years, now in all corners of the world, with their life stories. It was magical.
Safari-ing this week with whole family in the jungles of Jim Corbett National Park in foothills of the Himalayas. Grateful to detach & recharge in the midst of nature. 🙏🏽
PS: no Royal Bengal tiger 🐅sighting yet. But one more safari to go. Wish me luck!
Sportspeople have disciplined training regimes to achieve next level of performance.
Shouldn’t tech workers (like us) intentionally develop a fitness training practice for our work? (Beyond the basics of sleep, diet, exercise)? Can we have mental fitness trainers too pls?
People complain about well-being even in the most privileged cushy jobs, but rarely realize that 80% of it is not knowing how to or having the discipline to manage yourself.
Just came across this (slightly dated) graph of UPI growth while making some slides.
@GooglePayIndia
was launched on Aug 17, 2017 and dramatically changed the slope of UPI adoption.
Source of the underlying graph:
Today's game was a periodic reminder that a Test Match lasting 5 full days that results in a "No result" can bring out the beauty of sport at its highest level.
Friendly reminder: I am hiring across all levels in eng, pm & ux.
We are also hiring a recruiting lead for India to build out our recruiting team from scratch.
Please apply here and get a unique opportunity to work in the exciting crypto space.
Hung out with old buddy
@SumitGup
- we were classmates from high school onwards!
Sumit (now at Apple) was GM of the GPU business at nvidia circa 2010-2014 exploring GPU applications other than graphics/gaming. He sent me this email in 2012 when I was at Twitter.
NFTs are often defined to be tokens (pointers) to images. This is incorrect! An NFT is a pointer to a pointer to an image. Only the 1st pointer is on-chain.
More precisely, it’s a tokenId optionally with a tokenURI pointing to a JSON schema containing a URL to the actual image.
Sit/stand work desks are great. I bought the largest one I could find in India :)
My attention and engagement level in a meeting when I am standing seems to be much higher than when I am sitting. Is it just me?
It's so nice of Stanford CS to give life-time permanent email addresses
@cs
.stanford.edu - also very smart - gives them an always live collection of alumni and current students.
(And yes, I have firstname@ there too ⚡️)
I love the message he's talking about, but smthng about this video makes me sad. Is
@bchesky
sick? Is he on drugs? Why is noone talking about how ill he looks while talking about this? I sincerely hope he's ok.
Alas, I'd love for my kids to hear this message but I can't share
This is it:
@bchesky
on founder mode.
Three reasons why founders differ from managers:
1. Being the biological parent
2. Full permission to make change
3. Knowing how to rebuild the company
TIL about a totally random connection between crypto and Indian mythology :) -- specifically about Ethereum and the monkey army ("vaanar-sena") in the great epic, Ramayana.
#justforfun
We organized a day long workshop today on AI/ML research and practice in India at our Bangalore office. We have a wonderful and diverse array of participants and speakers from academia and industry, with the day kickstarted by a keynote from
@JeffDean
!
What is Money?
For about a year, I have been collecting various interesting definitions and perspectives of money in a tweet thread. This weekend I put those together in a blog post:
If you come across new and interesting definitions, please reply here.
📣Calling India’s cryptopreneurs!
Coinbase Ventures is partnering with
@BuidlersTribe
to host an in-person pitch day in Bangalore in April.
$1M+ is up for grabs, including $25k bonus grants provided by
@BeliefDAO
, and mentoring sessions with the best minds in crypto.
Kids said they want to stay up late but never allowed to. So I said let’s do an all night coding session together. They loved the idea :)
We did it till midnight, late night snack and all. The defn of coding for one was to build a house in bloxburg. Doesn’t matter - we had fun!
The whole global crypto ecosystem feels like a startup - so fast paced, so many innovations happening across layers and so many great people joining it every day. 🔥
Much love to
@Twitter
employees. The drama in the company was recurring and not at all a surprise in the early years of the company. Most folks who were there then (like me) love the product and the company dearly and are proud to have been associated with it.
One big use case for me in
@TezbyGoogle
has been to pay to any AccountNumber+IFSC in real time. I used to dread doing that via netbanking what with wonky bank websites, having to wait for a beneficiary to be added and inability to do outside working hours. Now 24x7 and real time!