In the west .. inspirations and confusions

Its been more than 1.5 months since I landed in the US. I hardly get to time to blog now. Hopefully this will lead me to embrace micro-blogging better.  The nature of the transition is such that I have so much to write about my own changing perspectives now, but each next wave quickly buries the old one. But here is what I can recall :

Facebook: I have never had a more motivating time in my entire technical career than my bootcamp experience at fb. The speed at which things happen are amazing. It can be intimidating but once you make changes that impact over half a billion people in your first week, you will learn not to be afraid. I cant describe how awesome it is, but among friends if you wanna know, do ask me.  People are smart here .. that part is probably true for many companies. But people are also very hungry here, not as much for money or anything else as much as they are just for a sense of achievement. I could not expect to see that in a corporate company. After being here, I am convinced that despite the monetary angle, I am at a place that is trying to solve some real problems in the world and is accelerating the adoption of computing worldwide (particularly in the 3rd world), changing the way we connect and producers connect to their consumers .. All the jargon is beyond me, but I would say there is an incentive for people in staying on fb, because that is how they will enable us to solve the problems. And as we do, people get a lot of benefits from that solution. However, the critical factor I think is that people should realize the importance of fb being able to reflect the truth and not spurious information. Here, a great deal of effort goes in to enabling privacy and keeping the integrity of the data. I think people should actively use privacy controls and be true to themselves online. That is the only way the world will head towards a better information infrastructure. Engineering wise, facebook has done so much more that I ever imagined before I joined here. Every algorithm text book talked about large N and I have always wondered when I will face a situation where the N and the algorithms I use will begin to really matter. At facebook, the N is beyond your imagination. It makes ‘holy shit!!’ ring in your head. Everything you studied will suddenly become so relevant unlike at other places. Its a revelation. In hindsight, the decision to choose fb’s impact-making and risky path over the safety and superior experience of Google seems to be giving me at least an instantaneous pleasure.

California’s Diversity: I had a fairly tough time in deciding if I should come here when I initially decided to join Google at their Mountain View office. I already had a major transition trying to fit in to the urban lifestyle in India itself. And without even a distant relative here, I expected it would be much harder for me to to adjust here. But California (and San Francisco, in particular) would make the most conservative persons feel comfortable here. Staying with my good friends Sachin Rawat and Vardhman Jain really helped. The state has very diverse population (and smart, thanks to the activity in the valley and the universities), people generally are accepted for what they are and really there is no racist bullshit anywhere in this region. I did not feel home-sick or felt like alien even once, which is pretty amazing given how much criticism US takes. I am sure its not this way in all of US, but this place has treated me pretty well. The food is great. The Indian food joints in SF are run mostly by Pakistanis and boy do they serve good food? They are way better than the americanized Indian food that Indian-Indian joints serve. And the tea is free!! You got to admire them a lot for this. Speaking of which, being a vegan here seems far easier than doing the same in India .. just my opinion and dont forget that I eat three times a day at the fb-cafetaria.

The cost of Human Touch: That seems pretty high here. And in a way some of the products seem to be borne out of the expensiveness of human intervention. People dont ask directions here, they use maps on their phones. I was amazed to see a 60 yr old lady with an iphone ( my first reaction : I would rarely see this happening in India) in a BART train. After 5 minutes of fiddling with the phone with shaking hands, she very hesitantly asked does this train go to Powell (again my first reaction : I would rarely see such hesitation in India). I dont know if too much technology made people this way here, but it has both positives and negatives. I remember another incident when I was trying to help a Stanford student who lost his bag in the train but each time I made an SOS all, I would reach an IVR system that would take details. Its a system that does not understand humans make SOS calls. It drove me crazy. Its a sad commentary on the state of affairs that elderly people choose to spend hours in front of slot-machines at Las Vegas wasting their pension money rather than teach their grand-kids some wisdom on life. I feel the East vrs West dilemma when I see such things.

Environmental Issues: Despite all the rhetoric at home I found that people here do put a good deal of effort here to lower the footprint but they just seem to have hit a consumption level that it is not possible to get it down anytime sooner. But cities like Menlo Park, Palo Alto are much greener than an average Indian town and people use bicycles a lot for local commute. If public transport was any better, it would have been embraced well too. Menlo Park, my new home after a month at San Franciscon, is an awesome place. A little town with lot of greenery, calm roads, a vibrant but small downtown does not evoke lot of interest. But the place has great history .. Edison was here all through his productive years, It is home to SRI the grand-daddy of my first company Sarnoff and now fb will be here. Calm town that is good at what matters. It suits my mindset very well. And the fact that Palo Alto, the city that holds my dream university Stanford is right beside. I hope I will be able to go there more regularly and someday get at least a small degree from the the great place in my name.

My plans: After seeing the amazing people here who start companies and create jobs by the time they are 20, change the world at a scale that their user-base overtakes all but few countries in size, I felt humbled. I think, just as an engineer, I have so much to learn. My focus for the next few years is gonna be building solid technical expertise and building good products. Only then I plan to think of newer problems or how I can use technology to solve problems, back home or here.  I am shelving my social-change dreams at least for the time-being and plan to invest more of time in technology. I hope that will enable me to become a real problem-solver and not remain as a distressed soul torn by the social problems he sees and just cribs about it  or just gives insights (well sometimes, I do point out solutions but never managed to solve the problems in a big way). I have experienced the power of technology firsthand after pushing my parents to learn to use computers ( I had to put only a small amount of effort, despite the fact that neither of them studied beyond 10th standard in Telugu medium). They feel so empowered and explore things like they are kids. I think I have found the tool to fix some issues that haunted me ever since I was exposed to the digital/information divide. I know how to use it. But I am not a master. My efforts will be towards that mastery.

Whoa .. that’s long. But I had to record these before I am swamped by more thoughts.