My Love With Computers
All this #10YearsChallenge in the social media, made me think about my early days. I am 36 years old, and my love affair with computers started in 1995. So this more of a #25YearsChallenge š¤£.
During my formative years, my father shifted our family from a small town to a relatively big city. I felt my uprooted, as missed all my small town friends. The city culture was different to get acclimatised. I felt alone, and I took refuge in computers then.
My dad had taken me to his office on one the weekend. One of his colleagues introduced me to a PC game, Paratrooper. I was hooked. That mesmerising feeling of touching a keyboard seeing some effects in a greenish monitor was insane high. At that point, I had not even played video games much. So it was my first crush.
I could not own a computer as it was very expensive. But I wanted to identify myself as a computer geek. At school, I had to wait on the specific periods to get into the computer lab and access it. At home, my only way to know more on this topic was getting my hands on the books and computer magazines.
I pestered my dad and asked me to enrol in a local computer training institute. That turned my crush to real love.
How My Intent to Change My Team Actually Changed Myself
Context:
I had moved from a big startup to an early stage startup working in marketing-tech. One of the significant challenges in any startup is to ship things on time, if not early.
My new company had its fair share of unpredictability in the timeline in which a feature is shipped to the customer (internal as well as external). The new startup was a rapidly growing organisation. Regarding new features in the product, revenue as well as new team members. Like any growing cross-functional team without a strictly defined process, it had its fair share of challenges.
Engineering team were waiting for the final copy texts in the feature. Product team was waiting for engineers to do feasibility, but features were getting shipped without their knowledge. All teams were hiring and growing fast. Marketing team didnāt know how to use that feature.
Worldview of the team members:
The size of the company was 35. The team members are technically super skilled, humble and extremely motivated. For most of the team, it was the first startup experience, and they had worked in a different setup where there was no āprocessā or āscrumā or āagileā way of doing things. Their previous company was a very well established company with its way of working and structure. It was neither agile or scrum way of working, but products/features were shipped and customers were paying.
Their previous company was a successful bootstrapped company, which has its way of shipping and addressing the customers problems. The current company was a venture-backed startup, which has a completely different dynamic and intervention from the stakeholders.
What was the change:
Split teams into a smaller self-sufficient team (pods) to ship faster (Not more than 5 to 6 people in a team and it is called as 2-pizza-team by Jeff Bezos)
Have a daily 15-min-standup meeting among the pods to know what they did yesterday, what they are planning to do today, are they any roadblocks for the team member.
Have a 2-week sprint for shipping feature and fixing bugs instead of intermittent/sporadic shipping
Who is it for:
Individual team members who are coding, designing and writing the features.
Senior team members who are leading and managing the teams.
What is this for:
To ship things to customers in a faster and predictable manner
To ship things in a better way by having all the team members (product, engineering, marketing) on the same page
To achieve the rapid growth that any startup eyes for as the company had enough stakeholders waiting for its growth.
Where there is a fit:
A smaller, nimble team with a clear goal for what to ship in the next two weeks is always a better approach. It gives more clarity for the team members on what is expected out of them, instead of firefighting and solving the issues in an ad-hoc manner.
Having a clear deliverable and a roadmap is extremely comfortable for all the other teams like marketing, sales too. They can plan the campaigns and promise the customers accordingly.
Where there is a mismatch:
All the things planned are perfectly right, but when the rubber-hits-the-road moment of implementation, there was a problem. People are not willing to change and adopt new habits.
Suddenly they feel there are too much of meetings (standup meeting, planning meeting, review meeting). The team is a close-knit team that dines and parties together. Things were getting shipped on time when the close-knit team was of size 5 or 6. But once the team started growing, the team was still reluctant to change.
Suddenly someone from outside, who is not part of the close-knit group joins the company. Says something like a 2-pizza team, scrum and blah blah. What if he is wrong? What if he is trying to constrain themselves with this āprocessā from a big company. We have been working this way for years in the previous company making millions in revenue, why suddenly this change.
My lessons and learnings:
Importance of semiotics: The title āmanagerā is a symbol of some authority. The concept of adult supervision has its bad rap (thanks to John Sculley and Steve Jobs). As a āmanagerā trying to impose something from top-down works out rarely.
Importance of pattern matching: If there is a pattern of work that is completely strange to my style of working, I will be sceptical about it. As a manager, I need to make sure that I provide an option that matches their current mindset of work but solve the bigger problem. If I try to impose, I will be just burning my finger.
Importance of framing: Instead of framing it as 2-pizzas-team and āScrumā, I should tone down and make the āphrasesā much more accessible. Assuming that the vocabulary of scrum and agile is known to everyone is wrong.
On Marie Kondo
As it is a trend to write about Marie Kondo in 200WaD, I want to ruminate on her works and what it means to me.
It was through the NYTimes Best Seller list, I came to know of Marie Kondo and her book, Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I became even more curious about it when Tim Harford wrote that it really changed his life. (On a side note, I am sucker for books when people mention it as life-changing or the most important book in their life. I refer it as Keystone Books. Will write a little more about it some other day.)
My first reaction after reading the book was, āWhat? Is this a best seller?ā. How can a book about tidying up and decluttering be life-changing? But indeed it is.
Marie Kondo is less about decluttering and tidying. She is more about living a happy life, sparkling with joy. Her means is through decluttering. She is more like a productivity expert giving tips on something tactical, but the goal is to make a big strategic change in oneās life. She is a philosopher in a consumerist world. She is not asking us to denounce our desire for material wealth. She is an antidote for hoarding and asking us to more conscious of the things that we collect/buy/store.
Her first book, Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, was really laying the foundations for her philosophy that took the world by storm. But her second book, Spark Joy, was more of an extrapolation of the first. It is much more tactical in giving tips and getting in action.
Personally, I have done a lot of de-cluttering in my life after reading her work. But I am far from perfect and I am still a work in progress in this area (like in many other areas of my life).
What impresses me of Marie Kondo is her branding and marketing prowess. Her team has done excellent work in translating the content and make it very reachable to English audience. They have named a technique KonMari after her. They also have a Udemy MOOC and also a Netflix show. Even though her English is not good, she has taken the English speaking world by storm. This is not a small achievement at all.
On Retirement
When we are young, typical advice on careerā/āfinancial planning goes like this:
- Donāt spend more than you earn.
- Save money and invest prudently
- Most importantly, plan for your retirement
There is always a romantic notion of retiring early, unshackling oneself from the daily doldrums of work. Many even invest in farms/ranch in rural areas to settle down after retirement.
I have a different opinion.
My dad, after a minor health problem, retired early from his service. We, myself and my family, convinced he will be able to spend more time with family and do things that he really liked. But guess what, it was a terrible move. For close to three years, it was tough for my dad. He couldnāt come to terms with not having to have a daily routine of going to an office. But I realised it is more than that.
My dad worked for a huge insurance company. He started his job at the age of 23 and retired when he was 58. He worked in different departments and different cities but in the same company. Like many in the previous generation, work gave his identity. He loved interacting with people, and he was very gregarious. All of this was shaken deeply because of retirement. It took a long while to find a community of friends outside his office network and also an identity. It was like a process of self-discovery, which was painful at the same time insightful to him and the family.
Taking a lesson out of this experience, I realised that my work and the company I worked for could not be my identity. It was then I started to look out for finding meaning in my work, what makes me happy and all other mission/values hunt associated with it.
Life is tough at many levels. But expecting a state of nirvana after one stage of life is absurd and might be disappointing. Best thing to do is to find happiness in whatever way we can in day to day of life. Travel, gratitude journaling, meditations, getting married, having a kid, being part of a tribe and helping others are a few things that can change our outlook to life.
Finding happiness in things that are meaningful to us may be the best antidote to the seduction of retirement.
Carbs Are God Given Nutrients
(This is not a parody. I take a topic which I donāt agree and write about it from the oppositionās point of view. The goal is to be empathetic on the other side of the discussions/debaters. The tone is not meant to be dismissive or derogatory. I believe carbs are an over-rated nutrient. But if someone thinks the other way, what will be their arguments. Following is my version of that.)
The modern diets of Keto, Paleo and Whole30, are fads. They denounce and vilify carbs in a rabble-rousing manner. Here are my reasons:
It is unscientific. Only in the last 5 years, that too based on few highly sampled studies, scientist are showing some results against carbs and claiming it as a useless nutrient. But agriculture has been the backbone for human growth. What agriculture produces is 100% carb. Agriculture increased the population of human beings, who were very scarce in number during the hunter-gatherer times. It was carbs that made people settle in one place instead of being nomads.
Cholesterol and fats are known to create cardiovascular diseases, and for the last few decades, many studies have confirmed it. Despite that, this faileo gangs binge on butter, meat and cheeses. God only knows, what after effect this will have in their health and longevity.
One thing that the Whole30 brainers get right is the evilness of sugar. Yes, sugar is a carbohydrate but it is high processed and synthesised. It shares the same dopamine release pattern similar to the cocaine. The point to remember here is sugar is a refined carbohydrate. No all carbs are created equal. Gary Taubes, who is the godfather-like figure for the keto mafia, says that there are good calories and bad calories. Sugar is definitely a bad calorie. But not all carb is terrible.
A complex carb is naturally occurring macro-nutrient in tubers and many vegetables. If such complex carbs are bad for health, how did many such plants evolved and improved the longevity of the people living in highly vegetarian nations of Asia? Many people have lived healthily till the age of 80 and 90 but have a rich plant-based diet that is full of complex carbs.
Finally, carbs are poor manās health food. Not everyone can easily afford a steak or meat or artisanal cheeses everyday. A simple McD hamburger cost less than $3 can have vegetable (tomato, onion), chicken and bun. It is incredibly filling and very tasty too. Just imagine a life in which you go to a movie theatre, and it has no popcorn or french fries or nachos. But egg salad, meatballs based snack and some hi-falutin side dish. It is a nightmare.
In the age of hyper-differentiation in a crowded diet/nutrition market, villification of carb is nothing but a conspiracy theory of dieticians and nutritionists looking for an edge in their consultancy. Long live carbs.
Memento Mori
Stoicism talks about the concept of memento-mori. An object or a thing that can remind us of our mortality and death. By looking at it once in day, we reinvigorate ourselves and appreciate our life in a better manner.
Modern day saint, Steve Jobs, has said it better: āDeath is very likely the single best invention of lifeā. In his famous commencement speech he reframed it as, āYour time is limited, so donāt waste it living someone elseās life.ā
For me such a epiphany came after a near-death experience with my fatherās health situation, almost a decade. My father is known for being stickler of habits and diet. He is known for his healthy lifestyle and yoga. Yet, he caught a tuberculosis infection after a vacation at Mumbai, which is notoriously known for TB. We had diagnosed it quite late, by then it grew complicated and turned our life upside down. It took some surgeries, an episode of paralysis and almost 6 months of time, for things to be normal.
Luckily, I was blessed with a family, who were extremely supportive of my Dad to take care of him and see him back to work hale and healthy. It gave a unique and lifelong learning of people who are important to me. It also gave a hard hitting lesson on people who even though were relatives but not important.
This entire incident happened when I was in my late twenties. I had just gotten married too. But surprisingly, myself as well as my support wife handled this entire thing in a matured fashion. I believe my phase of adulting started after that jolt-like incident. This experience still helps me handle any life situation in composed manner.
Do you have such experience? If yes, I would love to hear more about that.