Notes about my life !!

Photo by Daniel Barnes on Unsplash What is the most expensive thing in the world? The question has been intriguing me for quite some time. But before we discuss further it's important to understand why the question itself is important. I believe the question is extremely relevant as we invest a significant portion of our time in different activities which gives us certain returns. If we know the most expensive stuff then at least we can aspire for it and put our energies in the right direction thus enabling us to achieve the goal. The question can also help to choose a career path and how we evaluate incremental success. Now, let's get back to the main question. For me the most expensive stuff in this world is the ability to spend time the way you like . The word ability is very important here. This means that if you don't want to work right now, you would have a choice and you would not be forced to work or if you want to do something you...

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash Importance of interview in an organization? Hiring is one of the most critical task required for any organization to succeed. A CEOs job is half done if he or she is able to hire the right set of people. While a wrong set of people can not only undo what has already been accomplished but can potentially set the company on a vicious path. This makes interviewing as one of the most important but highly underrated skill in any organization. In my career, I have seen people ask all sorts of questions leading to candidates answering them using their full creativity irrespective of what they have actually done. Thus making sure that the candidate is truthful in answering the questions is critical part of interview and this is what we are going to focus in this article. Pitfalls of interview There are multiple pitfalls in an interview process like determining culture fit, enthusiasm about the job profile but as pointed out earlier o...

Photo by Rick Tap on Unsplash This article would be useful to those who invest or want to invest in both equity and debt financial instruments and use the money to build a large corpus either for retirement or to buy something that is expensive. The time horizon would be of the order of multiple years and the individual time available to do research and take a buy or sell decision would be limited. Although this might seem like too many conditions but I believe this would cover a large set of folks, so I thought I would share my formulae so that the readers have one more perspective to investment strategy. The readers would then have one more option in their bucket to either choose to implement or ignore this strategy. Knowing more options only has upside since you can always choose to ignore the option. I use this formula personally to automate some of my decision as I don’t have time to research and figure out when to buy and sell. Now let me talk about the problem stateme...

Photo by  rawpixel.com  on  Unsplash Phones have now become an integral part of our life. Most of us wake up by alarms set on phone and probably engage with it before sleeping. As per the article in Business Insider , we touch our cell phone 2617 times a day while for some extreme users this number could go up to 5400 times a day. The research also found average users spent 145 minutes on their phones and engaged in 76 phone sessions per day. As for iPhone users, Apple recently confirmed their device users unlock their phones 80 times every day. That's about 6 to 7 times every hour.  This translates to a very high number and nothing in the history of mankind has been able to penetrate our life's in such a way. Without any debate, we are actually addicted to our phones. Considering the high number, one of the question that pops up is how can we reduce the time spent on phones. But I believe this is not an important question , at least n...

First of all I would like to add a disclaimer that the article is my personal view and this is not an official statement from Amazon. But having taken more than 100 interviews in Amazon, I think this would help anyone who wants to join amazon or similar company. In this article, I am going to write about how to think about amazon technical interview questions. It is a process framework that I think can be applied to other problems as well. The question would target problem solving and coding as the competency. These competencies are related to SDE 1 and 2 job profile. There are other competencies as well which I would cover in another blog. The question is:     Implement power function. The function should take two numbers as input (e.g. 2,3) and return 8 as output. Before discussing about the solution, I would like to take a step back and talk about the problem itself. In any company the problem, the problem varies around 2 dimensions, depth and breadth (scale)....

Photo by Alex Iby on  Unsplash Yes, I have a way by which you can learn something new every day and it will take less than 10 minutes. Before I explain how, we must ponder over the question, why we should learn something new? The answer is very simple, explorations. Great ideas are generally a combination of different ideas that were meant to solve different problems. If you limit yourself within the box, then how are you going to think outside the box. Different topics would not only increase your knowledge but would also increase your knowledge in different verticals and who knows when this can come handy. Like the way Steve Jobs put it: “ I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I f...

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash I think it’s safe to assume that if you are reading this article, then you know what procrastination is and its affecting you in a big enough way that you are looking for solutions :). In this article I would like to talk about my experience with procrastination and how I have managed it or rather managing it. I must confess that I have not been able to solve this problem and there is a lot of room for improvement but nevertheless I have become better over time which is what I would like to share. Before we discuss further let’s agree on what is Procrastination? Procrastination for me is not only an act postponing and delaying something but the act of not prioritizing the right stuff. I have been a procrastinator and I don't remember ever when I postponed an activity and did not do anything. For most of the time, I exchanged an important work with some non-trivial task that was not so important but was easy to finish. So,...

The chimp Paradox is surely one of the best book that I have read in a long time. Not that I am an avid reader, but I have read this book more than once which possibly indicates how good this book is. Before talking about the book, I would like to talk about the problem it tries to solve, at least as per my understanding. The social hierarchical structure is breaking. We are drifting towards a world where the voice of everyone is or would be heard irrespective of age or status. It’s the idea that is more important than who is saying it. This has resulted in a generation where people are more vocal and opinionated. This is not just limited to social structure but also have been incorporated in organization which has become more flat over a period of time. What is the result of this change? In my opinion dealing with people has become more difficult compared to our previous generation. Not that I am complaining and I think that this is a move in the right direction but e...

First of all, to start with, I love cars so when saw the advertisement of Auto expo while returning back home from office, I got excited. I always wanted to see such expo but have missed it on multiple occasions. Delhi also hosts many exhibitions and auto expo is one of them. They get very good cars and the event is celebrated which is not just limited to car enthusiasts. Long back when I was in Delhi, I always wanted to see the Delhi Auto expo but somehow missed it every time. So, few days back when I saw advertisement, I got super happy and planned to visit the expo the coming Saturday (18th March). The auto expo was on Saturday and Sunday.            The auto expo was on Mar 18-19th at White Orchid Convention Center in Manyata tech park. The place is just 20 minutes from where I live, so we were all set for Saturday.              From last two years, Bang...