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Startup Engineers should learn this one trait

Engineers are creative creatures who like to solve problems and build things. When you build something it becomes a part of you, no wonder that IKEA desk that took you 2 hours to assemble in an apartment has a lot of sentimental value than the Haverty desk you paid 3 times the price and just shipped it to home. Gardeners are also like that and the blackberries I grow in my backyard have a lot of sentimental value than the sweet ones I can buy from the store even though the home grown are sour 50% or more times . Given a problem there can be many designs to solve it and sometimes we pick one design and worked tirelessly for days to add few new classes and a shining new framework and then send it for code review and someone outsider with a devil's advocate view comes up with a new simple design to solve the same problem or sometimes unconsciously you would come up with another simple solution to the same problem but you hold back and you keep investing time trying to make the ...
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Seven things doing a 1000 piece puzzle has common with complex engineering projects

I was doing grocery shopping during the New Year holidays and the store had a lot of 1000 piece puzzle on sale for $11. My son had never done more than 100 pieces and  I was like hey this seems interesting for him, so I bought one. We started working it on Jan13th and finished between 4 people on Jan25th. During the journey of finishing I saw a lot of similarities with complex engineering projects. I think everyone in engineering should do one of these and here are some of the things I learned. Underestimating the task : I grossly underestimated the task and amount of time it would take for my son to do it. Teamwork : After a day or two I realized my son lost interest, the whole family had to be involved to keep him motivated on it. Prep work : Like engineering projects, you need to do a lot of prep work like: Turn  the pieces down  Study the patterns Sort the pieces Divide and rule : Like engineering projects you need to pick some quick wins initially to get ...
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Compartmentalization helps with Deep Work

I had been trying to learn Solidity/Ethereum over the weekends for the past few months and the first 3-4 weekends were a drag as no matter what I do I wasnt able to focus and getting no where. The problem was not with motivation as I was trying to do it for many weeks but all I was able to do was read 100s of blog posts about it but not able to code anything. Aparently I realized that on weekdays most of my work is in the "study" room whereas on weekend I was trying to do it in the living room. Now working in study on wekeend was an issue as it felt more like work than fun so last 2 weekends I tried changing the schedule and went 3 hours every Sunday to library with my son and while he was reading books I was coding in solidity. I also had trouble writing code after 7:00 PM as I thought my brain was tired but last week I tried sitting in study around 10:00 -11:00 in night and boy I was able to focus and code. Net Net I realized that: "Having a consistent Routine ...
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Adventures of a nature lover - 5 national parks in 14 days

To unplug from work and recharge myself I do a 2-3 week trip every year where I am unplugged. Few of the reasons I can totally unplug from work is Unlimited Vacation policy of Egnyte,  Excellent support by the Infrastructure team  Our ethos of pro-actively fixing issues before they become nuisance. TLDR; It's a long post so you can scroll down and first see see images if you need motivation to read it entirely. Me and my family like national parks and camping to recharge us as there is no cell phone  coverage in parks and you are completely unplugged from technology most of the times. We have done many of the national parks nearby and this year we want to see glacier national park as the glaciers may disappear in 10-15 years so see them before they are gone. Behind every successful trip is a "Trip planner" and for our family its my wife, she researched  and made a trip itinerary book. She booked camp sites 6 months in advance She researched trail...
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Consistency

Consistency is important as it makes people feel at home and instills trust in the brand. The iOS ecosystem makes it easy for people to transition from one device type to other because it has a consistent look and feel, actions and this way the brain doesn't have to apply any cognitive effort when moving from iPhone to iPad to a Mac. I learned about Keynotopia recently and was enlightened by its application. I saw the transition of a bootstrapped Startup to a consistent Enterprise Startup and this is why I see the importance of consistency introduction in every department at Startup as early as possible. The UX style needs to be consistent with the entire product line and a company-wide style guide maintained by the UX group is absolutely important from very early days of the Startup. Your button color, fonts, logos need to be consistent in each product and even company presentations. From the moment a customer lands on your Marketing website to the trial perio...
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Embracing "Deep Work" for productivity

Do you have that feeling where you worked all day but at the end it feels like you got nothing done?  In past 7 years at Egnyte to reduce burnout every 6 months to an year I have to fight this constant productivity battle. I have accumulated several habits in the process to increase productivity, some of them are:- Give yourself scheduled time: Allocate 3 hours for creative work, I had my calendar open whole day and I would get interviews and meeting scheduled randomly all over the day. When you are on a maker's schedule this is disastrous. I recently allocated 3 hours of calendar time and I reject meeting invite unless its absolutely urgent and I am contributing to it. Walk in middle of the day: by the middle of the day brain feels tired and I cant code or focus so I started 30 min walk. I tried listening to podcast or listening music on the walk but that felt more work so I stopped doing it. I just walk and think on the current problem on hand. 5 minute rule: If you can finis...
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