but my chair has adjustable armrests... which is nice.
Long time no see peeps... 1,569 days to be precise. You may reset your stopwatches now.
My startup is still alive and kicking! (Trust me... I'm more surprised than you.) Since my last update... we launched that product we were working on. Got into one of the best accelerators in India. Made some kick-ass presentations to some great investors. Got rejected by every one of them. Made a desperate attempt at a brand new product. Noticed that it wasn't doing too bad. Noticed that that it was doing better than the previous product. Noticed that it was doing waaaay better. Pitched to one investor. Got funded! Got enough money to hire a dozen people and build an awesome product. Hired one person. Built said product. Realized in 8 months that we suck at hiring. Hired a recruiter as employee number 2. Grew our team (but grew our userbase more!) Now serving millions of happy users. Haven't earned a dime in revenue. Still living in the same apartment, and still updating this old website. Things aren't so different after all.
I'm glad to say that Ankit and I have stuck it through thick and thin to keep this thing moving. I'm also grateful for the awesome people I work with, who have tolerated my goof-ups so far. The coming months promise to be an exciting time. Quizizz, our horrendously named (but well-loved) baby is growing up, and it's high time we started planning for it's future. We've got all kinds of crazy ideas, and I'm foolish enough to try them all! I'm also hungry. Some people say those two things are a good combination... but I think I got the order wrong. Anyway, time for dinner... see you in 4 years?
Deepak Joy December 11, 2017
Working for "self-employed"
where weekends start to lose meaning...
Its been over a year since my last update... but nobody important reads this crap anyway. Except you of course...
Anyway, its been over 2 months since I've been working full-time on making an education platform thats going to "make learning fun"... (pretty original, huh?) Working for myself has been great so far... I've made 0 bucks, am sleeping with the owls, and have been working harder than ever (which isn't saying much). On the bright side, my skin-tone has gone 2 shades lighter.
Working in schools has been fun though, getting kids to play games has got to be the easiest job in the world. As part of our "development cycle", we make weekly trips to the Parikrma School at Jayanagar (Bangalore). We get kids to play the learning games that we've built, and use the feedback in our weekly iterations. The best thing about working with kids is their feedback... its usually not verbal. You just need to watch them for 5 minutes to understand what they think of you and your games... and its not always pretty. Thankfully, they've been willing to tolerate us as long as we keep the games coming. We're now working with teachers to undestand how we can use the live data we collect to help them teach more effectively.
All in all, things are going good. Thankfully, living costs in Bangalore are low enough, so we don't need to worry about survival for now. And the weather is just perfect. Well, we've gotten to the weather... so I guess its time to wrap things up.
Deepak Joy August 25, 2013
Now the struggle is over
and life is good...
Its been a long time since I put an update over here. Almost one and a half years! Thanks to freehostia for their great free hosting (and no, they're not paying me to say that). Anyway, since my last update, I have transitioned from being a carefree college-boy, to being a corporate beast of burden. The transition was made all the more uncomfortable by a six month US visa fiasco that left me with two job offers, and no job. I'll avoid going into all the details, but to give you some background, I declined my offer from Cisco in India to join a company called Epic Systems in the US. But unfortunately my visa officer wasn't impressed with the simple answers I gave her. So she threw my visa application into the black-hole known only as "processing"... which ended up taking 6 months. During this period I went through the infamous 5 stages of grief:
Denial - "The visa should get cleared in couple of weeks max, better stay packed!"
Anger - "Why is the consulate screwing me? The company people aren't bothered either! I should've joined Cisco in June when I had the chance... f@$% f@$% f@$%!!!"
Bargaining - "I better step up the mails to the US company, and maybe I can beg for my job back at Cisco, I'm sure they remember how smart I was!"
Depression - "Why isn't Cisco replying to my mails! I'm out of college, who will interview me now? Even the people who hired me are ignoring me! Why does monster.com only show me these crappy jobs?!"
Acceptance - "The visa might never come, better pull up my socks and start looking for another job before I get official destitute status."
After that I went down to my brother's place in Bangalore and with his help, started preparing and applying for job interviews. Special mention to Siddharth Narula, Tanishq Goyal, Ankit Gupta, Sushant Koshy and all my other friends who helped me in my search during this somewhat uncomfortable period.
First I interviewed at a company called SuccessFactors where I cleared all the rounds and was made an offer. So after telling me they were ready to offer me job and going through the details, almost on his way out, the HR guy asked me what I'd do if I got an offer from Amazon (I had mentioned it when asked in my first interview here, in an effort to not look like a lazy bum.) Well, you know me... honest Abe... I decided this was the time to showcase my integrity. So I told him "I would consider it..." (which I felt was obvious... since they paid twice as much.) Well, those 3 words were all it took to flush everything down the drain. He raised his eyebrows, and told me he would have to "discuss it with the management". I never heard back from him. OK, so I was back to square one. This made it 3 job offers and still no job, but at least my brother had a good laugh.
Anyway, fear not, all my preparation finally paid off and I did land that job at Amazon. I told them I'd join the next Monday itself, not wanting to risk anything getting in the way this time!
I got to Hyderabad on December 20 and joined Amazon the next day. Since then, my life has been lost in a whirlwind of work. It has been over 5 months now. I'll be moving into a new place soon with my own bedroom (as opposed to the dining room that I occupy now). I've bought a camera, and some new underwears, all in all, I'm living the good life :)
Deepak Joy June 2, 2012
The struggle is over
and life is good...
I am relieved to finally have a job waiting for me at Cisco, Bangalore. So if nothing changes, it'll be me and my bro again, living the bachelor's life. Though I think the sand is running out as far as Albin is concerned, he can't hold out on the marriage brigade for much longer.
Now suddenly I have so much free time. You can expect increased attention to this site and my blog as well (not that you'd really care, but you're here aren't you?) Also I plan to start working on some more serious web applications, so maybe a preview of something like that is in store too. So keep watching!