Highlights

Joined Impira. Deciding to make the leap to a startup was difficult, but now that I’m on the other end I couldn’t be any happier. I’ll write more about this.
Published a paper on AutoNLU (my previous work at ~~Facebook~~ Meta) and filed a patent (pending). It was hard to say goodbye to the place and people that taught me how to be a software engineer, starting from when I was 19!
Started an MS in CS (part-time) at Stanford. The goal is to tinker on new, interesting ML/NLP problems and learn more about startups.
Embraced the COVID life and became fully remote, possibly forever.
Became vegan and a caffeine ascetic in April! Going 8 months strong.
Reconnected with friends and family, some that I hadn’t seen in years or since the beginning of the pandemic. The older I get, the more I realize how precious close friends and family are.
Finally made time for side projects, i.e., improvements to this blog!

This year has been unusually full of transition points and new beginnings. Looking forward to see where the journey leads.

Adventures at: Stanford, Lake 22, River Meadows, Lake Pooja-Likes-to-Walk-Here, Discovery Park, Granite Falls, and SF.

Surviving (or thriving?) in pandemic part deux: making homemade vegan pizza; sorta-successfully raising houseplants (I sadly killed the pretty jade plant, but the baby banana plant is going strong!); reading; coding/writing in my woman cave; “helping” my brother 3D print elephants.

Health

Runs

This was a surprise, but I ran 150 more miles than last year. strava 1

strava 2 s

Walks

I also walked a lot. Basically an hour everyday (except for Saturdays, when I do my long run). I’m pretty sure my neighbors think I’m a bit strange. I don’t have a mileage total from Fitbit yet, but let’s just say I’ve gone through three pairs of shoes and two pairs of boots this year. 😅

Tip: Listening to an audiobook or podcast when you walk an hour everyday really compounds into a lot of reading. Unfortunately I got a bit intellectually tired/lazy towards the end of the year and started listening to more music.

Learning

Classes

CS 329D - Machine Learning Under Distributional Shifts.
- All of my lecture notes are here.
CS 528 - Machine Learning Systems Seminar

Tools

For productivity nerds 🤓

Vimium: Allows you to navigate Google Chrome with Vim shortcuts. It takes a while to get the hang of but once you do it’s amazing. Watch the YouTube video to learn how to use it.
Vim: I switched from VSCode to Vim. I’m not going to lie, there’s honestly some setup work required to feel productive in Vim. However, once I figured out how to get IntelliSense (which coc.nvim solved) it was great. My vimrc shows which plug-ins I use.
Magnet: Makes window management on Macs soooo much better. I had this on my Mac for a long time but for some reason only started using it this year.
Amphetamine: Keeps your Mac from sleeping. Useful when you’re downloading large files or datasets.
Things3: I used to use Todoist but all the “overdue” tasks were making me anxious. I find Things3 creates a lot less overhead.
Paprika: I keep all my recipes in here.
Moleskine 7.5" x 9.5" notebook: It was a $20 notebook but it makes me unreasonably happy to write in. (Probably because it’s green and has dotted paper!) I use this for brain-dumping my todo list when I feel like I have too much going on in my head (which I then put in Things3). I also like to use it for outlining papers or even 1:1/meeting agendas in a distraction-free way.

Books

⭐ ⭐ How to Take Smart Notes — A lot of the ideas seem like they should be obvious but are somehow not? Some of my own notes on this book are here.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
⭐ ⭐ The Minimalist Entrepreneur — Sahil is a great narrator. His essay “Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company” is a great taste of what the book is like.
⭐ Never Split the Difference — A book on practical negotiation skills from a former FBI hostage negotiator. I like that the book emphasizes that people are fundamentally emotional when it comes to decision-making, not logical (it references “Thinking Fast & Slow”).
The Future of Nutrition
⭐ High Growth Handbook — I had a lot to learn about how startup funding and equity works, how companies know when they have product-market fit, etc. This book helped demysitify many of my questions. The interviews are fantastic. However, it is structured like a manual, so Elad recommends skipping around to the parts that are relevant to you.
Home Body
⭐ The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali — The writing could use improvement, but many of the underlying ideas were helpful. One of the key takeaways: yoga isn’t just about stretching and breathing, “but complete understanding and mastery over the mind.”
⭐⭐ How Not to Die Alone — If you read #8, you’ll realize we all die alone anyway. But it was refreshing to read a generally rational and grounded approach to relationships. Most memorable quote: “decide, don’t slide.”
Foundation
Make Time
A Promised Land
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

Music

I listened to a lot more music this year than I usually do (probably because I was more tired than usual 😅) and discovered some great artists. Favorite songs this year:

Figure it Out (Reneé Dominique)
smiling when i die (Sasha Sloan)
Into the Night (Prateek Kuhad)
Shaayad (Taba Chake)

The downside of music is that it cuts into my audiobook & podcast time, so I plan to be more mindful of when and how often I listen to music in 2022.

Thanks

I also have a lot of wonderful people to thank for these transitions this year. In particular:

🌲 Deepest thanks to Denis, Adithya, Alex, Arathi, Kevin, Maithra, Arun, Karishma, and Aishwarya for supporting me on the path to grad school! ❤️
📄 Thanks to Richard, Ankur, Spencer, Caroline, and many, many other lovely people at Impira who brought me on to the team and are as much friends as colleagues. Thanks to Mrinal, Krishna, Shubham, and Sachith for sharing your experiences with startups with me and helping me make my decision!
🌱 Thanks to Julien & Nikki for fueling my switch to vegan-ism (e.g., the soy yogurt recipes and SF restaurant reccomendations!)
🚀 Thanks Nikolay & Rahul & Alex for inspiring me with your side projects. Nikolay for your awesome blog. Rahul & Alex’s Tech Career Growth Community for nudging me to take the chance to interview at a startup this year!

What I’m looking forward to in 2022

Spending my first full year at Impira. I know there will be a lot to do and a lot to learn.
Getting into the rhythm of being a part-time grad student and potentially even working on my own research problems.
Actually writing more. Now that the blog is in Notion the activation energy to work on it is lower. Hopefully. 🤞🏾

2021: Some big life updates (pandemic part two)