ananthrk
4.2K posts
What is the name of the old actress who played Kamal Haasan's aunt in Hey Ram?
Never seen her in any other movie. She comes only in a few scenes and she's terrific.
youtu.be/StLvVpR2zxU?si…
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@shri_shobhit @amuldotexe Mind expanding this point with some examples or better yet, some pointers? TIA.
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@amuldotexe This sounds similar to what happens in the Engineering Manager interviewes. In a way, it's a variant of code debugging question but with people and situations :)
My trick is to ask a lot of questions. How familiar you are with basic frameworks in your area of work?
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Weekly interview wrap up for 15 May
2 rejections
A. on a debugging interview on an angular tech stack, points me to do build more web apps, and learn to debug them without LLMs
B. on a generic product engineering role where I failed in the product ideation side, primarily because I could not converge on what the interviewer wanted
the first one I feel relaxed about, I understood and I just know what to do to improve on the next attempt
that is I think of the beauty of engineering interviews, far more tangible and you actually know where you went wrong
the second one, a typical PM interview case study, share a problem and ask the interviewee to ideate, is where I have failed multiple times in last 1 year or so
I am unable to read clearly where the interviewer is hinting at, they want to converge to something specific, but I am unable to take those hints, maybe it is ADHD, maybe it is a lot of conviction, either way it is a key skill of selling, to have that conversation in a specific way
I look back, and that is what I think, last year or so, the PM interviews I am unable to see clearly how I failed, not sure if this is what other product folks think or face
the interviewers were nice and graceful, but I was unable to read what they really wanted to me converge on in the product ideation
maybe I need to meditate more and develop more composure, there is almost nothing else which I can think of at the moment
for now it obviously is a moment where I am feeling bad about myself, wishing I was a different person, who could read the room better, these were after all good opportunities towards a systems programming career
so what next
- more full stack apps in the portfolio
- more meditation / jaap for more composure
- more PRs on Rust projects
the bad mood comes from the entitlement of outcomes, everytime I forget, that I am after all, merely an instrument, only meant to observe the plan of the universe reveal itself 🙏
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ananthrk retweetledi
He skipped placements at IIT Madras for 2 consecutive days. On the third day, he took a flight back to Mangalore just to avoid being forced by his family to attend placements. His desire to build an aircraft company was so intense that it made him act irrationally in front of his family.
He then started building his aircraft company from Bengaluru. When he had barely Rs 20,000 in hand, he still hired an intern, promising a stipend of Rs 7,000. On one of the days when he could not make it back to his PG on time, he spent the night at the Majestic bus stand. All of this at the age of 23!
That is the story of @shreepoorna365, founder of Arctus Aerospace, a company building unmanned aerial vehicles that can fly up to 45,000 feet and capture imagery for a wide range of use cases.
Hear his full story on the @mundhebanni podcast, with English subtitles for those who do not follow Kannada. 👇
youtube.com/watch?v=qiXXbr…
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Are there any online resources where I can find a reasonably complete, easy-to-understand answer to “What is Sanatana Dharma?”
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ananthrk retweetledi
I’m in love with this sentence:
“Consistency looks like nothing is happening, until everything changes.”
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ananthrk retweetledi
This is one of the smartest people in the world, without doubt. And I feel sad about how tunnel visioned the AI folks have become + on top of that they feel they have all the best ideas in the world because they are developing the things that's setting the economic agenda of the world.
But is this posture below even truly defensible? Have you never watched a scene in a movie and truly felt in awe of either the emotion it evoked or the spectacle that unfolded. Have you never wondered how the director came up with the "idea" of that scene? Because in their mind they had the whole thing before it even existed.
You think they express their ideas in mathematics and code?
You think people who paint, who produce music, who write stories have no ideas? Or you believe all of their ideas can be mathematically expressed?
How sad.
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ananthrk retweetledi
There was a time when you would join a founder with a small team who did not have clarity and experiment with him to sell something
but today you can probably do that yourself so why not build your own thing and try to build distribution for it instead of trying to help someone who is not building something complimentary to the table
if someone already has high momentum then trust their leadership and jump to help them
but if even they are unsure, then why not build on your own and if even you fail someone more capable will see your initiative and value your attempt and agency
amul.exe@amuldotexe
Hypothesis: It's time to either A. Join large organizations with a lot of momentum OR B. Join as a founding teammate on an area the founder has clarity on OR C. Try to build your own product x distribution game anything in the middle might no longer be a great idea
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ananthrk retweetledi
Si la probabilidad de que tus preocupaciones se hicieran realidad fuera un video 🙏
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ananthrk retweetledi
The man's software runs in over 10 million cars on the road right now. That alone deserves a tribute.
Here is the great man's story.
Ravi Pandit co-founded KPIT in Pune in 1990, two years before liberalisation, when nobody in India was building software for cars. He came from a family Chartered Accountancy practice, did his master's at MIT Sloan, and instead of staying in finance or moving abroad, he chose to build engineering software for an industry India didn't really have yet.
What he built ended up running inside vehicles made by BMW, Ford, Honda, GM, and most major global automakers. Indian companies usually get to do the back-office work for global firms. KPIT got to do the safety-critical work, the kind of code that has to be reliable enough to not kill people. He spent 35 years earning that level of trust, project by project, contract by contract.
He saw the EV and autonomous mobility shift years before it became obvious. KPIT pivoted hard into software-defined vehicles when most peers were still chasing pure IT services contracts.
The best part was that he kept Pune at the centre of it all. He didn't move the company to Bangalore or to the US. He co-founded the Pune International Centre, which became one of India's most respected policy institutions. He started Janwani and the Zero Garbage Project, which genuinely changed how Pune handled its waste. He supported the Gokhale Institute and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme. He was the only private-sector member on the National Green Hydrogen Mission's Empowered Group, and recently launched HRIDAY to push hydrogen adoption in India.
He wasn't too social, didn't do podcasts, didn't tweet but he did do was co-write a book called "Leapfrogging to Pole-Vaulting" with R. A. Mashelkar, about how India could skip stages of development instead of just catching up.
I read that book a few years ago and a lot of how I think about Indian companies competing globally came from it.
A genuine builder is gone. The kind who picked unsexy industries, stayed put in his city, did civic work that lasted, and kept his name out of the headlines while doing some of the most consequential engineering work this country has produced.
Rest in peace, sir. Thank you for everything you built, and for showing what was possible from Pune, India. 🇮🇳
Amit Paranjape@aparanjape
An icon of Pune industry, Ravi Pandit passed away earlier today in Pune. A huge loss for Pune and the Indian Industry. A visionary, a mentor, a great leader. Always softspoken, helpful, humble and ready to guide so many of us. Along with being the chairman of @KPIT, Ravi Pandit was actively involved with institutions like @PuneIntCentre, @MCCIA_Pune and many more. Om Shanti 🙏
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Quite pained to read this!
Ananthan Ayyasamy@AnanthAyyasamy
Four years ago, I sat down with my 12-year-old daughter in the US and told her I was walking away from a successful tech career and real estate business to return to India for public service and politics. At that age, she didn’t realize “public life” would slowly take her Appa away from her for months… and years. But I came with conviction. So for the last 4 years, we gave everything we had — for example -In villages like Subramaniapuram and Vellanaikottai, we built bus shelters, restored a 100-acre pond, removed seemai karuvelam, strengthened bunds, planted thousands of palm saplings, supported students’ education, organized medical camps and career workshops, built community sheds, encouraged youth and sports activities, and contributed to annadanams. It cost several ten lakhs of hard-earned money - just for this village alone. But more than money, it cost time… family moments… and precious years watching my daughter grow up from far away. Then elections came. And the same village chose a candidate who had barely visited them in five years. In the end, one week of election-time money defeated four years of sincere service. Yesterday, my daughter quietly asked me over video call: “Appa… can you now tell me what exactly politics is?” For the first time in my life, I did not have an answer for my chellaponnu. @svembu
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@ponnappa @realfastai Cool. How long do these camps run? And what is the avg experience of the audience?
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@ananthrk @realfastai software engineering, mental models and consulting skills
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ananthrk retweetledi
In Chennai, I feel both at home and like an outsider.
There are parts of the city I grew up with, and some practices and beliefs that the city gave me. There's the beach in Besant Nagar, the temples across the city, many restaurants that retain their 2000s charm... there's the Chennai Tamil slang, the many local festivals, there's a beautiful recognisable inertia.
That part makes me feel at home. This makes existence effortless.
Then there are new parts of the city. towering 20 stories high, massive glass facades, delivery agents everywhere, new restaurants that cater to a quite different consumer-base, traffic snarls that last 45 minutes... there are people from different parts of the country here for work, travel, family (many more than ever before)...
That part makes me feel like an outsider, like the city is something new. Something to be discovered like a traveller.
Paraphrasing Herodotus - "One doesn't step into the same city twice."
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ananthrk retweetledi
ananthrk retweetledi
@bookmarkdiaries @narayananh This is one of the oldest magazines still in active circulation. There is an active effort to make all past editions available online (indexed and searchable). I was volunteering for that effort a few years ago. Will check whether it has gone live now and post the link.
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A new habit - started reading since the beginning of the year.
How did I get to know of this magazine? Appa used to read this religiously.
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ananthrk retweetledi
Singapore’s AI obsession just hit Everest peak.
The Foreign Minister is self-hosting Claude on a Raspberry Pi and building a diplomatic knowledge graph using Karpathy’s LLM Wiki pattern. Wahlao!
SG devs, the minister is coming for your job. And he’s not even using Cursor — he’s on NanoClaw running locally. Can someone git pull his code and give it a test.
Only bad thing? He dropped this on Facebook instead of X. Minister, we need to talk.
gist.github.com/VivianBalakris…
Zac@Zac_Pundi
Singapore’s obsession with AI is hitting a new peak. 🇸🇬 🤖 Today, 4 of the top 5 most downloaded apps in SG are AI chatbots. Both the tech migrants and the aunties in hawkers are doing it. And what’s with this vpn at number 4.
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ananthrk retweetledi
ananthrk retweetledi
The most profound secret of Punjabi happiness is the concept of Chardi Kala. It translates to relentless optimism even in the face of disaster.
In Sikh philosophy, staying in Chardi Kala is a sign of faith. It is the belief that since everything is the will of the divine, 1 must meet even the most brutal hardship with a smile.
During the 18th century, when Punjabis were being hunted & lived in jungles, they used code words to stay happy. They called a single person a Lakh (a hundred thousand) & called roasted chickpeas Almonds. They used humor to literally gaslight their suffering until it stopped hurting.
Nikhil Kamath@nikhilkamathcio
Such a nice man. There is a strange correlation between Punjabis and happiness. What could this be?
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