Consumer tech

I was reading this article about a startup that is launching satellites for imaging the earth. A line from the article stuck with me, the startup is leveraging technology developed for consumer devices like laptops and mobile phones in their satellites. This is a reversal from the olden days where technology that was developed for … Continue reading Consumer tech →

Go lang

Last round of the recently concluded stripectf was in Go lang. This gave me a good opportunity to familiarize myself with the language. Even though my native programming language is Java, I have worked professionally in JavaScript, Perl and PHP; dabbled in Python for my personal projects and can manage to read Ruby, Lisp(and it's … Continue reading Go lang →

Startup test

Where does your startup stand on the below? Do you have version control? Do you back up data(server data, db data, etc)? Can you build using a single command or prosaically, do you have build scripts? Can you deploy code to production in a single click/command? Do you have different staging environments like dev, qa, … Continue reading Startup test →

Suckers for simplicity

Let me lay it out straight in the beginning, we Indians are big time suckers for simplicity in others. It is not that we ourselves aspire to be simple but attribute unnecessary importance to it in others. Just that virtue is enough for us to weave magical stories around a person and see him as … Continue reading Suckers for simplicity →

Government regulation of muliplexes

Recently I read in the newspaper that Karnataka government is planning to regulate multiplex movie ticket prices. This sounds like sweet music to ears right? Why would someone not be happy to pay a lower price for anything? I feel this move smacks of licence raj. First of all, government has absolutely no role in … Continue reading Government regulation of muliplexes →

Future is in the photos

I was going through the VC interaction posted by Everpix guys. If you go through the letters, you see this repeated a lot, "You guys are in a crowded space which the biggies(Facebook, Dropbox, Google, Apple, etc) are after". Everpix is/was a service to store and organize photos. Why is this such a hot space? … Continue reading Future is in the photos →

Path of least resistance

I fractured my leg and Pavitra wanted to send the x-ray to my brother in law who is a doctor. He insisted on her not e-mailing but sending it through WhatsApp. I do not use WhatsApp because I do not have a smartphone(sic, sic) but almost all of my friends are on WhatsApp these days. … Continue reading Path of least resistance →

AAP, an Indian e-com startup

There have been multitude of blog posts/tweets comparing AAP to a startup. I am not sure about the comparison in general but there are eerie similarities between AAP and the Indian e-commerce(e-com) startups of the yesteryear. 1. A lot of Indian e-com startups where founded by IITians and just this IIT tag was used by … Continue reading AAP, an Indian e-com startup →

The disconnect

I used to sit next to the CS(Customer Service) team for sometime and I heard them instructing certain steps to customers to redeem campaign codes the second time. The dev team had put some extended efforts to exactly prevent this sort of scenario, these campaign codes were not to be redeemed twice. Why this sort … Continue reading The disconnect →

Hands On Manager

When I was new to the software industry, I always used to wonder why managers and leads delegate and ask for updates instead of being hands-on. This article is dedicated to the young novice naive me. Let us take a hypothetical manager in an organization who has taken upon herself to deliver a feature. … Continue reading Hands On Manager →

What can one person do?

Someone posted to our mailing list, urging us to enroll in the electoral list and vote for Narendra Modi. As expected, many replied with comments like, “What can one person do?” or “I voted last time, but what changed?” Our media and intellectuals have trapped us in a state of inaction. Daily, we hear that … Continue reading What can one person do? →

Appraisals

Employee appraisals are a cause of butt ache in almost every organization. Majority of the people I have known/worked with hate this time of the year. In most of the places, appraisals are done in an ass backward way, where in, during some pre defined interval, you fill a form with all the potions you … Continue reading Appraisals →

Collaboration tools

Anyone who has been part of a team, be it as an individual contributor or as a lead/manager, would sense a feeling of deja vu after reading this succinct post. I personally have seen this being played in almost every organization I have been a part of. Having been on both sides of the table, … Continue reading Collaboration tools →

API

Whenever I hear about the government upgrading some utility website, I die a bit inside. I am strongly of the opinion that the government has no business to be in the business of building end user utility websites. A government should act as an enabler, not as a provider. How does this apply to utility … Continue reading API →

To move or not to move

In the initial days, when I was trying to bootstrap the FreeCharge tech team, my team members were always trying to make me move us away from svn to git. For the past couple of years, if you have not been living in a cave somewhere without a net connection, you for sure know that … Continue reading To move or not to move →

In search of that unique idea?

Why google when there was lycos?Why myspace when there was friendster?Why facebook when there was myspace?Why wordpress when there was blogger?Why tumblr when there was wordpress?Why posterous when there was tumblr?Why instagram when there was facebook?Why twitter when there was facebook?Why etsy when there was ebay?Why pandodaily when there was techcrunch?Why stripe when there was … Continue reading In search of that unique idea? →

Be Vocal

Fresh out of college, in my first company GXS, after our training, me and another guy were put into a legacy maintenance project. It was atrociously boring. A couple of weeks into it, I told my colleague that I am going to talk to the manager regarding this. It was a pretty bold step going by the … Continue reading Be Vocal →

Work from home

Recently, there has been a brouhaha in the tech community over Marissa Mayer's views on work from home. As an individual tech worker, it is very appealing to side with work from home, and going by the community's reactions, I would say that I am not in the least surprised. But, when you look at it from … Continue reading Work from home →

Letting go of perfection

The dark side of perfectionism. Being a perfectionist is all the rage these days. Perfectionism has a dark side to it, which gets glossed over. When you are new to something, perfectionism acts as a hindrance. Many times, you know that you cannot dedicate wholly to something. In this scenario, perfectionism prevents you from starting—your … Continue reading Letting go of perfection →

Mental model of systems

One beautiful Sunday evening our quartz jobs running inside tomcat server started to freeze. At the same moment, tomcat went kaput. I sshed into the server and started poking around the logs. No error in logs. Hmm, ok. Checked the system health, again stats looked hale and hearty. Now, what do I do? I started to reason around … Continue reading Mental model of systems →

The social taboo – body and mind

I just finished reading something that got me thinking about society’s discomfort with using the body as a means to succeed. I doubt Sasha Grey’s parents boast about her success in adult films, but I’d bet Nate Silver’s parents are proud of his mathematical brilliance. Today’s world is full of women(and men) who’ve climbed the … Continue reading The social taboo – body and mind →

The Algorithm and Data Structures Conundrum

Hacker news denizens have a penchant for articles on hiring. Every once in a while, a post appears on the home page followed by a passionate and vituperative debate. People conversing on this can be divided into two camps; one argues that math, algorithm and data structures are critical and interview candidates should be quizzed … Continue reading The Algorithm and Data Structures Conundrum →

Programmers and movies

I just finished watching Looper and really loved it. In the beginning, for sometime, my brain was scrambling around like a headless chicken trying to fit things together. After settling into the movie for about half an hour, things started to make sense like a mist evaporating from a glass pane as the sun rises up … Continue reading Programmers and movies →

Gandhians With Keyboards

6th January 1980; young, 20 something artist; supremely gifted with a melodious voice; has no connections in the entertainment industry; zilch sugar daddies who can put her in touch with the right people in the recording business. How can this artist unleash her hidden talent on the unsuspecting world? The same situation forwarded to 6th January 2013. Records her … Continue reading Gandhians With Keyboards →