On Religion
I am an atheist, and I despise the caste structure created in our society. I believe caste is an offshoot of religion and it should be eradicated. Many social reformers and leaders have dedicated their lives to this cause.
Religion as an institution is quite an old one. I also think it was the most necessary evil then. A local priest in a temple or a church had many shoes to fill. He (it is scarce that it was a she) was the organiser of the community, psychologist, entertainer as well as the mediator in tussles. He probably had so much power that eventually he abused it. His role was to keep the sanity of the community and get the community united in the name of religion. Later, that could unity could be used for a war or a fight against another society or religion.
Come to the present.
Even though many of us, including me, claim that we are atheist, we are not. We might be religious about many aspects of our life.
We either are in Apple or Andriod religion when it comes to our devices. If you are in Apple religion, Jony Ive is in our pulpit now, and Steve Jobs is still our god. We judge people based on the kind of device they carry in the pocket or wear on their hands. We feel an affinity towards the people closest in our religion.
I have seen the same enthusiasm in the developers around me. You are either into JavaScript or hate it. You either love the frameworks of JS like AngularJS, NodeJS or you despise them.
It is the same with micro-services, diet, sports and what not. I belive it is perfect and healthy until this becomes our identity. We might start to hate and hurt ourselves emotionally because of this.
Let us hold them as views, instead of identity. Of course, the views should be strong but weakly held. When we are challenged enough with reason and data, our views should change, instead of we blinded by it.
I have many strong views about topics, and it goes from Apple Devices, Carbohydrates, Fasting, Zero-Inbox, Genre of Audiobooks and so on. But I hope I am sane enough in the future to change when things change.
What are you religious about?
On Incentives
If I were to be teleported in a time machine, ten years back or forward, the only lesson I will take with me is the Power of Incentives.
Charlie Munger has a powerful quote about it:
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
Understanding the power of incentives has unlocked many avenues for me. As a parent or as a manager or as an individual contributor, knowing about the incentives help a lot.
(Note that I am talking about incentive as a concept. Not the monetary one when you exceed your quota, as a salesperson.)
As a manager, it is essential to know what are the intrinsic motivations of an individual. Also, as a manager, one has to know what are the immediate goals or milestones to be achieved in a company. Successful management is about aligning organisation’s goals with the aspirations of an individual. Many times in my career I have seen where managers get this wrong. Because of this, people can lose their mojo for work and quit. It is also possible that people are over enthusiastic and work their asses off, but don’t grow or recognised, because of the misalignment with the organisation.
As a parent, I want my kid to eat healthy food and avoid junk. But as an individual, I know the high you get by eating sugar and chocolates. The tricky part is to understand my son’s motivations and align the incentives.
My six-year-old loves running and winning. Every day when I come from my office, he asks me to race for fifty meters with him. Somedays, he wins, and some days I win. One of the things I do with my son is: Tease him that, if he eats more junk food, he will slow down in the race and I will win — it kind of works for now. As a father, I need to imbibe him the benefits eating healthy, but for now, tweaking around this incentives work for me.
Fyre Festival
Imagine this.
You are a founder of a company that has a cool new app. You are in a great market and you knew some VCs to have been blessed with enough funding. You need to get the news about your app to a bigger set of audience. You decide that you will organize a huge, luxurious event, where famous people will be there. By this, you can get the word about your app in this event. You wish that you can get momentum out of this event and grow your app.
Sounds like a usual thing done in a growing your business.
But just one small problem. If all these things are built without on one small thing, trust or integrity, everything crumbles down like a house of cards.
This is exactly what is shown in the new Netflix documentary, Fyre.
It’s about a company founded by people who are famous, supposedly brilliant but basically charlatans. They tried to organize a music festival near the Bahamas. They promised great food, awesome parties with supermodels, luxurious stay in the sun-soaked private island. One minor blip: Nothing they promised happened.
The founder was ballsy enough to give an interview to the press that, “Hey, we tried to organize the great event. The v1 (version 1) of it just failed. Nothing else.”. When all the people, who paid for this event had complained and raised a lawsuit, he could just be out in bail.
During his time out, he even sent promo emails to all the people, who paid for Fyre festival about another Ponzi scheme. A luxury event or an exclusive event for people in NYC.
This movie is a good lesson for an Internet consumer on which influencer to trust, which hypes to buy in. Basically, how to spend wisely to get good experiences.
Because more than buying things, we are supposed to invest in experiences to be happy. Isn’t it?
Amadeus & Ilayaraja
I was reading an interview of Ilayaraja in a Tamil magazine today. Ilayaraja is one of the greatest musicians from India. He is a god-like figure in my state, Tamil Nadu. Every Tamil music fan might have a fond memory in their life associated with Ilayaraja.
But this is not about his genius or the other musical genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is about the Czech director, Milos Forman’s masterpiece movie, Amadeus.
In the interview, Ilayaraja mentions how awestruck he was about the movie, Amadeus and why he watched it over fifty times. I have read in other interviews of Ilayaraja that he and Kamal Hassan paired up in many of these viewings of Amadeus.
My memory of watching this movie goes back almost a decade. I had moved from Chennai to Bangalore then. I was staying with a bunch of friends. All of us had curious interests in movies, books and technology. The broadband connectivity was very poor and we used to buy and rent movie DVDs.
My obsession and my education in films started at this time. I was working in a great product company. Had a lot of time in the evenings to spend on my interests. I used to watch movies about a director in chronological fashion then. I discovered Charlie Chaplin during this phase. I remember seeing this weird little DVD in the Landmark store, Amadeus. After a recommendation from another friend, I started watching it and I was mesmerized by it.
I was just searching about this and I found that I had written a blog almost 13 years ago about this.
The interview rekindled my memories about Amadeus. It also reinforces on why Ilayaraja is a maestro in film music and his appreciation for the craft of filmmaking. This is what Ilayaraja had said about Amadeus:
நான் 50 தடவைக்கு மேல் பார்த்த படம் ‘அமேதியஸ்’ (Amadeus).புகழ்பெற்ற இசைக்கலைஞர் மொஸார்ட்டின் வாழ்க்கை குறித்த படம் என்பதால் மட்டும் அதை நான் ரசிக்கவில்லை. நுட்பமான விவரிப்புகள் நிறைந்த, சுவாரஸ்யமான திரைக்கதை கொண்ட படம் அது. ஒரு பீரியட் படம் என்பதால் லைட்டிங் உள்பட பல விஷயங்களுக்கு மெனக்கெட்டிருப்பார்கள். மொஸார்ட்டின் இசைத்துணுக்குகளைத்தான் படத்தில் பயன்படுத்தியிருப்பார்கள். ஆனால், அதைத் திரைக்கதைக்கு ஏற்றவாறு பயன்படுத்தி யிருப்பார்கள். பில்லியர்ட்ஸ் டேபிளில் இசைக்குறிப்புகளை எழுதுவது மொஸார்ட்டின் வழக்கம். அவர் பணம் வாங்கி ஒழுங்காக இசையமைக்கவில்லை, எப்போது பார்த்தாலும் குடித்துக்கொண்டிருக்கிறார் என்று மனைவி திட்டுவாள். ஒருகட்டத்தில் சகித்துக்கொள்ள முடியாமல் மொஸார்ட், ‘Goback to bed’ என்பார். அந்த வசனம் சட்டென்று ஓர் இசைத்துணுக்காக மாறிவிடும். வில்லன் முர்ரே ஆபிரஹாம் சொல்லச் சொல்ல பிளாஷ்பேக்காக கதை விரியும். அவர் கதை சொல்லிக்கொண்டே வருவார். ஒருகட்டத்தில் காட்சி முடிந்து, மீண்டும் அவர் கதையைத் தொடரும்போது எச்சிலை முழுங்கிவிட்டு, சில வினாடிகள் இடைவெளிவிட்டு, மீண்டும் கதை சொல்லத் தொடங்குவார். எவ்வளவு நுட்பமான காட்சி அது. நானே 20 தடவைக்கு மேல் பார்த்தபிறகுதான் அந்த நுட்பத்தைக் கவனித்தேன். இதுமாதிரியான நுட்பமான திரைக்கதை கொண்ட படங்கள் தமிழிலும் வர வேண்டும்
On Labels and Identities
Once, my entire perception of things in life was based on labels.
You are either an organic farmer or GMO supporter. You are either a humble bootstrapped startup or a brash, arrogant VC-funded company. You are either a master craftsman or a shady snake-oil salesman.
I many decisions in my career and burnt my fingers to learn the lesson that codified by Paul Graham years ago.
The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
I made a jump from a big enterprise company to an agile, small startup which was funded by a famous VC. Of course, with the change in environment, one has to quickly unlearn and learn new routines, mental models, decision-making frameworks to excel.
Instead, I was shocked in a new startup, and I blamed it on the VC funding for the crazy and dynamic work environment. I thought a bootstrapped startup is the ideal environment for growth and success. I made a jump to one, and the reality hit hard on my face. I realised how shallow I was to trust the labels and not reading between the lines of a company’s messaging and branding.
Professionally, I was going through this mayhem and epiphany. Personally, I was in another awareness. I was high into learning about organic farming, self-sufficient living through composting, growing your food movement. I had this black and white way of looking at the world. I was missing the nuances and the greys. Soon, I realised people are minting money in the name of the organic label and came close to the anti-vaccination moment. My family has benefitted from modern medicine in many crucial occasions.
It took some time, good luck and wonderful colleagues and a supportive family & friends to be back on my feet and usual self.
My critical lessons from this period were this:
Keep your identity small - Paul Graham articulates it so beautifully in this essay. It is so easy to get caught in the maze of labels and identities. Instead, we need to more curious. We may not agree on what others do or like. Instead of reacting to that impulse, I question it and get interested in the other side.
Avoid extremely intense ideology - Charlie Munger frames it nicely in his famous speech: “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think that only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.”
On Memories About the Matrix
Let me start with one fact: Matrix is the best sci-fi movie ever made. Period.
I have very fond memories of Matrix, as I had seen it in binge-watching mode even before it was a thing. It is the only movie that I have seen more than eighty times. Yes, eight-zero.
Watching the first five times, I was mind-fucked. I could not understand the head and tail of it. I wasn’t used to watching with subtitles like now with Netflix or Amazon Prime. It was already hard to appreciate movies in English because of their accent and subtitles-less dialogues. On top of that, this movie was philosophical and meta at multiple levels.
The fantastic action sequences kept me hooked in the initial times. We used to have discussions in the late nights on what we understood out of every watch. Everybody used to come up with their theories. We used to validate and invalidate them by watching it the next day. Yes, we used to study for the exams, in between the movies 😆. This was how our study-holidays used to be.
It is so fun to peel the onion of Matrix during every watch. The dialogues are legendary, and it used to be a mantra. I used it in emails then to simply show-off 😁.
I watched it again this weekend. One scene stood out stunningly. I could remember that it was stunning for me during every watch.
The scene in which Neo (or Trinity) learns new skills in seconds. Neo learning Jiu-Jitsu, Kung Fu and Trinity learning to fly a helicopter.
In the past two decades, I am obsessed with learning things faster and quicker. I have burnt my fingers by doing things that one shouldn’t do to learn. In that experience, I have also come across the techniques and tools that help to learn faster. Maybe, me watching Matrix obsessively in my formative years has had this effect in my subconscious mind, I think.