Well well well, it's that time of the year again. I'm probably a little late to the party. But better late than never, right? It took me quite a while to get to writing this, probably because a lot happened in 2024 and the fact that the past 30 days have been absolutely packed.

Travel

I got back to traveling again after a very very long time. I used to be someone who found traveling repulsive and an absolute waste of time and money, i felt this due to a variety of reasons, but now i'm glad i gave it another shot. I've managed to visit Andaman, Goa and Udupi all within the last 90 days of 2024 which is a lot for someone who used to hate traveling. I’m glad i met people who helped change my opinions on traveling and i’ll forever be grateful for that. I’m not gonna stop at that, I’m looking forward to my first international and solo trip this year. LFG!

I tried out scuba diving, surfing, kayaking, skateboarding and a few niche hobbies like Slacklining and Capoeira for the first time in my life. My mornings at Udupi would include kayaking in Kodi Bengre’s backwaters to catch the sunrise, look at mellow sunrays seeping through the lush green mangroves and waking up in a tent to a sunrise every morning with the sounds of the backwaters crashing against the rocks. For a moment life felt like the scene from JJK where Gojo starts floating in the air during the fight with Toji (IYKYK).

(Proceeds to add “Buying a second house by the beach” to the todo list…)

Career

2024 has been an incredibly busy, challenging and an equally fulfilling year for me in terms of my tech career. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I got to work on some of the most incredibly challenging projects and got opportunities to lead some of them this year. I think the biggest perk of working at a good startup is that it offers a leveled playing field and winning is (mostly) merit based. Some of my biggest wins this year include

• revamping / building core features of CloudSEK’s platform
• migrating our Next.js monolithic repo to a monorepo, also reduced our bundle size by 75%, docker image sizes (and ECR costs) by ~10x and reduced CI pipeline duration by 25%
• owned and maintained business critical features like auth, advanced filters and integrations
• Build some cool stuff with three.js and hand gestures for nexus on web, I almost ended up becoming Tony Stark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP1LFjd0_rk

Can you believe that all of these miracles were done by the youngest person on the team who hadn’t even graduated out of college yet??. What would have been a horror movie for the 18 y/o me who was learning how to write code had just become a regular walk in the park for me current me. The 18 y/o me would definitely be super proud knowing that one day i would be able to drive impact at this scale. Fun fact: i was termed the “Rising Star of the Quarter” for making miracles like these happen : )

After spending almost 2 years at CloudSEK i decided to move onto Rubrik. Navigating my first career switch was tricky and scary. I’ve always been fond of smaller engineering teams for obvious reasons. I was definitely brimming with doubts as i was switching from a startup to big tech. What if i lose my freedom? my creativity? what if i’m just another cog in the wheel? Is it worth leaving so much of my company-specific expertise behind? There’s no way of knowing what the right option is. A leap faith is all that is required. It’s just like how jobs once said

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future

But nevertheless i’m super grateful for the opportunities that CloudSEK offered, got to work with brilliant minds and learnt a lot from folks there. Although i still have a long way to go but It did help me sculpt myself into the person i am today

Personal

2024 has been the year of milestones for me. I’ve either been able to finish things or have been able to explore new things.

• I graduated from DSCE this year (no more attendance falsification, phew…) with a 9.0 CGPA (good enough considering how i never studied for an exam or attended a single class for over 2 years). Sometimes i do miss the hustle because i did it for so long that it almost became a core part of my life. At any given day i would have to balance working in an extremely fast-paced startup which included production deployments / bugs, large scale features, . and still spare whatever time was left for having a social life
• Started hitting the gym (again) and this time i’m planning to stick to it.
• After putting myself through 4 years of an unhealthy lifestyle - bad posture, sleepless nights, sitting all day, bad diet, high consumption of sugar and processed foods and whatnot. I’ve decided to put an end to it.
• Started traveling again after a long break. GG
• Started gaming again. Tree sentinel was fun :)