My Journey: 2021

The pandemic continued and so did working from home. 2021 was a smooth continuation of 2020. At the same time, 2021 was also a transformational year in many ways.

One of the major highlights was at the beginning of the year, where I took part in some core yogic rituals. It was really a great experience. I’ve followed the practice for the most part of the year but slacked at the end. I hope to bring back the ritual of meditation. I’ve also read books to acquire theoretical knowledge of the spiritual world and its possibilities. Speaking about books and general knowledge, I came across amazing people and podcasts on the internet like Abhijit Chavda, Radhakrishna Pillai that talk about great Indian history and personalities. I’m super intrigued by the amount of hidden and lost knowledge. I also understood the importance of “Sanskirt” as a language how it was a binding force of Indian civilization in the past. Learning “Sanskirt” is certainly one of my long-term goals.

Personally, 2021 was transformational in becoming an “Adult”. I was part of many family discussions where my opinion mattered. There were some hard moments for me as I wanted to man of integrity. I was always in a dilemma whether what I’m saying is right/ wrong. But, reading books, etc, helped me comprehend the true meaning of the right decision-making and meaning of “Dharma”.

I’ve also invested a good chunk of my time in coming up with an investment portfolio. I’m still not 100% happy with the process and mindset. I would like to spend more time fine-tuning my mindset and my “style” of investment. I realized that the nature of the internet and the ecosystem is about to change towards web3. Understanding the concept of web3 was crucial to me and I spent a considerable about of time learning the importance and possibilities of web3 and blockchain.

The day job work was good (not “great” though) but I was greatly appreciated by management and the team. I have worked hard to pursue my goal to become team-lead. The nature of my work has now changed a bit from just an individual contributor to a team leader. A new set of tasks are OKR discussions, engineering decision-making, etc. I was also elected as an ERG leader. It was a good learning experience. I got to learn about the challenges of community building. I also bootstrapped a team to develop a tool for my company called Integration API visualizer which was great fun and rewarding. I continued to work as a freelance developer alongside the day job.

One of the interesting aspects of 2021 is about increasing the number of income streams. I learned that 1 income stream is really close to 0. I’m happy I have developed 3 income streams and would like to grow them in the coming years.

Building a business empire is a recurrent dream. Every time I even think about it I have a burning desire to achieve it.

Finally, about the most important change in my life. My sister is getting married! I’m really happy for the couple. I’ve also received my Mtech completion certificate.

My Journey: 2020

2020 will definitely be one of the productive year for me. Ironically, that may be the most controversial thing I may say! First of all, I pray for all the people who faced hardships this year, I have been fortunate enough to have all basics covered so that I can focus most of my time working from home on the work. I worked from home for about 10months now! It’s been a mixed bag of events over the course of this 10 months…

First things first, I moved to a new job! It is a startup based out of Germany. It was actually a huge risk on my side to take a call to join a startup which just started operating from India. But right after I joined the company they broke the news that the company is being funded by a huge amount! my experience so far has been amazing! I’m learning a lot and got to work on stuff which I really want to! I was the first person virtually on-boarded in the company. For the most part I worked as a single developer in a project but it never mattered because the work was so interesting. My work for last 7 months has been recognised and I have been awarded as the top-performer. After just 7 months I’m given opportunity to start on another challenging project!

I have started meditation and spiritual process last year and this year was a clear progression. I have seen a lot of change in myself. I’m able to spend more time with myself. I was also able to read some books and knowledge material which more and more strengthens by beliefs. Through this practise I’m slowly realising that I’m just hesitating to express myself fully, Which I plan to work on next year.

Like I mentioned earlier this year has been very productive. I always wanted create a product. This year I was able to start 3 projects and complete them fully. It is great achievement and assures that I can be product developer. Among the 3, one is a freelance project which is an end-to-end ed-tech platform. The only reason I was able complete it along with M.tech preparation is because I wake up at 5AM. Waking up at 5AM is revolutionary for me. The fact that I complete most of my work even before most of the world wakes up gives me a huge sense of calmness.

I have been continuing on the new habits that I acquired in 2019 like sketching, reading Bhagavat Gita, practising yoga etc. I’m happy about it. Though I have sketched a bit I could not fully spend productive time but a stress relief. I bought IPad, that’s a new investment! Reading books and sketching became a lot easier.

Towards the end of the year, for the last couple of years I used to slack off and not be productive. But this year it was not the case. I was able to keep myself active and motivated all along the year. In hindsight, I credit it to meditation practise. I also picked up couple of on more habits or skills this year.

Speed typing – While attempting my MTech online exams I realised that my typing skills are not really that great. So, I started picking up typing practise in my free time during the work. From 20WPM I reached to 40-50WPM now. Now It’s just a time pass for me while I attend some boring meetings!

Equity Trading and investing – Since I switched my job I’m right now making some sizeable income. During the process of investment avenues. I found out that equity investment is the one of the important skills one must learn. I was always interested in understanding business. I started learning on how to value a company, value investing, swing trading etc. There is a lot of great content on this topic on YouTube or online for free. I also started reading “Intelligent Investor” book. So far, All I understand that is that there is a lot to learn and there is a lot of potential.

on closing note, This year has been one of the productive year of my life. There are a lot of things closing off this year which are started in 2020/ 2019. First in the list is my M.Tech. I also want to prove myself worthy of managing teams and building products at my work to get more opportunities. Learning about investment and making some successful investments is also a top priority. I realised that I’m always thinking about creating some online product. This year I plan on finding the right avenues and make some positive case studies. Personally, This was the year I witnessed the worst fight my parents had. This incident made me realise that there are not only ups but also very steep downs in life. It’s all about bouncing back!

My Journey: 2017

2017 has been a great year. A lot good has happened and definitely, this year is certainly start to many things and also end to some beautiful things too. This post is just a run down through all my ups-downs in this year and kind of like a report card.

The main difference between this year and any other previous years was that this year I had a resolution i.e create a digital presence. The medium I have chosen was Youtube (and Blogs). I still remember the enthusiasm with which I have created the first video. I’m happy with my progress till now. I have around 100 subscribers and 24 videos. I’m happy because I’ve produced videos only in 7months. If you are like what about the other 5months? Ans. There had been few awesome trips (work/personal) and a lot of procrastination.

I’ve released my first video on Jan 8, 2017. Since then as I already mentioned I have produced 24videos. I have learned a lot in the course. Honestly, The path was not pleasant. Many times my PC crashed, recorded videos in scorching 40c deg summer heat (as fan sound is disturbing), multiple double works. nevertheless, I consider all these as learning.

Meanwhile, I was doing my internship at Accolite Inc. and also my UG final semester. I finished my internship as well as the UG final semester almost about the same time. First, The UG is very dear to me. 4years in the same college forced me (just kidding.) to be friends with 6 amazing people. And apparently the long conversations and silly jokes in college cafeteria came to an end. I embrace that fact and shall cherish those moments for life.

I couldn’t spend much time in college in my final semester as I was doing my internship. The internship was a great start to my professional career. Accolite is a great place to work and some of the amazing and interesting people work there. Luckily, I got good opportunities to develop a product and in fact, I developed a whole new feature for it. And at that point of time that was big deal for me and a matter of pride. To the end of the internship, I was moved to another project which introduced me to Angularjs and web development. I always wanted to be a full stack web developer. Matter of fact, by then I was learning Angular2 on my own. 30th June was the last day of the internship.

By this time I got my results for my UG. I’ve graduated with flying colors and secured 80% (personally, a huge achievement for me).

3rd July was my first day of the full-time professional career. But this time en-route Delhi because it was the time for AU (Accolite University). AU is an intensive workshop style training program for AUers. There are a plethora of memories but I want to mention a few highlights. Every AUer is put into groups and given projects. Fortunately or unfortunately we got one of the biggest problem statement. TL’DR we have successfully completed the project and stand top 2 on the leaderboard. This was a great experience for me I learned a lot about myself and people around me. I understood my strengths and weaknesses. Besides the work, there has a lot happened personally also. Met lot of great and fun loving people. Traveled to Agra and Lansdowne, 2 great places. Certainly, ended AU with a bang! That was the first time I stayed so long away from home. but when I was leaving Delhi it was equally hard to leave as much I wanted to go home.

After AU I’m officially a working professional (wow! sounds very mature). But funnily I had no work just after the AU (at least it left like that after so much intense work). I read a lot of books at this time. Even if I want to I cannot remember what productive things I have done in those days but I do not regret as I learned a lot about people and how to deal with them(better way).

I went to Kerala with family in November. Kerala is a true “God’s Own Place”. Such mesmerizing beauty of nature definitely baffles everyone. Then another vacation to Mumbai with my college buddies. Mumbai is a great place and this was the first time ever I went on a trip without adult supervision. There is a lot I need to learn to become more mature. There are few(just a few!) things I’m certainly not good at, Need to work on them next year.

So, Where we are in the timeline of my journey? Ans. December.

In December, I was mentally laying out plans for next year. I’m sure things will not turn out the way we have imagined. But I believe we can exercise our brain to imagine better every time. As I initially mentioned 2017 is starting to many good things. I plan to end them really well the next year and keep making better quality videos and gain more expertise.

So, 2017 is ending! I’m sure I might have missed many details here. But on whole, I have covered as many highlights of the year as possible.

My new year resolutions,

1. Read more books (read 8 books in total in 2017)

2. Stick to one technology and gain expertise.

3. Grow as a better human being.

4. Obviously, produce better quality videos and have >1000 subscribers by 2018 end.

My First Interview.period

On 26th july 2016, Accolite came to our college for placements. Whole recruitment process was in a day. The day has began with a keynote presentation by one of the top ranked employee from Accolite. We were given brief about Accolite and its services.  Presentation session was finished by 11:30am. After short Q/A session we were asked to go to our labs for objective test.

Objective test has started at 11:45am. we had few technical difficulties due to which we couldn’t see the next question but timer was running. So, We were asked to logout of that session and wait till the problem is resolved. A new objective test was conducted and this time had no problem (always wonder how they managed to resolve the problem so quickly!). Nevertheless I did not get any aptitude questions this time but other technical questions are not easy as well.  We also had negative marking. Most of the questions were from geekquiz. I could solve a fair share a questions. After completion of the test we are sent to seminar hall to wait for the results. Within 20min we got our results and surprisingly out of 150+ candidates only 39 got shortlisted for next round. Second round was a subjective test.

Subjective test has started around 1:00pm. We were given a set of 3 questions and supposed to write code for it. I felt questions bit hard because I haven’t solved questions like that before. We were given 1hr time to answer all 3 questions. Questions I got are:

1. Given 2 arrays check whether 2 arrays are isomorphic when BST is constructed. They asked try not to create a BST.
2. Given sum S check how many possible ways are there to reach the sum S with 3, 5, 10.
3. Given an array which has digits ranging from 0 to 9. Find the minimum sum when all the elements of the array are made into 2 numbers.

They said correction of subjective paper might take a long time so meanwhile we had our lunch. After long 2hr we got out results. I was really tensed at that point of time. But luckily my name was the first. Then I told to myself that “You have come far enough to go back”. Initially we were said that we will be having 2 technical rounds followed by a HR round. Technical interviews quickly started and I was the one of the first people to go for technical round.

Technical Interview round 1:

First I was asked few basic questions like tell me about yourself, what is your project etc. Then we quickly dived into questions. Questions were fairly easy and I could solve them with minimum strain. Questions asked are:

1. Reverse a single linked list.
2. Find max element using stack in O(1) complexity.
3. Explain me about DFS algorithm.

Finally, I was asked to tell about my project which I completely screwed up! I couldn’t recollect technical terms and and other details. I came out and was sure that I lost the opportunity.

Technical Interview round 2:

This round was a nightmare to me. I was asked a matrix problem which I couldn’t get any answer. Then I was asked a linked list problem for which I could get the solution. Interviewer was really nice to me. Even though I am able to get optimal solution I was continuously motivated by him and keep my cool. I was asked to wait outside for the feedback.

questions asked:

1. Given mxn matrix, find minimum cost from (0, 0) to (m-1, n-1).
2. Addition of 2 linked list.

Technical Interview round 3:

This was supposed to be both HR and technical. I was asked a tree related problem which I could solve in 10min and write code in 5min. Interviwere liked my approach. Second question was about array. Then I was asked few basic questions. Finally we asked whether i had any questions for me ? I asked couple of questions and He asked me to wait outside for results.

After longest 45min in my life, whole panel came and said that they are thinking that out 5 candidates left we are positive about 3. But he said he needs only 2 people. He said he will choose by a chit game. I was really scared that I came this far and whether I get a job or not is depended on luck….? to be continued.

 

How do I learn something new ?

In computer science there is lot innovation going on. It is believed that technology is improving every second. In this day and age where there are tons of new things that you don’t know . Sometimes it becomes overwhelming. It is surely hard and unreasonable to pin point a specific technology. In my view , I have 2 keywords that motivate me to learn anything new, Curiosity and Necessity.

Not only computer science , anything like learning to play guitar definitely takes lot of time and effort. I try to schedule myself to make room for this. A blunt fact I have learnt is that curiosity is certainly needed to kick start the process of learning but it is not all it needs. Motivation to learn/put extra effort may die sooner or later but if you try to make learning a habit , you feel like there is something missing whenever you skip it .

There are numerous options to decide what to learn, for example , in mobile application development apart from mainstream application development software like android,IOS or windows the application development environments itself are huge in number. A good research and knowing pros and cons of every technology is equally important to start learning one.Internet is a great source ! But for a single technology there are tons of resources. After a good research , stick to one online resource to maintain the consistency.

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 you never lose, You either win or learn