In Pursuit of Wisdom

  Finished reading the newly published   No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention   by Netflix Co-founder   Reed Hastings   and Professor   Erin Meyer  (the author of   The Culture Map ) yesterday. I pre-ordered this book last month in anticipation and started listening as soon as it was available in Audible. This book narrates a fascinating view of the Silicon Valley giant Netflix's radical corporate psychology and culture. I got my share of shocks when I first read   Netflix Culture Deck   a few years ago for the first time, the document that was claimed by Facebook COO   Sheryl Sandberg   as   probably the most important document ever to come out of Silicon Valley . Before being hired by an ex-Netflix leader at Marqeta (Manish Pandit), I worked at Roku for one and half years which was a spin-off from Netflix. There a big chunk of my team-mates I worked day-to-day were from Netflix including my hiring manag...

Like many of you, I am looking forward to a better 2021. So happy new year! But I want to also acknowledge that 2020 brought some good things to me despite the Corona Pandemic across the world. While we are safe, many of our friends and relatives lost their near and dears during this pandemic. We are still in lockdown and counting days to get over this pandemic in the new year. I, along with my wife, son and daughter came back from 3 weeks of Bangladesh trip in the first week of January 2020. I am glad we could go for the trip in as the Coronavirus pandemic and eventual lockdown started within a few weeks of our return from Bangladesh.  It was so refreshing to see my parents, brothers and their families, and my in-laws along with my school/college/university/chess friends back home.   I successfully hosted an engineering meetup at Marqeta that many bay area engineers attended; it was a lively tech talk from  Roko Ruze on Cockroach DB  at our Oakland office.  Shu...

 My office has arranged for a virtual fun event called  Marqeta Talent Show  where people can demonstrate their different talents in a festive manner. I thought of hosting a simultaneous chess show with some of my fellow players of Marqeta Chess Club. When someone joins Marqeta, they need to say what is their superpower, usually something funny or some passion that they cherish. When I joined Marqeta, I claimed my superpower as the ability to play chess in 10 boards in parallel with 10 opponents, making each move in less than 10 seconds and win all the 10 games! Of course, I am not that good, specially if 1 or 2 of the opponents are seasoned players then I have no chance. But then, a superpower is supposed to be flashy or funny. So I gave it a try. Our SVP Brian Keilly was hosting the All Hands and told me he wants to test my superpower. Well, it's not easy to arrange a simul like this and we decided we will figure out a way later. I remember every once in a while Brian w...

  Last Tuesday Ahyan and I played the 5th and 6th round of Tuesday Night Marathon online over chess.com arranged by Mechanics Chess Institute. The games are live analyzed by FIDE Master Paul Whitehead and Abel Talamantez. After a nice win by Ahyan at 5th round he was jointly in second position with 4 out of 5 in the open section which is phenomenal at his age and rating. Ahyan and I joined the commentary by invitation from TD Judit Sztaray after the 6th round for a short time. Here are some excerpts from our games and the commentaries. The TNM newsletter for this round may be found here -  https://www.milibrary.org/chess-newsletters/931

  I have been thinking of learning Philosophy without going to a college or enrolling in Philosophy courses for some time now. Philosophy is such a vast topic that the biggest trouble for me was to figure out where to start, what are the major areas of Philosophy that I should focus on, and how to go about it within the limited time I have. Apart from my spiritual quest, I was very intrigued by  Jordan B Peterson 's mentions of  Friedrich Nietzsche  in one of the best books I have ever read  12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos . Some of my early attempts were watching the  Philosophy Crash Course  in YouTube (and planning to do these 47 videos another go in the next few weeks), reading  50 Philosophy Ideas you really need to know  by  Ben Dupre,  listening in audible  50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing: Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books  by  Tom Butler-Bowdon , and r...

  I have been fascinated while listening to and reading about the Universe since my childhood. But most of those readings have been random, organic in nature just like my readings on everything else -   science fictions , detective novels, history, biography,   cricket , soccer, and so on. The notable exception is Chess and Software Engineering which I have done pretty significantly in terms of   method and volume .  In 2015 I started reducing my overall time spent reading, learning, and playing chess (it was not an easy decision, believe me). That gave me extra time to focus on my pursuit of knowledge outside of my day job and family responsibilities. So I picked up first to understand religions and particularly Islam as I felt it's my duty to know in detail as a Muslim.  About 3 years  of reading, watching videos, enrolling in seminars on topics related to Islam, Comparative Religions, Atheism, and relevant topics - I felt like it's good enough for m...

1. Positive mental attitude 2. Self/Achievement motivation 3. What is Communication? 4. Communication and Listening Skills 5. Conflict Resolution 6. Leadership 7. Relationship Building 8. Negotiation and Meditation 9. Teamwork 10. Work Ethics

AHappyJob, an online portal for job-seekers, recently contacted me to ask a few questions around the challenges of leading engineering teams. They published a blog post with my answer about it here – The Challenges of Leading Engineering Teams What do you wish engineers understood the challenges their managers go through? My Answer:  When engineering managers are giving relatively high dev estimate for an apparently small task, they are not moving slow, they are adding time to account for the unexpected. When they are going to meetings after meetings, it’s so that you don’t have to. They can answer some of your questions, but they don’t have all the answers. Also, they crave feedback but rarely get it.

Earlier this week I finished  Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less  by  Greg McKeown . Essentialism is doing only what is important and essential while saying No to all the rest of the things that come to us. This book has made me think if I am doing too much with my limited capability and time. In fact, I am very sure I am doing too much and the book merely pointed out that to me in a crystal clear manner. The idea of essentialism is similar to minimalism, although I think essentialism has a more positive connotation to it. It's fundamental personal discipline and leadership quality. You may have also heard about doing smart work instead of hard work, which is also relevant to this. Greg tells us that the way of essentialists is to  (1) explore and evaluate, (2) eliminate, and (3) execute . With that in mind, I am thinking that I need to optimize my life for the following essential things -  family, health, profession, and knowledge . However, I am won...