The essay covers the 3 key learnings that happened much before NestAway started which I think shaped my journey as an entrepreneur and also is going to be the future reason of my dream to create many more products from ideas in my lifetime.
My first story is about finding a reason to learn.
After college in 2005, I was a restless, dreamy boy full of positivity and with a hunger to do something. Within 6 months into the first company I joined from Surathkal through campus, some of my colleagues had already started thinking of ways to create products differently. Initially a lot of thoughts that we used to discuss in group were a derivation of what we were using as a product and we could see an improvement that must happen to them. For example, we were thinking of making SMS storage happen on the internet and make them searchable. Upon exploring further, I realised that making SMS searchable was at best an incremental idea while the big idea is messaging — which has been solved.
Not seeing a great future in such ideas made me wonder if all the problems of the world have already been solved. And am I at the dead end of the invention where I am expected to just enjoy the fruit of seed sown already. Is this the truth no one among us is acknowledging? Emails were coming on time, we had an IDE to code, a debugging tool to debug, logs were stored in files, deployments were on time and they never used to fail on a server. Why on earth then they are needed to be better than what they are.
Fast forward 5 years, we saw virtualisation of OS, streaming of video content online, penetration of message queue systems that gave rise to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp of the world. I then realised as an engineer that nothing will become remarkably different as long as I remain the user of the product and at the same time wish to reinvent it. This was an incremental method. And any amount of research and deep understanding of a horse cart that we used to use for commute 100 years back fails to provide clue of what on earth can make the commute faster than they were.
Because faster horse cart was not the problem, the problem was faster commute. The word “faster” is one of the key tenets of engineering among the list which are reliability, speed, accuracy, security, maintainability etc. They are some of the fundamental expectation from any engineering product we use. I say this because most of your future work will by and large would be about solving problems in one of those key tenets. Hence while doing so I would want you to find the best that has happened in this area. It is my observation that, being aware of the cutting edge technology that are present in these areas provides a scope of improvement and perhaps a discontinuous improvement on this axis -reliability, speed, accuracy & security.
Take WhatsApp for example — its more reliable, faster with delivery notices & encrypted than SMSes were ever. In order to make such a thing happen, we fundamentally reimagined how messaging should work. Take any problem or opportunity at hand & pass them through the lens of reliability, speed, accuracy & security. And you can reimagine how such a problem can be solved better. I have found this line of thinking to help me get bigger ideas in the basics of problems.
What is your takeaway from this — As you start working in the projects, see if the work that you do can impact one or more of reliability, speed, accuracy & security aspect of what exists. There is no death of a big idea — One needs to have a method to discover them.
My second story is about team dynamics
In the year 2008, while I was part of Bing team, Microsoft wanted to help users discover information on the internet in a more accurate way than what Google used to do at that time. This was a massive engineering product. There were so many types of information and so much information to process for any single question. We always believed that if we could do it right, we can really be better than Google.
On internet there was art, science, history, movie, music, song, dance, geography, facts, opinions, questions, news, sports, images, videos and people were looking for all kind of information in them. We could not afford to do less good in one subject and better in other.
The 400 members had to be divided among all the subject areas. I was responsible to build a product for cricket related queries that are searched across the world. We had to understand the languages world speak, the regions where the interest is higher, build it with a quality that can respect the accuracy expected by the user and match with the competitor. Also lot more part of our success was dependent 140 other teams who were solving their part of the problem.
We did not succeed in our mission not because of my actions but lack of coordination and belief of 140 other teams. During this process, I realised that engineering is a game played in a large team. The process of building anything new and fresh happens through collaboration among multiple skilled individuals. In order to succeed, engineers need to resolve conflicts, bargain on the advantages, agree on a course of action and craft joint outcomes that bring mutual happiness and defines individual successes.
This is very contrary to the country and mindset we are living in as we speak. A significant part of our achievements is very individualistic. Starting from the grades we get, assignments we complete to the sports we play. They all focus a lot more on individual brilliance and a lot less on the reliance of a teammate’s success for one’s own.
In my own experience, realising it early in my life was instrumental to me becoming a dreamer and following a passion and problem. I always carried an inherent trust and could derive huge confidence from my fellow teammate’s positivity. My brilliance was just another part of the success and the objective was always to help each other succeed.
Take away for you — Be a good friend, a team player & celebrate group projects. There are wirings you require to do big things in your life.
The third story I want to talk about is of my consolation with some hard truths.
This world operates in a very thick layered approach. First, human learned how to make a sound. From a sound, we moved to talk and then we can sing in such melodious sound now. This is a layered approach to human progress. Sometimes layers tend to become thick enough to understand or realise what came before what. We call such layers platform in engineering. Only if we understand a subject deep enough, we can make out the hard work undergone below the surface to create an an output. Thomas Edison worked hard to create an electric bulb. After few years Charles Babbage used electricity, and created a computing machine and showcased a computer for practical purpose. Tim Berner Lee worked used computer and worked on the concept of networking and built the internet. There are a lot of other inventors worked multiple protocols, libraries, programming languages, other computer products, so that Kevin Systorm and his team could work on top of them to create Instagram.
Perhaps we will fail to notice all such works, when the creator of a new product receives almost all the credits with her progressive idea to change the world. Some of the heroes of the past are not explicitly mentioned in such moments. And knowledge, empathy, kindness, and humility is expected in order to divide the share of credit with others where you think it is due.
Similarly, we need to understand that engineering also needs many skills. Infra building, library building, feature building, and UI are 4 core areas engineers work on. Able to see in any product your contribution and proactively contribute makes one learn in long term. Not all these give credit in short-term, a user or a stakeholder would hardly be able to see all the roles. But that is how layered things are. Recognise this fact.
Take away for you — Build empathy for all that you see around you, who make you what you are. Teachers, friends, the postman, your mom. As you walk from here on, learn to share happiness, sorrow, joy & the labours of your effort.