(00:00) all right hello welcome and Namaste thank you so much Pratyush for coming on this career Journey podcast it going to be a fun episode you have a inspiring journey of figuring out that you want to do Masters in USA and then doing that and then starting your journey with one of the US job and I think by now we know each other for about 68 months yeah and it’s been a fun fun Journey so far so with that I want to give Mike to you to share let’s start with what you do and what your typical day and week look like I am a software engineer at
(00:46) open BB Finance it’s a financial startup that’s based in us and so we designed the software called the terminal Pro that is a web based software for Equity analysts but mainly any professional that wants to explore the data and do some investment research for their form or for themselves so what I do is I work for the platform the platform is the software that powers the other software so it’s like the engine of the other softwares and so I’m a software engineer in that division so in my like daily to
(01:19) daily basis what I do is that let’s start with like sleeping I sleep at 500 a.m in the morning since I’m at the farthest end of the like employees because I’m in India right now and the other employees they are in primarily Europe or they are in the United States one is there in Canada so it’s kind of like a dynamic that I am on the further side and the person in Canada he’s on the further end so I have to wake up at night so that we can coordinate with each other if we have some issues so I
(01:51) sleep by 5:00 a.m. then I woke up at 11:00 a.m. so my day starts at like getting fresh and then like looking at the news in the morning what happening what’s the deal for the different like you you know the different subjects and then what I do is like to plan my day that I’m going to work on this particular issue that I have or this particular thing that I need to do today and I start blocking my time on that basis so I get ready and so I start around you would say 300 p.m.
(02:27) I start my work and then I keep working for like 7 to 7:30 it depends on the task at the hand I work till 7 to 7:30 so in between I take 15 minute breaks if I find that okay I can now take a break if I have done something and it’s working for that matter I just take a break and then after like 7:30 I’m free so I just go ahead and read some book or watch YouTube or think about something that I was thinking of think for a project or anything or talk to people on Twitter then at 8:30 I have my daily so the daily is where we are asside like we
(03:08) have to tell about our work whatever we did in the day and so and forth and then after that if we have a meeting somewhere at around 9:30 or 10 that’s what I do in a 10 and then again I go on our daily Twitter space that we have so I go there I talk to some people it acts as a refresher for me throughout the day and then when that ends by around 12: or 1 a.m.
(03:36) in the morning I go and work again so that’s the time at the end where I am still looking at the work that I have left and I still think about what I have done during the day and how I can manage this task better for the next day and so that’s what I do till like 4: or like 3:30 a.m. in the morning then I go back and watch some episode like a TV series or something currently I’m watching nucho and then I go back to sleep so that’s how my typical day looks like I have never seen somebody who would start watching an episode at 4:00 a.m. until 5
(04:08) like this is the weirdest it’s actually a trick it’s actually a trick what I do is that when it’s night at around like after the Twitter space ends I go and turn off my light because when the light is turned off now you know that okay no light is there so you cannot like wake up for a long time so it kind of like induces that sleepiness and so when I go back and go to my bed I’m going to watch I know how I’m going to watch I’m just going to go and lay down and then I’m going to put my tablet over there and
(04:39) just like start watching it and I know the moment I do that after 30 or 40 minutes I’m going to fall asleep so it’s like a trick that I have that’s what I do so I would watch and I simulated your mind yes right and the other thing that I notice is you have pretty good time management habit around making the list and time blocking and then you have certain blocks that are kind of daily like daily standing or some kind of meeting so is this something that you’ve been following for a long time or or how
(05:13) did you come up with it actually would say that it’s been like a habit for a long time since I was in school so it’s kind of like a roller coaster ride I would say since I was in school when I was in fourth class I had this urge to like you know do some more works I had to study hard because there were things that people understood very well and I did not and it kind of made me feel that I’m lacking in some subjects I’m not by any means a very good I would say student in terms of getting marks I like
(05:43) to study for the purpose of you know applying something but if it’s to study for marks I cannot do that so I thought I was lacking somewhere so I started getting up around 4: or 4:30 a.m. in the morning so when I was in class 4th I started doing this and so it became a habit to wake up in the morning early and like go back to sleep at night like pretty early and so after that what happens is that in the mornings when you are awake you see that the whole world is quiet it’s very Serene it’s calm so
(06:13) you can like manage your time better when you are up so early so that’s what I used to do and back when I was in like my undergrad I had the same thing because we had classes at like 9M in the morning so before like going to class I used to play basketball so to play basketball what I would do is like wake up before time at around like 6:00 a.m.
(06:35) go for basketball at 7:00 a.m. play till like 9:00 a.m. and then like get ready for classes and go for back and forth so it would like really depend on my schedule of the classes that I had so I manage my time around those things and to be really honest it has worked well for me so far yeah I mean many people just start their day and then let things dictate what whatever they are doing throughout the day yeah yeah so because I’m excited with this I want to get even more deeper do you use some kind of a technique to
(07:12) identify what’s the most important thing for that day or week actually that’s a good question so before my like week starts when I say week I would say like the working day which is Monday the Dreadful Monday when it starts what I do is that before that that I have my weekend and on weekends I go and look at my tasks like very thoroughly so what usually happens is that my Sprint is of two weeks so every wedness day there’s a status update and like on the alternate weeks on wednessday is when we get a task
(07:48) assigned so when our task is assigned that meeting starts at 9:30 p.m. at night at my time so what I do is like when we get our test assigned and everything I go on that day I do not do any programming I just review whatever the task I have I talk to people that if you can you know let me know much better what you think is the right step and what are the Achieva bles we need to have and what would you consider that this ticket is done so I go and ask those people to do that on that day and then when I have done that I go and like
(08:21) reread the things I go back and forth It’s like that I am going through breath for search I just go through each and every file make a like uh logical explanation in my mind how it’s working and how I can fix it by talking to people this is for the task that you will begin that is Sprint or for the Tas that you just completed in the last two weeks no that this is for the task that will be starting in the next R okay yeah so what I do is like that’s how it happens I go and do that for like wednessday and Thursday this is what I’m
(08:53) doing the whole day thinking about other task like go each and every task thinking about theu ofu going to the you know going through chat DPT or Google or stack Overflow I actually use chat DPT less I still prefer stack Overflow more I go and read the official documentation I try to find that if I get that I try to experiment with stuff just so I know what’s going on and when I’ve done that I just start blocking my time that okay for the next day I’m going to do this for the next day I’m going to do this
(09:25) and this is what I need to achieve so I have a very clear goal in my mind that I need to achieve this I need to at least be on this level so that I can C it a day because to me what happens is is that like I can tell you right now it’s 11 a my time and for the last you could say 24 hours I haven’t slept I haven’t slept till the last day is 1 p.m.
(09:50) I haven’t slept for like today at all I was working late in the night doing some like coding and so for me it’s like that I have to like make my brain sleep because I just keep on thinking and thinking and thinking what I can do what I cannot do and so sometimes it takes a tall on yourselves as I am the coming week is the one when the Sprint will be ending so no the next week after that yeah so the thing is that random question yeah random question how is your Sprint completion kind of rate or how will you do with your Sprint
(10:27) commitment I complete 95% of the test if they are well defined and if they’re well within my range because my my thinking is like I suffered a little bit I had a little less in the last month I suffered a little because I cannot push bad quality code because in our software is open source it’s you can see my like commits every day so the problem is that whatever I do is going to be in the public space and in the public domain whenever you have the open source software if something breaks you you will have to like you know you going
(10:59) have to block your time these are things that you are not aware of or even if you are aware of you are not aware how you will fix this so it’s something that you that you can say is like the uncertainty so you have to always like account for the uncertainty in your work and so what I do is that I always strive for Quality code to me quality code is more important than like completing the task so right now what I do is like I try to make it so that whenever I’m doing something I can at least say that hey
(11:28) this is like a workaround thing but this will be fixed you don’t have to worry about it this will still work for the time being and we can like always iterate over it because how good is a software like how good can good be so that’s how I think man we just explore a couple of thing right that when the task is assigned to you I mean the task is not assigned you pick the task and then you immediately break it and then you gather as much as information that you can and then you tracking yourself toward the completion
(12:02) and you didn’t sleep last couple of last two days because you are too much into that challenge or problem or whatever feature that you’re building right and then on top of that you have your own drive to write the quality Cod to to be conscious about what people will think who are looking at your code and these are all different aspiration which is beyond your man and your company right because you’re not doing all these because your company said so or your manager said so right you’re not trying
(12:38) to gain their appreciation it is your internal drive that is making you do all this yeah I believe in code ownership so whenever I’m writing a code even if it’s like you know if I’m working on someone else’s code I go and as the person like if I am tagging the person before that I go and tell that hey I made this change you know I did not understand if they like most people don’t leave comments or anything I would say that and the the people mostly agree yes we do not leave comments we programing I leave a lot of
(13:07) comments I like leave comments there are some Easter eggs as well that if I’m naming a variable something if I name a variable say Jedi I’m say yeah the dark side is always good or something like that or I will leave a quote random quote out of nowhere so in my quote you can find things like these and so what happens is that if I am not finding comments in someone’s code I’ll go and personally comment it because I’m in the process of like understanding what they are doing so I will like just write it
(13:35) and then I I will ask the person that what you thought when you were writing this code and you will say this and I’m like okay noted it down and so before I do something I go for if I modify someone else’s code I’ll ask them so that you know they don’t yell at scream at a later stage that hey you did this this was not supposed to be done like this so I do that and then when I like modify it and then I leave comments and everything to so my in it drive is to make it as good as possible because I think that somebody
(14:07) else over there would be like me who’s trying to understand the code but he would not understand why it was written there in the first place code is supposed to be readable for me but the comments they should indicate why it was used like what was the intention to put it not to write what it does you can pretty much understand what it’s doing for for that you have the like function do string and everything the comments should be there to indicate why it was there the intention behind using that line of code because there are multiple
(14:35) ways to doing the same thing so before we move to the next segment I wanted to ask you you’ve been here for like two years now correct yeah in last two years if you want to share some exciting project or code or module or feature whatever you have been built that you found like one of the most exciting thing that you’ve done I mean there has been a lot of code I pretty much code every day it’s a lot of code that I have but there is one that’s like online it’s the one I did recently it’s
(15:11) creating the like documentation for the website so like if you go online you can go to the open BB Finance repo please star And subscribe to it so we’ll do it yeah please do so when you go there there’s in the website folder there’s a file called generate platform V4 Mal what it essentially does is that it takes in the functions that are already defined in our code and you know the function parameters the fields we are using pantic which is a library that allows us to like Define the fields for our data so it takes in those structure
(15:50) it takes in that pantic structure it takes in the output so those are the classes and it generates a read me file which is like hosted on the website of open BB for the platform and so I had the task I would say I am very grateful to my colleague he like asked me do you want to do it I’m like yeah and he’s like it’s a challenge I’m like great I’ll do this so what it does is like I created everything from the scratch in it so it was a m code it was just there for the sake of like do getting things
(16:25) done since we ship fast so my internal F like my first thing was that there were a lot of imports so I saw that there was a particular import do string barer so do string passer is used to pass the dog strings I did not want to do that so I remove that external dependency and redu the internal dependencies by 60% so my intrinsic thinking was to make it fast and that is by removing the internal dependencies a lot and then making the code more modular more structured and then making it more readable so that people understand what is going on so I
(17:02) Ved on it for like a week and until the very end I asked people to like give feedback and like suggest me things they want things like that and when it was like I thought it was perfect right now I simply went ahead and mered it and I was I was scared it was something that has to be deployed in DOS so for deploying it to dogs it has to beers to develop first so I went and saw that okay let’s see how it deploys in the production when I saw pretty much I was very relieved first of all but I was very happy because that code that I have
(17:38) written is working perfectly it’s doing what it’s supposed to do but it’s making the dogs much much better than the previous version and it was a big work it was a big task I wrote around 1,000 plus lines of code in it what was the technology the technology is nothing particular I would say it’s mostly you could say we have internal Library so we are using fast API and we are using pantic so in particular the technology is basically like using those things and then like using functions that are able to extract
(18:12) that particular you know file structure so for the classes you can get the like you know if you are using pantic it gives you the model schema of the fields in the class so what I would do is like I would use a function to get me all those fields for a particular you could say provider provider in this case I mean the data source like it’s coming from this website or that website so I would get all these feeds and then it’s a matter of like clever data engineering and like doing clever manipulations so
(18:41) by that logic i’ would say I am a good data engineer because the work that I did was to create a very specific file for documentation called the reference. Json fire so it’s a structure that holds the data for making the documentation and so I would first generate the reference file when that’s done you can do everything with that so I had to like at night I would go and sit and see how I wanted the structure based on the older documentation that we had I went ahead and I deviced a structure that I
(19:15) wanted everybody loved it and I think now we are going to create our own API spec so that is my current task for this print is to use it for the other products that we have in our pipeline which is the terminal V4 and the platform C so it’s supposed to be something that we would scale up to be used for other products and not only the documentation that we have right now got it got it yeah one last question on this when you started this project did you do some kind of design some kind of activity before you start writing the
(19:50) code this code in particular yeah I wouldn’t say like any specific activity or anything I mean I just went and saw and then like when I saw the code I was was an existing code so you had the the idea of what that be what has been done yeah I saw the code but I then then I saw the code when I first started using that previous version of the code it asked me to install a dependency when it did that I’m like okay one red flag gone okay one point less then I started using it and then I so it’s only dependent on the do string
(20:31) that we are generating for our functions I’m like okay second flag you can get the same data and you should not use the to Strings that are generated because it’s a parallel process the platform is the one that is generating the other products so it’s not I wouldn’t see that as a very good thing that I have to use the do strings second refed flag then the overall structure of the code not very clear no comments everything too many like Ric statements and nothing in particular I’m like okay so when I
(21:04) looked at that I was like okay I’m not going to look at this code I’m just going to redesign everything that I have on my end and so I like completely cleared that file I deleted that file I’m like okay new file in progress so the only thing that I did was to use that file to generate the new files for the documentation we using docusaurus oh yeah that’s a technology that we use for the talks I forgot to tell so for docusaurus you have to create the markdown files and the Json files that are going to you know place the place
(21:36) those particular files in a order and so what we do is like we place the files in a particular order for me it’s alphabetical so alphabetically you can get it that okay you want the price for crypto it starts from C it’s there you want the price of an equity you can get you can go to E and you would find it like that so the markdown files I generated from there but then I never looked back at the code because I wanted to see how the files are being generated which is the main thing that I have to generate and docus would take care of
(22:06) the other things and so that’s what I did right awesome so all right let’s switch gear slightly I want to talk about two things number one how did you get this job and before that you have done or you have attended New York University so let’s start there how did that idea come like why you decided to go and do Master do a degree from there yeah yeah oh it’s actually a good question I I mean it makes me go back to my like Childhood Days my uncle he’s been in the US for a long time he has been there
(22:48) since 2002 or 4 I guess so I was very young at that point of time and so he went like he went like at that point of time so the thing is that when I saw him he would come from the US and he would get me things I got my PlayStation Portable because of him and I’m a you could say I’m a gadget GE I love gadgets very much but I don’t love gadgets just for have like owning them I love gadgets for what I can do with them and so when I was young I used to watch these cartoons or TV shows and I would see that people in the US they
(23:23) have so many like you know things with them they have these resources at their disposal I fell in love with the way they had the resources and they had the capacity to do things that simply I could not even imagine in India at that point of time since I if I had to like get a sensor or anything I would have to like go online even like having internet access is like I did not have internet access until I was in class fifth because my uncle came and he wanted to do his work so we got internet installed in our home up until
(23:56) at that it was like going to internet cafes where you would not like get so much time to do stuff and so by that time you would be like by that logic you would be limited to doing stuff that you wanted to do freely so in essence when that happened I got to know about the you know world I would go to YouTube and see oh there’s a website great oh there’s this great oh I can do this nice and then you know I’m very curious by mine so I would just like go up and like start seeing things so I’ve seen like
(24:31) Google evolve when it would not give complete like it would not give correct results and now it’s like damn good I’ve seen Google from that time and I have like you know used Google for specific queries that we have and I’ve done that and Wikipedia I used to see Wikipedia YouTube a lot and go to instructables.
(24:52) com hacker.com and I would just be mesmerized oh wow all these projects you could make because you had Radio Shack you had you had events you had so much stuff right right and I’m from a small city in India called kpur kpur is famous for its leather products worldwide but we did not have those things not even in school so I could barely do something if I even wanted to I would be like okay if I have to do this I have to either wait for a long time or ask my father and it would cost a lot of money so I cannot
(25:25) simply afford to do things like these and so I no I want to share I’m so tempted to share at this point I’m from hosangabad uhuh so my my childhood up to 10th grade was in hoshangabad and I like to create these electronic circuits in in those time it created a clap switch that my niece loved so much like whenever she would come to our house that’s one activity she would do entire day so I used to do that but for getting the component for that I would go order and then wait for a week sometime three weeks to get that
(26:06) component and then try it and then I would find something is missing and then another two weeks of weight so I have I have experience the pain that you talking about exactly exactly the the resources at hand and so like then I came to my undergrad when I started attending my undergrad college but that time be had things at our disposal the inter it was there there were websites that were like selling products and so it was a trusted website from where you could get parts and we discovered bang good and we discovered a way to get
(26:38) products for free from bwood basically like getting refunds for products they were working but we would just like you know make the boxes look like we would like scan the pictures of the boxes and like click them in a way that it would look that they have arrived damaged but they were not and so we would get like you know refunds for products so I’m we’ve done things like that and now we would I mean I I go back and think like what a silly thing like it wouldn’t even cause that much in today’s salary
(27:09) and everything that we have so now exactly so I have done a lot of that but when I got into undergrad I started to see the world from a different angle I went and I saw that I’m not now a free bir because now I can pursue what I like I have always been an engineer at heart and for where did you do your Bachelor my bachelor where did you I did it from lovely professional University it’s in Punjab on jalanda Deli GT road yeah so I did it from there it’s a good University it has great infrastructure especially
(27:45) for people who want to like just study and get a job it’s prly basically a very good University for those reasons my my particular interest was not doing job my interest has always been research and development because from a very young age I like to you know see things make things my own customize them myself learn about the you know deeper impacts of those things so because of that I taught myself do you know when I was in class 8 and in class 9th I bought the book for operating system that is taught in Bachelor second year it’s the gold
(28:18) standard for operating system books it’s called Albert silver shards he’s the author and so we call it the Dinosaur book because it has dinosaurs on it that and so I got that book and I completed it within a year so I knew about operating systems I knew about Hardware I have been programming since the age of six and I have been making robots since I was in class fourth by like you know getting those dpdt switches and like soldering them and then like you know to a motor driver and then using them to
(28:47) control the robot in those plastic boxes so I’ve destroyed a lot of plastic boxes for that reason so I got started with robotics when I was in school and then when I went up the ladder when I came in class 12 I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to be I wanted to be in research and development I wanted to make things just for the sake of you know having fun but also at the time I had the ambition to understand that I want to do something that helps humans or something that helps people not necessarily it’s
(29:21) like you know helping people in general but like some it helps professionals or something like that it gives you you know it kind of like an Underdog thing and then I did my bachelor when I went there I met a couple of great people and I was the head of the organization that was for robotics it’s called risk so I became aead with my best friend one of the co-heads and it was in my second semester so that was pretty young for me to be like handling a robotic organization that is the oldest technical organization in my University
(29:55) and started making robots participating in competition so I got a lot of mentorship from my I got a lot of mentorship from the other students my seniors basically so I’m very I’m very grateful for to them to like teach me about things so I used to learn about designing from my mechanical senior I used to learn about circuits from my electronic senior I was pretty good in computer science so I would do all the programming for which I didn’t need any special instructions it was just passion and willing to learn things and willing
(30:26) to explore like taking the risk to explore and do things and then at that point of time I started watching in American TV shows more so I I stumbled upon Big Bang Theory I can say and I think many people who have watched Big Bang Theory will say that it is one of the TV shows that inspires you to be in the research and development to be a scientist or an engineer for any G like it is a very inspiring show because of the way they present things you know it makes it look yeah I really like that Siri show in which they actually treat Siri as a
(31:07) person was fantastic episode oh yeah yeah yeah when when Raj goes and sees that hey Siri is a person oh I can shoot my shot with that so yeah for me the funniest episode is the one when Chon is like you know he has to have lunch with his best friend and then he goes on and has lunch with the penny and so he’s like you know he is like the whole day just making things work because he has eaten a lot and he does not have the capacity anymore and so he has to lie which is he he never does that he never lies and he has to do that so he’s like
(31:40) you know shifting his way out of things so I started watching that and then I was like yes I want to pursue my like passion I want to be a robotics engineer I want to be a good engineer I love hardware and software both it’s not like that I’m a CS engineer so I should only love software I love software and Hardware both and I was making robots so it like fued that passion and then I started working in my fresher in my fresher year I started working you know yesterday we was talking about my daughter’s robotic Club yeah and robotic
(32:14) competition you know you can start a club in India for this exact same program and they have helped is starting clubs in India this team has done and many many other people does it so maybe maybe let’s let’s remember the next season is start in August September August actually August time frame at that time let’s see if you are interested then this team can help you start a club there oh yeah definitely I I would love it you can start with five 10 people kids high school and and middle school kids yeah exactly I would
(32:56) love it I mean yeah that’s the thing that when I saw these things you be amazing I I would love to I I mean I love doing that I teach my uncle’s son like he asked me for stuff so I teach him that hey you see Minecraft you can do this on Minecraft you know you can go and like do this on a keyboard you can go and do this stuff so I try to explain him it I try to explain things to him as much as I can in the most simplest of terms the most difficult of things so like coming back to the topic yeah that’s what I did I started as as a
(33:29) research assistant also for my professor so at that point of Time Machine learning had picked up and data science was already a like field that everyone wanted to be in it was it is called the sexiest job of the century but I don’t think that’s the case anymore everyone is now going to be an AI engineer for I wanted to be in machine learning and not data science since I loved programming the algorithms more than like using them so I started working with my professor and we were working on neurop fuzzy
(33:57) systems that’s like making neural networks with fuzzy logic so it’s kind of the System supposed to make AGI possible which is artificial general intelligence so I started working with that and for three years so for the next three years I worked as a research uh assistant to him and then when it was my second year when it was time to understand stuff about jobs and everything I was like no I’m not going to pursue a job here I don’t have the scope here I I want resources the resources are not here I would be called
(34:32) an ml engineer over here but I would not be getting the pay I deserve I would not be getting the work I is so the work that is there it’s either in the US or Europe so in Europe I saw that they had more jobs for data engineers and in the US they had more jobs for machine learning Engineers so I chose that I should pursue my masters and that should be in the US so I chose us and when it came to universities I went and saw what universities had what professors like what subjects and everything and so I applied to a couple of them I got
(35:11) selected at at around six universities or seven universities and I got you were a second you said you you were a second year at that point or third year at that point no when I started working as a research assistant I was in second year so I was in my you would say junior it’s called Junior I think no it’s called sore so I was in my sore year when I started working as a resource assistant when I was in my junior year that’s when I started looking about the universities and everything okay and that’s and
(35:45) that’s when I like decided that I wanted to pursue my masters in the US because they had the resources and everything so I started looking at the universities where I thought I could go into covid happened and so they stopped the use of G which is good for me I did not have a very good G score because I do not like to study for you know marks it makes me ous and so I got a little boost because of that I could say unironically and I applied to n BYU I was of the opinion that okay I can apply they are giving me a fee like they are
(36:20) giving me an application fee wer it’s fine and they wouldn’t select me it’s and they selected me for masters in computer engineering I for masters in computer science but they selected me for computer engineering so I went ahead and saw okay these are the subjects that I can take and they look pretty good and I also was of the opinion that they they might introduce some good subjects later on and they did so when that happened I chose NYU because my uncle lives in New Jersey so it was close for me to go and see my uncle it was New
(36:52) York New York has always been the place that I like wanted to see that whenever I would go in the US New York would be the place I would want to be in and it’s sort of all worked out it’s sort of worked out I went to New York University started my masters I went to the tendon engineering school it’s a damn hard school for for all that matters it’s a damn hard school they like you know they suck the energy out of you their subjects they are so demanding but they make you learn so much within a short
(37:24) span of time so I had to adjust myself to that I did that I was stupid that I took too many difficult courses so my first course that I took over there was like computer architecture where I had to design a basically a CPU I had to like do that as an assignment with my friend and and then I saw the output I was like dude we just made a CPU a small CPU he was like yeah and it was fun so I cherish that part of my life that I went to New York for my masters it did help in a couple of things because whenever people ask me I can just say that yeah I
(38:02) went to New York for my masters it’s the same school that swent for the other people who are in movies and everything man so you just cover your high school aspiration converting that into the engineering and then you master what a journey and you just followed your passion see that you have some kind of ability to to understand your inner Drive I noticed that when we was talking about your current work and how what drives you I noticed it there and then I I saw the glimpse of that when we was talking about your your
(38:42) education Journey yeah why is that my inner drive my inner drive I have been like when I used to think about robots and I would watch movies and I see robots like something that act like humans they act like humans they do things like humans I would just ask myself what makes a human human what makes me a human I think about things in that sense like you know there are genders and everything so I think about something more deeper I think about the soul does the soul have a gender is it like all this determined or is something
(39:20) that gets determined later what is the core aspect even in Hinduism we have the concept of like you know the Atma the soul it goes away and this is just a you know carrier for the soul the body so it decays it goes back where it came from to ganga so I think about stuff in that sense a lot so when I used to see your robots I would think to myself my inner drive has to be understanding what a human is and then when I am able to understand what a human is I’m able to understand what I am because it gives me the idea about
(39:55) different people why people choose to do the thing they want to do you know there are people who don’t want to do anything there are people who want to do many many things there are people who only want to do things when people ask them to do things so it’s and then there are people who want to do XYZ thing but then they don’t do anything yeah yeah they couldn’t do it I mean I I I I personally been to a phase where I want to do really good but didn’t do anything like I couldn’t do anything I mean I gone
(40:26) through multiple phases I see so many people who have the potential who have the desire but then for whatever reason they don’t do anything even though they know exactly how to do it yeah yeah yeah I have been through that P not like you but I have been through it a little what I observed is that I would keep that spark alive in me I would not let that spark die because if there’s a spark I can always use that spark to create a fire but if I don’t have the spark the fire dies out and that’s basically been
(41:02) my goal the entire life is to keep that spark alive and what that spark is the spark is to help people it’s to help my country it’s to make the people of India like you know more technologically advanced like not I would say that’s not like a goal goal thing but the goal here is to make people understand that not everything has to be one-sided not everything has to be like that you can be kind and human at that point of time and you can also do stuff what you want so I do stuff for the heck of doing it I
(41:36) just like to do it I want to prove to myself that yes I am a good programmer no matter what I can learn about stuff even if it looks like that it’s something very difficult I I don’t shy away from like going and exploring it because I would see that at the end of the day if I knew nothing I would know even 2% I would know some something that something matters a lot to me I don’t care what anyone else says it matters a lot to me 100% let’s quickly connect the dot between your Master’s and after that how
(42:11) did you get this job yeah the job so to anyone who is going to expect that I give lead code or I gave a DS interview no I did not give any of those nothing I just proved I am not a fan of those things it was a good principle for some companies it’s not anymore my work involves data engineering so I use like data structures in my day-to-day life so I have to device like rever data structures and like use functions and programs to make sure that those data structures are uncovered on a very optimized level so I just proved to my
(42:52) work by going to the repo the question is how I stumbled upon that repo I was asked by the CEO as well during my one-on-one with him before I was hired so I told him that I was looking for a tool I have been interested in finance so I was looking for a tool where I could get the data I want for doing my machine learning project and that to for free finance data is not free like and getting access to like even little a good data for finance is difficult and then you when you want to get that data you have to like use their apis and
(43:25) everything so if I wanted to connect to like three or four data sources I would have to like learn the three or four data libraries it’s not a problem to do that but it’s a problem to like get the data from each and every one of them and Club them together it makes your code a little messy so I went and like found out about open BB and then what I did was like I went ahead and I downloaded the software I got some problems so I told the team that I found these problems but me being me I don’t like to
(43:52) wait and like you know I don’t like to wait for Solutions if I don’t get a solution I’ll just go and like try to fix it myself that’s how I like to be I like it handson so I went ahead and I saw I was like okay python great pandas pandas is good I am a master at pandas I can brag about that I I have done complex pandas like manipulations and I had the code as a image from my friends and he’s like dude you did this this is damn amazing so I saw that these were that there were function and everything
(44:28) and I saw the problem by debugging it I just went ahead and I was create I created a pull request that hey it fixes this problem have you encountered this problem they like yeah it’s quite a lot that people encountered I was like I been through it and I found a fix for it and they said cool so I like I did not have a j job at that point of time I was still looking for a job M and there had been some like incidents in my family where I personally where I was like totally Fed Up of coding I was like okay I don’t know if I want to code anymore
(44:58) but just so that I wanted to give it a like a last CH what I did is that I thought to myself okay let’s give a last chance and like just do this for fun so I used to wake up in the morning and treat it as a night to like a 9 to5 job go ahead see the problems doing my project create a full request if I find any issues or if there are issues that other people face and I know how to fix them and so for this specific project or for any project no for this specific project I did this and when I did this at I used to do this in my morning and
(45:34) the person at the night Who and the person in that point of time would be in like the US and at night he would see that there was a pull request linked for a particular issue and so my CEO currently Dr James masck he’s a great guy he would see and he would tell me that dude I go to sleep and I always knew that there’s going to be a pull request from you any any day of the week there is going to be a full request from you at like 10 or 11:00 p.m.
(46:03) my time and I don’t know why what you are doing so I just have to like before I sleep I have to go and check out your PR and I get scolded for that at that point you did not know that they could offer you job yeah you was just doing it because you wanted to do yeah yeah yeah I I had no idea this turn into a job yeah I was using it for my project I had like I was three so I created a python rapper for a Library called defy Lama defy Lama is a library that like tracks the def data they have very good dashboards but they
(46:34) don’t have an official python Library so I created an API for it it has like I checked yesterday it has 12,000 Stars it I created it last year I published it on pip it has 12,000 downloads not star sorry it has 12,000 pip downloads at this point of time and I’m amazed and like around 540 downloads on Anaconda so it’s a big I could say it’s for success I never thought it would be that famous yeah so I was looking to like you know make it a public thing that okay people can use this library and I can get same
(47:08) a little so I went and I saw that software and I saw that I could integrate my own library but then I saw they had already integrated I was like okay fine I can just go and see if they are updated or not and I used it for my software I use it for my project actually and I would just go and find problems and fix it because I was suing it for myself and I would see people had faced these same issues and I did not have a job and I did not anticipate that they would hire me and they said okay we will hire you after two months they said
(47:39) okay we will start you as an intern and if you do good work we’ll hire you but when I became an intern I knew I was going to get hired because at that point of time he had started working on the platform and since I knew everything about the platform from the top down how it worked I had an idea of the very basic project that was going so it would give me an edge so I’m the person like who’s the junior most at the company I’m the only Indian at my company only person from India and I am well aware of each and everything that
(48:13) is happening with the platform like how each and every code file works and so that is like a very good you could say like that’s an edge that I have and so and so like when that happened I was pretty amazed because I when this gave me an internship I was also working as an intern at another company I had got an internship but they said it would be till December and then we will offer you full-time subjective to your performance and I got work as a data engineer at a software at a robotics company in India
(48:47) it’s called moo it’s based in Mumbai my end sister used to work there so I got a job as a data engineering intern over there so I used to use uh Python and SQL for my day-to-day task and then I used to work at night for the for my current company so I was like doing you could say 80 hours per week and I would be like you know my my day would be like you know waking up getting the job done for the Indian company taking a break for an hour going back and doing the job for the US company sleeping and then
(49:25) repeating the same pattern till Monday to Friday wow and Saturday I would just sleep Saturday would be the day I would sleep Saturday would be the day I would sleep and Sunday would be the day I’m thinking okay what to do for the next week and then when they gave me the job I was like okay I’m leaving because I wanted to work at this company where I found like colleagues who could you know help me become a better developer it was about stability it was about learning from the best people and my colleagues
(49:55) they’re so good they helped me so much think about things I talk to them about stuff I voice my disagreements in a very positive way they take it positively the feedback and we have this banter that when we talk about things we want to see what the software is looking like and how good it can be what’s a good software rather than saying that hey you are wrong I’m right or that I am wrong and you are right it’s nothing like that I love that with my colleagues they’re superb now PR at some point um I’m kind
(50:28) of feeling the passion for robotic which I don’t know if this job has or not but at some point I’m thinking that that part will come and one thing that I can attest I can say that there are so many turns that your career takes and as long as you remember the the reason why you are here what drives you it will take you to the the direction and it’s typically 30 40 years long like career is 30 40 years yeah so you will find that and I think I I will connect you with some of the team members and just talk to them about
(51:12) starting a team in India yeah definitely I would that can fill some of some of your fulfillment Bucket from from helping some kids robotics yeah definitely we need people for robotics robotics is so cool because unlike the unlike the software that you create and run on your computer for robots you can program the software it would like you could see the things in real life like it can you can make it like you know if you touch it you can make it like hold your hand it’s so cool you can see that stuff in real life my
(51:46) my I would require one coach one or two coach and then couple of mentors and you will be an amazing coach I would love to I mean thank so much for the like the opportunity to even have that I would love it all right so I think we are about time I will have last three questions for you by the way I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation I I I know you for six eight month but I saw some completely different glimps and I’m I’m eager to share that with everyone with whenever this episode will be released in couple of weeks so I wanted to ask
(52:27) you is there any question that I have not asked but you want to answer I think you asked about me and that’s good I would say that there’s nothing left there are a lot of question honestly that anyone can come up but I think what I would says that not as a question but as a person I would say that to all the people who are going to PA this never never think that you are lesser never think you are greater keep building keep working and never forget why you started it in the first place like never let the spark die there might
(53:02) be situations circumstances where you are not having the luxury to even think about these things I can understand or I may not but never let that spark die keep that spark alive somewhere even if you like sleep just go back to sleep thinking about that stuff it might make you feel sad or anything but at the end you will also understand that that spark is alive within you and you still have the you know you still can must the courage to go and pursue that thing awesome there’s so many people is struggling to get their first job you
(53:38) have you got you found your first job and then you you you found the internship you found the job and you you’ve been in that job for two years any message to the them say that if you want to get a job just for the sake of getting a job it depends it’s a strategy game it’s not a number game it’s it’s not a numbers game anymore you have to strategize you have to talk to people you have to get things done so that you can get your foot on the door the problem is not to get a job at a company
(54:09) you like the problem is to get a foot in the door when you have that you can always move up from that ladder you can always like switch places but you need to at least be in that position of power to leverage that thing and then when it comes to having a job no job is going to reject you if they see that you have the passion you have the skills the you know the mental capacity to like handle the task at hand you have to convince them that yes I am the best man for this job and to do that particularly for like the
(54:46) Cs brand you need to be very passionate about stuff that you write you need to be you know you need to own your code so that you cannot blame it on people that hey it’s because of yous breaking you need to own your Cod one thing and then you need to be passionate and keep on learning that’s the third point that you need to keep on learning our job is like not secure at all I’d say that I our job is always at a risk of being you know replaced so you always need to keep learning and keep upskilling yourself in the computer
(55:16) science and if it’s like any other place for example any other engineering P I think it would be the same thing Al together but yeah strategize don’t just apply to, jobs per day or something and this was a power pack episode thank you so much PR for coming on this episode I thoroughly enjoyed your journey there’s so much excitement so much passion so much drive thank you thank you so much sir I love da