I’ve been meaning to write more (actually just write) for a while now. I’ve read enough about the benefits of writing, and it’s time to test them out. This blog will just be a write-up of random things and will serve as a detailed “About” section for me.
I started working full-time as a software engineer in May 2022; it’s been three years since then. Back then I looked at my profession as just another thing I happened to be good at, and it paid well enough that retiring early seemed possible. Over time, this view completely flipped; I started liking the job more and more.
Initially the drive came from realizing I was good at it. The kick from finishing a task, doing it well, and the praise from higher-ups kept me going. Somewhere along the way I became obsessed with code structuring, smart abstractions, and newly released language features. I spent more and more of my free time reading anything software-related. By then I had concluded that I liked this profession and genuinely wanted to be good at it. I also realized I didn’t really understand how things worked under the hood: networking, operating systems, the basics. I was carried by my ability to guess and operate on surface-level information. I tried to fix this with some fundamental courses (shout-out to OSTEP and Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach). An opportunity to interview for a Production Engineer role at Meta gave me the urgency to finish them, though I failed the interviews.
I resigned from my first job last week. In fact, the break after this is what prompted me to start writing. The job taught me a lot. On the people side, I worked with teammates who were smart, nice, had high integrity, and were hardworking. It was an amazing experience; I never thought I would see all these qualities together. It has raised my expectations for the kind of people I want to work with going forward.
The job was remote at a small startup. It felt like a blessing at first: great pay, freedom to work on my own schedule, and high velocity. I was sure I could pick anything up from the Internet, and the warnings about missing guidance from senior engineers felt like a hoax. I was wrong.
First problem: missing business context. I was the only backend dev in India, and the rest of the team was in SF. As the product grew more complex, I increasingly felt clueless about my tasks.
Second problem: lack of mentorship. A super-passionate engineer might not need guidance (unlikely), but most of us do. My manager was great, yet the team was too small and too busy to mentor me.
After three years I quit, and so far I’m very happy with the decision. I plan to join an India-based company and work from an office.
On the technical side, Golang is the primary tool of my trade. I freakin love the simplicity of the language. I also enjoy the infra side of things; Terraform is my favorite tool, and Docker and Kubernetes are right behind. I wouldn’t recommend using Kubernetes unless you truly need it, but learning about it and running it in production is a great experience. I did a bit of React and didn’t like it much.
I now have good clarity about what I want professionally. In the wake of AI, I want to build the tools that power consumer-facing products. Being part of the platform and infrastructure behind the next big thing sounds perfect. I’ve learned that I don’t get much joy from non-technical tasks, even if they have big end-user impact. My joy comes from technically challenging work and appreciation from engineering peers.
On a personal front, I want more predictability and routine. I’m blessed with a loving relationship and want to make it stronger. I’m also working on reducing how much I desire; mimetic theory has been eye-opening.
Health-wise, I want a fit body and a positive relationship with food and exercise without letting health dominate my mind. Basically, I want to want less and feel more.
Fixing my attention span and reading more are also on the list. There are so many topics that fascinate me (human anatomy, history, astrophysics, religion, geography, math) and I want the patience to dive deep into them.
I hope I keep enjoying writing as I go. Can’t wait to see how this journey unfolds.