I don't build social media clout for a dopamine fix.
Social media clout today is part of the essential consumer survival kit.
It is not only easy to access redressal mechanisms with most B2C businesses if you have clout, but in fact the only process of it happening today.
If you do not have the capability to raise a rabble, you just have no insurance against bad consumer experience and dealing with faulty products/services in today's world.
This is just the Black Mirror-esque world we live in now.
"Social credit scores" actually exist
I have regularly had experiences where my problems got fixed - exact same problems for which my friends who are not active on social have gotten the short end of stick.
In fact, the extreme end of *this* very spectrum is B2C brands sending freebies to influencers.
The TAT for issue resolving via Twitter rants is a couple of orders of magnitude less than the official redressal mechanism (if even one exists).
In fact not just for a bad food order or a torn dress you ordered, but even more constitutional rights like electricty/water supply
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Over the last 3 years or so I have had to hire/help-to-hire a lot of senior engineers, especially in small to mid startups.
Usually it is in a role where the person would be the main pivot of the team and be responsible for a project.
A thread on what has worked 🧵👇🏼
Over the last couple of years the tech hiring market has become more and more uphill. If you're a small startup, it is super challenging today. There are funded startups who are dying off because they are unable to corner tech talent. So the challenge is very real here.
Small caveat here - these are contextualised a bit towards Android, as that's what I have mostly hired for. Although the same methods and principles I have used for things like Node/Java backend too which has worked out well.
It has been almost 7 years, I'm teaching people to code, make apps and websites.
It is interesting how a lot of movers and shakers in today's edtech ecosystem (esp in the programming space) can be traced back to one tiny office in Pitampura, New Delhi.
A thread 🧵👇🏼
Before me and Prateek, Coding Blocks originally was started by Ankush (who now runs Coding Ninjas) and Anushray (who later was CTO at CueMath for a long time)
Tushar used to teach there too, and went on to build Coding Ninja's initial tech stack and a lot of CampK12's product
When they left less than 2 years after starting it, virtually an empty office was left behind.
Along with Prateek and me, Priyanshu (now heads operations at Pesto) and Sumeet Bhaiya (who went on to create PepCoding) picked things up from scratch and started from 0 again.
The last few years I have been at the intersection of tech, content, hustle culture, startups, creator economy and the move towards more indepent work.
A thread about the current state and the road ahead. 🧵👇🏼
(Might as well add a dystopian prophecy trigger warning)
Today if you look around people are making a lot of noise about a few things
- remote work, freelancing, independent work
- side hustles, personal growth, financial advice
- creator economy, social media, YT/Insta growth
Seems doing all this is both sexy + essential to survive
Here's what I want to break it down at - it is sexy because some people you have come to like are constantly hammering that thought down your head.
Reality is, it is becoming a way of life, and that is making surviving in the modern world an increasingly uphill battle.
Are you an Android developer? iOS developer ? Or maybe you're into web ? Using React or Vue ? Or even Angular ?
Flutter, sure. React Native ? Come on over let's talk.
I have built/contributed to production apps using all above technologies. And here is a 🧵 👇
Small disclaimer: While I have worked with multiple mobile and web frontend frameworks, I have spent 10+ years on Android, and have written 2 very popular VueJS libraries. So maybe some of this can be biased towards that.
The first rule of frontend development: Do not get married to your framework.
The second rule of frontend development: Do not get married to your framework.
Zoom out a little bit. Most of frontend development is same, regardless of framework.
When I repeatedly called out the fact that PM CARES fund is not under RTI, was not needed in the first place when PM Relief fund and National and State Disaster Relief Funds existed, I got chastised by relatives, friends, everyone for criticising a "positive effort"
Well so, fuck all of you who said that (I remember all of you).
But, gladly, this time around as I can see, no company/individual is promoting PM CARES anymore. Everyone is donating to GiveIndia and directly to Ketto/Milaap fundraisers, even frickin ISKON, but not PM CARES.
That says a lot doesn't it ? Even the hardcode bhakt celebrities are not donating to PM CARES anymore.
Guess this has completed the demonetisation cycle now I guess, when finally even the bhakts know associating with it is a net negative impact on image.
In the industry, people are moving en-masse to Kotlin, Swift, TypeScript and Go. Like if you look around at product companies, 75~80% new things are written in these.
Yet we are still teaching Python/JS/C/Java to beginners. This is creating a bit of a problem here. Read on.
When I use `?:` or `?.let { } ` type of syntaxes in Kotlin it comes so naturally to me, because of my years spent in Java, understanding the null-safety problems, and the long chunks of code to work around them, that these 'feel' idiomatic.
For beginners, it is very different.
As someone who as been teaching programming and onboarding developers at bigger teams I see -
Those who have made websites in JS being put into large TS projects
Those who are still grasping Java being put into Kotlin projects (android or backend)
Php/Django folks starting Go