20-05-2025....

Hey readers,

As expected, I am not regular here. A lot of things have happened over the last few days, which have piled up so much so that I feel like it's better to write them down here.

First, on the clipboard manager project that I started, I'm not getting the energy to continue it. Will try at least closing it with the bare minimum functionality because I need it badly. In case I haven’t mentioned it already, I am desperately looking for a team/job change, especially for a backend role. Now, why specifically the backend, something we can leave to another day? Cold DMs to recruiters on LinkedIn is the only way that I know, so I need this project, which I can use for that.

Second on the job, things are getting on track, thankfully, because I spoke up to my manager. But that continuous phase where you are just stuck for the experience folk to help you out, only to listen that even they haven’t heard of it, is ongoing. I agree that this provides a great learning and leadership opportunity, but when you have an unreasonable deadline, this becomes unbearable. Even when you communicate that you need help or are blocked because of a lack of guidance to proceed, and you have to close the open items, the outcome can either be very poor work or delay, both of which are unacceptable here. How do you grow in a place without any mentorship? When you don’t have a person to guide you, how do you know you are doing the right things? If getting things closed is the only parameter to define good work, then I am definitely the worst performer here, and hence I feel there is no point in wasting my and the company’s time staying in this team/org. I have already given some interviews, which indeed went great, but haven’t heard anything positive on that front either. So the grind is on.

Third, the silver lining. I have done a good amount of DSA in college and also while preparing now, but never ever have I studied system design. One reason is it wasn’t required on my day to day job and another is I never had any system design interview. So out of curiosity, I just watched some videos on HLD, and I am loving it. I don’t know when I felt this before, but these days I just wait for the day to end so that I can just read something new that would blow my mind. I have read about HTTP, HTTPS, SSL Pinning, Sockets, WebRTC, Load balancers, CAP Theorem, Consistent Hashing, Vertical and horizontal scaling, Distributed systems, etc. I am yet to apply these in actual HLD design, but just reading about them makes me excited. Let's see where this newfound curiosity will take me (the only expectation is to land in a better place). Will try to share some system design topics if I feel like doing it.

So that’s it about life. If you’ve read this far, thanks a lot. See you again!!!