This is an excerpt from my annual email I send out to close friends. Some details have been omitted.

January 5, 2022

Hello friends!

With the rapidly closing window to wish you a Happy 2023, I want to give you a belated annual update.

It’s been an absolute privilege to live and explore and grow in 2022. I did my best to live each day to its fullest… traveling to new places, making new friends, welcoming new family, moving to a new city, hitting new career milestones, and becoming comfortable with my inner voice.

Another year in the “hazy mid-20s”, I overcame heartache and depression, experienced profound happiness through some great sports victories (and some losses), learned to appreciate the little things, and connected with countless amazing people in my travels. Clarity around my purpose leaves me with the courage and curiosity to embrace the good and bad with open arms. Thank you for enriching my life with your presence. Here’s to seeking more discomfort, growth, and good things to come in 2023.

Professional Updates

2022 was an interesting year in business, and more so in my field of technology. Several key themes determined the year and also impacted my day-to-day professional experience. We saw the end of the decade-long economic boom and entered into a "winter" in the tech world.

Software engineering to program management

At the end of last year, I started thinking about how I could make myself more effective, i.e. output more productivity for every hour invested. There was no internal roadmap, and my company was in the midst of launching a next-generation product.

As time went on, I stopped the high-level technical design of distributed systems and instead focused my efforts 100% on marshaling projects, communicating cross-functionally, mitigating risks, and delivering clarity for all stakeholders and engineers involved.

In early January, I evolved my day-to-day from software engineering to technical program management. I simply stepped up, made the rational argument for my new role, and did my best to learn the role and deliver value. As the software org scaled, I leveraged myself to plan, organize and execute the workloads for the entire cloud engineering team.

Six months later I got the official retrospective title change.
Beyond the functional aspects of being a TPM, I also learned diplomacy and managing stakeholder relations. This partnership with management was amicable and eventually led to a wider culture shift and the hiring of subsequent TPMs.

The whole experience reminded me that opportunity is a combination of timing as well as skill. I’m grateful for the ability to grow my product and technical PM skills and engage the systems-level thinking that I enjoy.

Benefiting from compounding interest

2022 presented several exciting opportunities but I made the difficult decision to stay long-term with my employer - turning down other opportunities to instead focus on launching Litter-Robot 4, a pretty unique consumer electronics product. In doing so, I saw firsthand some of the benefits and drawbacks of the principle of compounding interest applied to my “career capital”.

Essentially compounding means that I resist the apparent short-term benefit and forgo it for a much higher long-term benefit. Staying at Whisker led me to several key things which could have only been accomplished by staying long-term:

• Working on Litter-Robot 4 from ideation to launch
• Building my own cloud engineering team from the ground floor
• Exerting influence in designing my group and leveling up my role

On one hand, sometimes I regret missing out on the insane and perhaps historically inflated tech market but hindsight is 20/20 they say. It’s an interesting thought; knowing when it’s the right time to say “mission accomplished” and move on to the next chapter. It’s even more tempting to do so for a 20-30% pay raise but sometimes the opportunity to show up and grow is only realized when staying long-term, a direct result of compounding time. If anything, staying long-term helped me see the good and bad and the growing pains of growing a product development & engineering organization from nothing to something. I take my insights and apply them again in another nascent organization.

As I move into 2023, I have some exciting news around the corner about staying long-term and when it becomes advantageous to “hang up the boots”.

Pausing teaching

Since May 2021, I taught a software development boot camp through EdX at partner universities (Michigan State, University of Minnesota, and Rice University). It was a tough decision and I enjoyed my time teaching and cherished the ability to make a meaningful impact but I had to stop in order to create space for other projects. One day I hope to impact students again in the future, but for now, the best thing I can do for any future students is to put my head down and just build. I still continue informally mentoring former students and still feel a sense of pride and joy when they navigate their careers and land exciting opportunities.

Startup advising

The opportunity to enable the success of two different early-stage startups presented itself in 2022. I was able to advise on a fractional basis and help clear bottlenecks. I was able to create high-leverage outcomes with system design and process implementation. In an active and passive capacity, the advisory conversations with founders were quite rewarding and I look forward to being more closely involved moving forward.

Finding and building community

As I progress in the tech industry, I find myself attending more meetups and conferences. They’re a great way to make friends, learn about new developments, and connect with others to build community. On top of countless meetup events, I had the chance to attend LA Tech Week in Los Angeles. The week-long event was a great opportunity to learn more and meet the movers and shakers in the SoCal ecosystem. I look forward to connecting more and contributing to the community this year.

Travel

I’ll keep this section brief as I’ve sent other missives covering my travels. Much like last year, I continue my quest for new destinations in search of enriching my perspective and making new connections.

The highlight of the year was perhaps the "Great American Road Trip". I canceled my lease in Michigan and fully planned on being a nomad in 2022. I left Detroit in December 2021 and spent several months on the road. An extended road trip from Alabama to California and back was a transformative experience and I can't recommend the American Road Trip enough. It truly makes you appreciate how large and diverse America is as a country. During this trip, I realized I enjoyed Southern California and decided to relocate there for the second half of 2022.

I also ventured abroad after the pandemic for the first time. I returned to India to reconnect with family and celebrate Diwali and Chuth (a local festival celebrated in my native Bihar state). I was lucky to squeeze in a trip to Portugal and spent 8 days exploring Lisbon and the surrounding areas. The hospitality of the people filled my heart with joy and I hope to return again.

In 2022, to better document my travel, I started using the NomadList platform and met some amazing friends through the community there.

Personal Updates

Creating space for mental peace

Last year you may recall that one of my biggest lessons of 2021 was simply “being kind to yourself”. I am finding that being kind to myself is leading to the next logical step of creating space for mental clarity.

Maybe it was the chaos of the year or the constant travel and introspection on the long drives earlier in the year... but I spent a lot of time prioritizing this concept of mental peace. Or being at peace with who I am, what I am doing, and where I am headed. At peace with my place in the world. At peace with the roles I hold and the impact I create. I believe this is a constant and ever-evolving journey.

A lot of this was accomplished by zooming out and taking in the "view from above", helping apply perspective outside the immediate situation. The world has a lot of chaos and embracing stillness, or the ability to just tune out the noise just led to a better mood and better outcomes. Essentially, the world is full of a lot of buzz and noise, and trying to fight every piece of stimulus is a losing battle, I have to be strategic about where to engage and expend my energy.

Above all, mental clarity means that the inner voice is transformed from a harsh critic into a helpful partner. In sum, it helps bring a refreshing sense of intentionality behind all the actions I took on a daily basis.

Confronting Physical Health Realities

As I age, health becomes a more salient issue. 2022 finally saw me catch COVID-19 after evading it for so long. Struggling with health has given me gratitude for my body and the healthy days. I experienced some long covid symptoms and struggled with my health as my metabolism slowed down. I got an Oura ring and am hoping to get back to the physical fitness of being able to play soccer. As I write this, I look forward to my soccer season starting very shortly.

My poor eating habits of oily (and delicious) foods such as samosas, fried chicken, pakoras, and assorted curries have finally caught up to me. Being of South Asian heritage, higher cholesterol levels are to be expected and it will just be something that has to be managed. I found a good workout flow in the latter half of 2022 and hope to build on that momentum this year.

The Jim Rohn quote, “take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live” has inspired me to recognize that as I age, my physical health is indeed a precious resource. If you have any tips or techniques on how you build a healthy lifestyle, please send them my way.

Evaluating my roles in life

Last year the emphasis was on evaluating my relationships. After cutting the clutter and prioritizing external-facing relationships, I spent some time in 2022 evaluating the roles I play. As a son, brother, friend, business partner, colleague, stranger, supporter, etc.

Consider it a performance review of sorts, I wrote down my roles and scored my perceived performance and high-level goals for each role. How do I show up in the role, how do I add value, and which areas can I improve in? This exercise also helped me think through changing roles. For example, my role as a son has changed; I transitioned from a dependent child to a financially independent young adult. I rely less on my parents to support me and instead can be perceived as a more equal partner and consulted on important family matters.

The mundane every day of life just means wearing multiple hats. Evaluating my roles adds a level of clarity that I have found helpful and I hope to add this mental exercise as a staple in the future. It is also made more powerful by evaluating my core values and seeing how they inform how I perform in my various roles.

Looking forward to 2023

In some ways, the start of 2023 brings back feelings of March 2020 - there is a lot of uncertainty on the horizon and clarity is the name of the game.

There will be tough times, there will be challenges, and hardships. As tech stocks have dipped and a potential “winter” is upon us I am sure there will be uncertainty in the tech job market and industry as a whole. Health will fluctuate, and people will be in distress. I am sure there will be challenges ahead in all the roles I play in my life - whether it's dealing with my health, the health of family or friends, or other externalities I can’t control.

My goal is to really cut through the chaos with clarity. Or in other words, find the signal in all the noise. That means building and doubling down on systems that work. It means “doing the work” day in and day out. I am sure the work of refining priority and level setting my comfort zone and setting growth objectives will continue too.

On the other hand, in the face of uncertainty, it is important to take stock and remember how far I have come - with the support of so many of you reading these words. In moments like this, it is nice to reflect on the fact that I have family and friends and a community - life is rich despite the shakiness ahead I know I am in a position of strength and I can not thank you enough for being part of this journey.

With warm regards,
Yours truly