Gonna leave this untitled

Welcome to the most fabulous music to blast when you have a 60W amp system :)

So I came home today - wait, "home"? It has people + looks nice - I'll have to upload some pics sometime. But trust me, it feels like such a well-loved place. The small living room fits two couches facing a small neat table with a tulip on it, and have matching pink+purple covers. There's a wicker rocking chair by the wide window that opens to a balcony overlooking the street. A (recently moved) TV stand sits in front of the window, along with John's electric guitar - a weapon for a more civilised age - and amp. We put plants where we thought they'd fit - aloe on the dining room table, basil on the kitchen floor, leafy potted plant stashed in the corner of the living room.

London was a rainy / peekaboo cloudy city today. I actually wore sneakers through the puddles - that was a great idea. When I arrived at work, I immediately stripped down to barefoot, and spent the rest of the day walking around like it was the most normal thing to do! You never appreciate the carpet quite so much as when you're barefoot ;)

Work work work

I talked to Angus yesterday, and it seems like he's starting his second day today! Congrats :)

Something good (and bad) about working here is that the startup is so small that if you're really niche, there's no one doing the same thing as you! Which is both a good and bad thing.

For good, I have the great opportunity to own small projects, like this one. The project scope was to stream video from cameras to the web browser, as the car is driving (oh no, don't hit the pedestrians, this is important!), so I got put on this project to do that. For me, it worked out nicely - I learned a bunch of stuff, architected most of a system (you can see it working end-to-end in this video here!), and spent like 2 weeks waiting.

The bad part is that you're likely to be working on something no one else is working on - so you can only get tangential help! This is actually what caused the waiting: on my team we have some (less experienced) people working on different parts of the project. Unfortunately, they get stuck on small things. I just want them to ask for help more, to learn faster (but how can I tell them without hurting their feelings?) This was definitely my problem during my past internship - I didn't really know when/how to ask people if I got stuck, because to me, it was something I could solve by myself.

That's one hallmark of a less-experienced software engineer (especially guys, I think): they think they can handle things, so they say ok way too often, even if they don't really know what's going on. For some people, this comes naturally, especially if you're more communicative. For others - the "tough it out" squad - asking is very, very hard. But we all learn :)

Here's another thing I learned: what good managers do. When I started, I wanted to move as quickly as possible - organising things, pushing myself and others to the limit, etc - heck, I even wrote blog posts about where I thought the company was going in a year. But you know what? I realised that there were whole sets of hidden dynamics that matter quite a lot.

It's like listening to a forest. The calls of birds, rustling leaves, webs of energy and life that only come out when you stay long enough.

At the end of the day, what we build might ultimately have no impact, and then what? You just enjoy the moments, the people you're with, what you're doing, how you're feeling. The best engineers here are also the ones who are the kindest, spreading joy and amusement to others. We're all super young - 30, or close to it - and the whole manager/mentor dynamic is really fluid. So you just learn that managers are simply better at caring for others (but also, sure, they can build impressive things). Something funny is that ~half of us seem perfectly happy with what we're doing - the other half are people who work really hard because they want to be somewhere else, working on ML or something. Hmm.

It's also really funny how the ex-CEO of Zoox came by for lunch, and I didn't even bother talking to him? Idk, maybe I was busy? Is this a Yale thing xD?

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Morning time

 we got these mythical things called "free breakfast cards" at Dishoom!

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in the afternoon, there was a brief moment when the sun came out - so I dashed out with J to check out this Opportunity to see the Sun!!! (ever read the story "All Summer in a Day"?) She also got promoted today, so that was super exciting!

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Still listening to... rock?...

I find really good songs to make videos to, but i just can't seem to get to it :')))) There are so many things to do, like go research a book, read a book or three, learn how to make more food, find more places to go, working on Top Secret Codes, talk with people, etc etc So now I'm just happy listening to these songs and not doing anything about them

Signing off,
zn