Naked man

Tech careers have become about perception management. Instead of a nerd who loves software, the best presentation and reference wins now. Which means decisions are made less to do the right thing and more to keep a clean record. Have no point of view. Push for nothing. Hold no one accountable. See no flaw in structure. “Disagree and commit”. Resist and fear bad back-channel and grapevine from all the weak characters from past life.

But “The naked man fears no pick-pocket.” It means if you have nothing to hide, nobody can rob you.

I grew up in a small town called Lucknow, India. It’s an amazing city with a slow life, beautiful gardens, impressive architecture, and great food (UNESCO City of Gastronomy). While it’s not a major economic hub, it’s where I went to school and university. After that, I moved to Bangalore for my first job, and later to Berlin for my third.
My upbringing has been in a financially unstable, conservative, and loving family. No part of it is broken; we’ll take a bullet for each other. But because of that, I didn’t have many toys as a kid, and the kids who had more than I did shamed me. Angry, I wanted to make this money we never had to buy these toys. I spent most of my time between the ages of 16 and 22 figuring it out. By the time I turned 24, I was making more money than I knew what to do with. And before I could buy the toys that got me started, I lost my liking for them. It was about the shame more than the toys now that I think of it. Eventually, I lost my anger as well. In this little quest of having more than bread on my table, I made my inner world so rich with ideas and information that I stopped fancying the world out there. Isolation and learning became an addiction. Picked up philosophy to cope with days when loneliness peaked (made me a hell of an independent thinker). Picked up expensive hobbies like sailing and traveling. Getting more social as I age. And now I am just going on to see my full potential in all aspects. Not to forget, I love technology. And boats are expensive. Money is no longer a commodity for me - it’s access and freedom to walk away from what doesn’t help my curiosity. I’m materialistic, but at a very large order of magnitude, objects don’t indulge me so much. As for purpose, for now, I want to be rich and famous. Put the best bread on my table. And tap into years of undocumented knowledge scattered as fragments across colonies.
As a kid, I was very studious, as that’s what Indian households grow you into. And I was also an athlete, which my mother didn’t like very much because I frequently tore my shoes while doing sports, and we had to buy new ones. As an effect of that, in my little irrelevant world, I tasted fame and criticism growing up a lot more than other kids with no support. It was hard. I never relaxed the competitive muscles I built there. But I learned to avoid the spotlight for good.
Ducks, cats, owls, and toddlers make me very happy. The sound of the ocean resets my nervous system. Photography is the only free-form art I’m into lately. And I have a spontaneous and dry sense of humor from what I’m told. Work takes up most of my day. Work-outs, cooking, washing dishes, and reading or side projects take up the night. I alternate between lifting and swimming. On weekends, I do my backlogs (mostly), socialize, or go for a hike outside the city.
I am a quiet person. I sit in a corner and get up from there once I am done. I don’t use emojis in my texts. I also don’t exclaim with an extraordinary reaction (I’m not dead inside!!). That doesn’t mean I hate you. In fact, I really like talkative people around me as they complete in the room what I can’t. But when I have shit to do, I function best in silence. That also means I don’t have the golden retriever vibe to do community building for your team. I’ll come off as very intense and intimidating at first, and slowly you’ll get comfortable.
I’ll walk into a temple, church, mosque, or monastery for a loved one’s happiness and beauty. But the code I follow is the constitution and my instincts. I’m not religious. I consider both atheists and believers as religious. I’m indifferent. Creator and religion are separate things for me. I believe in the idea of something bigger than me. I also think my makers are no holier than I am.
I have a way of life. (link)
As long as you hold your share of the bargain - skin color, gender, whether you come from a chaotic world like mine or a comfortable one, our political differences - I don’t discriminate. I’ll adapt and enable. And unlike the DEI teams in workplaces anchored to a fashionable definition of diversity, in my world, you also get diversity of thought. Curiosity is not a crime. Disagreement is not a crime. Pessimism isn’t either. But none of that I respect as leverage or excuse. Equality of opportunity, not of outcome. Win by merit - behaviour, intention, intellect, persistence.
I am anything that helps me ship. Have always had a hard time calling myself a designer, though that’s what I specialise in and do for most of my time. But I’ll write code, write product requirements, make decks to sway people, and babysit if either is not going well. Depends on my pay grade.
My level and compensation don’t dictate my agency and focus. I don’t need regular motivation, appreciation, offsite, lunch & dinner perks, parties, or insurance to show up. I have my own agenda to work for you (money, fun, path, status, peace). I love making software. Because of my inability to fuck the quality of my own work if people are being unfair to me, I am never closed to new opportunities. So I give first, then stay till the deal is fair and square. When it’s no longer fair, I find another buyer and leave quietly. No drama. I can see where I stand among others, I know my place in the chain of command, and that my time is all I can control. It’s faster and psychologically safer working with me - hiring, building, promoting, firing me.
I’ve been fired from my first job (CRED). Kind of. HR said I’m “obnoxiously aggressive” on the radical candor quadrant, and my boss’s boss said, “I don’t think I have more opportunities for you “. I was asking for it, looking back. I was good at my job but stupid - reactive, lacked pragmatism, focused too much on the right (my beliefs), disagreed with leaders in open forums instead of closed doors. Cared too much about the product than people and their image. Didn’t think the work around the work was important. That was an important arc in my character development. It made me a damn good operator later.
The end goal for my professional life is to make the software I want, the way I want. Figuring this out is what I intend to spend the rest of my life on. I’ve always believed I can do better than the people I have reported to. Call that arrogance if you may, but it’s honest.
Besides visual and motion chops, which will be visible on this site, the other core skill set I have is that I can narrow down a book into a blog, and you’ll say it has more than less. I have built a brain, eye, and taste to take a dump of unstructured data, break it into unique views and inputs, apply the right order and abstraction, and design interactions that transition through these different states and contexts yet feel like one connected system. A talent for deciding what needs to be obvious, what should be easy, and what should be possible in interface design. Part of why I am good at this is that I have a very high capacity for confusion, and my natural default is inversion thinking. Simply said, I excel at elimination. You can fact-check with my previous bosses.
I don’t do wireframes. Never did in the last 5 years. Will never do. I speak interface and hi-fi prototypes. You get it fast.
I’ve not been very coachable so far. I learn from fucking around and finding out.
I understand you need to do laundry, cook, you might have a face pack on, you might be in a metro running late, on a beach, you might have a kid heckling, have fought with your partner, etc. So if we are on a call, please never apologise for having a life. If you can’t take my call, tell me and I’ll reschedule. If you don’t make it to the call, I’ll drop after waiting for 10 minutes, and I will not be mad. I am not much of a workstation guy myself; I usually work from some couch in the office. So, showing up to meetings on your mobile’s front camera while you take a walk is okay. We are people - flawed, burdened, trying to do everything all at once, and managing somehow.
I assume you are as sharp as I am. So meetings are direct and brief by default. I don’t believe in cadences and recurring calls. I’d prefer to meet only when there is something to say (Slack?). If I am reporting to you, I will make sure you stay updated with the right volume of details, and you can always ask for more (I expect the same from my reports). You can still decide to have weekly/bi-weekly 1-1s with me, and I’ll be on time. Though my experience tells me the more your boss wants to check in on you, either you are a genius or about to be fired, the latter in most cases.
You can walk up to me and say I fucked up. I have a very high capacity for truth. I’d like you more if you spoke plainly, as to me it symbolises care and clarity of thought. Feedback loops with me will never become a revenge cycle, no ego. Because I do realise you could have chosen indifference. And I am glad that you didn’t.
I have grown kinder with experience. I am incompetent, and so are you, sometimes over some things. I offer you psychological safety and solutions till we find our way forward. Don’t hide your intentions no matter how personal, and let’s talk over beer or a walk. Neither of us is here for charity. A team at the end is the orchestrator and the orchestra looking for the spotlight together.
You don’t need to be my friend to get help from me. Ask honestly. If I can, I will. If I can’t, I’ll redirect. My kindness is an instinct, not a tactic. How gentle I am to people doesn’t depend on whether I know them or what they can do for me. So taking the manipulative approach of being nice to me, hyping me up, or playing on my ego to get close first does not build trust. Instead, I watch how you do your job. How much do you care. To what length do you go to get what you want.
As I reflect on my approach to work and collaboration, I believe nothing scales infinitely. My solutions are forward-looking, but for a maximum of 2 years in the future. Change is the only constant. Scale is synonymous with vanilla, and I am more of a cookie and cream guy.
If you are a manager, I know the job sucks on most days. Took some time to learn, but if you ever bite, no hard feelings. I give you the benefit of doubt of picking the best from the shit options you had. Unless you have a reputation of a tyrant, in which case I made a wrong bet, and I’ll ensure our paths never cross again. You can still trust me to give an official good word for you on record. I hate the game, not the players. All bread is hard-earned.