NRIs landing in B'lore: "I'm bullish on India ruling the world. Energy is palpable. Unbelievable how far India has come, beating US by miles. You have UPI. Mind is blown. Pants are wet. UPI. India is best."
after going back to family: "phew good to breathe clean air again lmao"
Indian techies be like "pay us what you pay the American techies in dollars we're doing the same work!" while paying their housemaid barely 4% of what she would have made in America with far greater dignity.
India folks at MNCs doing a 10PM meeting: "thanks for including us guys we're touched".
US folks when asked to do 6PM: "wow this is very late and outside working hours honestly do you even care we have a life outside work how am I supposed to even make this????"
There is genuine fear in India that if people don’t get off really quickly the plane will take off again with them stranded inside.
Nothing else explains how people disembark on Indian flights.
Used Cred for the first time recently and I genuinely, truly don't get what it's about and why I am supposed to serve all my financial info to them on a platter. I don't get it.
My partner works in nonprofit & grassroot development, I in core tech/software. Every day over the last 3 years, he’s helped me expand my perspective w/o even realising it. It’s incredibly rewarding to have a partner with a diverse vocation. Conversations aren’t echo chambers.
Indian companies need to start doing what many US companies now have to: display your salary range against the role. Let candidates a) decide if they should apply b) try to make their case to be on the higher end of that range.
Our cultural opacity is the problem :)
That moment when you come across a really good candidate. You ask HR to screen the candidate & they report the numbers
-4 Yrs Exp
-Current CTC: 28 Lacs
-Expected CTC: 45 Lacs
Read it again- this is 4 Years Experience. All you can do -pass it off with a bit of humour
#startup
Founder: Sir please invest in my startup
Nikhil Kamath: OK but 1st I gotta ask the most imp business question
Founder: Ofc sir that's expected, pls ask
NK: In vivid graphic detail, describe to me how traumatic was your childhood
Founder: It was kinda normal I...
NK: Rejected
“If you were to die tomorrow you should be insanely proud of the level of detail that you put into the last release” - CRED’s Head Of Design (fr)
Of course coz top 10 regrets that dying people have includes level of detail they delivered in the last sprint.
I can’t tell what important things my fellow millennials have to save every 5-10 minutes for. Truly. Everyone seems busy, everyone boasts about being busy, everyone wants to save time, everyone is impatient. But everyone’s tweeting & shitposting & whatsapping & doomscrolling
These “even my cab driver/delivery boy/<any other blue collar worker> has a love life but I am single” tweets peeve the fuck out of me.
Like bro if you think love exists only for the rich/privileged/elite then maybe that is why you’re single.
The number of Rakhis sold via e-commerce is a sad reality of capitalism intensifying in India. Festival products are the bread and butter of so many SMBs in India (aside from being emotional rituals), now we have delivery platforms owning their pricing and distribution.
Don’t call Bangalore the Silicon Valley of India until Indian tech startups start operating with the integrity, long term thinking, creativity, diversity, boldness and nuance that most Silicon Valley companies operate with.
FUNNIEST thing about Sudha Murty's latest humble story is that when the immigration officer saw her address was 10 Downing Street & remarked, "Are you joking!?" she replied, "Nahi sachchi bolti hu".
So humble she answers an English guy in Hindi which isnt even her 1st language🤣
@thakurign
Please point to your source on that miss Thakurign because the numbers I quoted are stats, not some entitled UC person’s privileged opinions
It takes 1 serious/chronic health issue to realise that no amount of romanticising hustle culture & underdog stories & startup fandom can justify the dangers of sedentary jobs rampant in the current decade. And tech will only make it worse.
We’re all fucked. Rich, but fucked.
Since you care so much
@kunalkamra88
, come and help us out! I’ll even pay more than you earned for this paid tweet or from your failed comedy career.
Or else sit quiet and let us focus on fixing the issues for the real customers. We’re expanding service network fast and backlogs
I am at that stage of life where if you ask me for career advice I will offer you only this video.
My awesome mentor at my 1st job showed it to me me. At the time I thought it was "nice". At 31 yo, I think it's everything.
I think I quite hate the Indian wedding industry. Myself included, I've hardly known anyone who could remember their wedding without the pressure, stress, disappointment, & "if only" regrets it came with.
We don't need this burden in an already hyper performative society.
At this coworking space in Goa and everyone’s busy aimlessly scrolling over pointless thingies trying to look productive. You’d think they’re trying to fool others but really, they’re fooling themselves. Our generation’s relationship with work is so… broken.
since the rich people are now virtue signalling on the internet about the 1 day they spent as a zomato delivery executive, can we get the delivery executives to spend a day as a startup CEO or software engineer or Twitter handle manager etc? fair schmair, no?
I want to ask everyone who’s lecturing people not to waste their youth trying to clear UPSC — how many decently paying private sector jobs do you see around you? How many of them are real, impactful work? How many of them are accessible to people of no/less privilege? Shut up.
When I’m asked about my current pay, I ask what their salary range for the role is. If they don’t have a range, in my books they aren’t mature enough to be the kind of company I want to work for. When they do share a salary range, +
techbros love to assume that rural India aspires to become delivery executives, delusional to the difference between aspiration and obligation.
In reality, most rural/small town youth wants to work in “IT” or become artists or entrepreneurs… not very different from you and me.
know that Bhavish is not the 1st founder to respond to criticism with "if you can't solve our problems don't criticise us". This IS the standard founder response. I wish I could open my LinkedIn DMs to show how low the biggest founder(s) in India can stoop when criticised but wtv
people aged 17-24 at what age do you think you can achieve fuck you money? people aged 25-40, how close are you to fuck you money? I'm trying to see something
Sab middle class hain. Sab zameen se uthe hain. Sab gareeb the aur ab down to earth ameer hain. Sab pure hard work se successful bane hain. Kisi ke paas koi privilege nahi thi. Sab bechare hain :’)
Tech companies will always be scared of offering Work Life Balance not because WLB is bad, but because it would need leadership to first create clear strategy & accountability. That’s never gonna happen, so instead they’ll throw 1.5X or 2X the money so you never ask for WLB.
when you have done nothing worthwhile in your life that you can identify with, nor have made choices that reflect well on the kind of person you are, you resort to the laziest form of identity — caste, religion etc. which are decided for you by society. Lowest agency behaviour
Someone asked me how did you go from X to Y in your career. I said I just chased what I liked doing. They said don’t give gyaan give me step by step.
I get that India is hard but we’ll never get ahead if we are so averse to nuance. Stop seeking formulas, there are none.
LinkedIn bros be like “Excited to share that I now have a job at a different company where I will continue to toe the line between mediocre work & office politics until either they or I get fed up of it after which I’ll share the same update from another company altogether.”
just ended an interview 60 seconds in
Me: counting down the hours till the weekend haha
Them: I sense this is not a culture fit, sorry
Me: You’re right. I want to work with people with a sense of humour and a braincell or two. Toodles, robot
It’s usually the successful people who like to share their “failure stories” from the past.
They say they’re sharing it coz “we should celebrate failure too” but they know that nobody will celebrate your failure until you become successful.
EdTech lost the plot by focusing on the “tech” part more than the “ed” part. The need was/is for high-quality, super specialised, research-backed, impact-driven curricula… not for a regurgitation of school books in video format.
Guy goes from pronouns to western ideology bashing to DEI to Ayodhya to patriotism to god knows what. This is why, like it or not, we do need some “western ideology (???)”, coz our education and conditioning clearly doesn’t do a very good job of teaching basic critical thinking.
On
@Linkedin
,
@Microsoft
and their wokeness.
As an Indian institution, Ola is for genuine actions on diversity. We run one of the largest women only automotive plants. Not 1 out of 10 lines, or a small section, but the whole plant! Almost 5000 women now and will grow to tens of
I know it’s amazing to visit India from the US for a few days. To suddenly have people & family around you feels great after walking on Bay area’s desolated roads during evenings. But please don’t mistake your emotion for qualification to speak about the livability of the country
User Interviews are tough. You need to ensure:
1) your questions are unbiased & not leading
2) you talk less, listen more
3) you know when/where to zoom in & ask more
4) you don't make assumptions
Forget making a better PM/Designer, user interviews can make better PEOPLE.
Nobody talks about working with good, decent, respectful people anymore. Everyone wants to work with famous people with toxic work styles.
India’s growth wouldn’t be held back coz of startups, they’ll come and go — it’s our misplaced cultural priorities that’ll play the part.
The tech sector can never compete with UPSC as far as fairness & accessibility is concerned. Hiring & career growth are overly biased & flawed here. We are also a largely non-inclusive, elitist, (& many other -ists) space. UPSC is many Indians’ only real shot at a better life.
Yesterday we were having dinner with a family of aliens. We asked them what would they like and they said, “full equity of your planet at 0 crore rupees hehehe” and then we discussed the alien startup ecosystem.
It’s amazing how Shark Tank is changing entire galaxy.
Some career reflections for anybody interested in my journey :
- If you don't stay at a company for >2 yrs, you'll def. miss out on big titles
- If you do, you'll miss out on diversity of network (& most probably money)
So many amazing women I know struggle to meet good EQ men “suitable” for marriage that I am considering becoming a matchmaker for woke millennials. Sima Taparia but for cool kids.
Feel like we should put Twitter to some use by connecting people who the apps aren’t connecting.
I LOVE making PPTs.
There, I said it.
Bring on the corporate jokes. I don't care. I just love putting in a LOT of hours and burning my eyes trying to NAIL that narrative, thought model, editing, visualisation or content condensing... leading it up to actionable steps.
(1/2)
Some hypes that are worth the hype (imho):
- Deep work
- Yoga
- Writing
- Passion
- Self care
Some hypes that are overhyped:
- Productivity
- Startups
- Side hustles
- Passion
- Self care
majority of DMs sound entitled as fuck.
“Hey, I want to apply to Netflix, let me know if you’ll refer me then I’ll send my resume”.
“I’m impressed with your profile. Want to know more. Let me know a good time to connect.”
“Let me know what jobs at your company will suit me.”
This Shantanu Deshpande is some tool. Guy thinks his team has produced an ad that “oozes class”, and then goes on to list the even worse things they didn’t do… selling, QR code etc.
Guy will use everything to sell his razors except his own bald head.
2022: Got married to 💓 of 4 yrs, 2 weeks of island hopping honeymoon in Greece, 2 months across Himachal w/ daily hikes & weekend getaways, spent much on superficial pleasures for self coz of wedding, moved from PM to ProdStrat after realising I enjoy breadth +
@asxna
Hey man. Why are you the authority to decide whether or not they “wasted” their time? Perhaps they’d have wasted their life had they not pursued their dream and taken some random course from you just coz you believed ‘twas the better thing to do.
how does one “except” the most fundamental human need ie clean air? My lungs are dying, my life is getting shortened, my parents are aging faster, I am choking and wheezing all the time but thank god for upi amiright
Show me a startup that obsesses over its NPS and I’ll show you a Product team constantly looking for ways to induce bias in its NPS surveys to improve scores.
I am sorry if you came to Twitter expecting academic research or news or whatever else you need to learn. Mommy should’ve told you it’s just people being people, which means a jungle of opinions & weird personalities. You’ll have to read books to educate yourself, ok kiddo?
I miss memes. Back in the day the internet would have responded to Narayan Moorthy’s advice with OK Boomer memes, now y’all gotta write essays and make videos and whatnot. Boring ya.
A late uncle was an IRS officer. He grew up poor. Not fake poor, he worked as daily wage construction labour at 1 point. He considered UPSC his only shot at changing his life, which it did.
For most of the poor & middle class in India, UPSC is fairer than all the tech industry.
Men who complain that women who are getting ahead are doing so “just because they are women” have no idea how much of their success and/or achievements have come just because they are men.
In a tech co. PMs have the most abstract deliverables, if any at all. Designers design, engineers write code, what do PMs do? "Help everyone find clarity," in the words of a senior Design leader I talked about this with. Now, how can PMs do that? (1/n)
#productmanagement
Coming to terms with the fact that our generation is too limp to make revolutions, overthrow governments, break systems and bring about strategic change. We'll die swiping, typing and scrolling.
Admitting that I don't enjoy execution has been the hardest thing to do for me as a Product Manager. The ecosystem frowns upon anyone who doesn't romanticise execution but then I had to remind myself that I have done this long enough to say that I have done it enough.
India is at
#144
out of 194 in GDP per capita.
love watching techbros ignore unit economics in favour of vanity metrics. such a good explanation of the state of the startup ecosystem.
Standard of living in India with a 40L+ income is higher than someone earning $150K in SF
Especially in the West or South, domestic help is available, it's safer, saving is easier, jobs abound, sentiment is positive, country is growing
Biggest bonus is family is around
Now that it’s out I can finally say this in public —
#Chamkila
is one of those films that makes me proud to be at Netflix. Among my favourite films of all time.
template response from founders who have low tolerance for feedback (i.e most tech founders).
1 reason why India hasn't built a truly tech-first biz (as pointed by
@championswimmer
) is the ecosystem's egotism that makes it deaf to feedback (& generally incapable of listening).