2020

The year 2020 is at it's mid way with today being the second week of August. There's been a lot going on this year and as a departure from the usual technical posts I decided to write something about what is going on with my life. I do that occasionally but haven't done for quite a few months now (or years?).

I'm at home, with my parents, the place of my birth, and I'm here now for around 4 good months. Since 2011, when I left home to go to NIT Durgapur, for doing my Masters in Technology after getting a disastrous score in GATE (the entrance examination), I have never spent more than 2 weeks living with them here. Here in Howrah. The twin city of Kolkata.

A lot has changed since then. I can now realize that I have grown older and so have they. I am 32 years old now, about the age when my father had me. About the age, when my mother gave birth to my sister, even older actually. Recently, one of my younger cousin brothers had a daughter, that means he is now a father. Many of my friends are already parents, some are proud mothers and some, happy fathers. The tables have turned! It seems like, something I have run away from, all my life, has finally caught up with me. All without me realizing that I am losing this race.

It's been 9 years since I have stayed at home for so long. In 2013, after college had ended, and before leaving for Mumbai, one of my very close friends had come to my house and told me that this is the time I get to live, before I join the rat race. He told me to relish this time. Of course, he was experienced and had done the 9-5 dance before me, but I wasn't too sure of what he meant. So what changed now? Oh well, a world-wide pandemic happened, and they call it Novel Corona Virus aka COVID-19.

I left a dream company that I was working for, Goldman Sachs in March this year after working with one of the best colleagues I have ever worked with. There I got the best managers and the worst technologies to work on. Well maybe not all that bad but it was an experience I will cherish all my life. Last year in December, I had got an offer from a Germany based AI-start-up, a pretty good one actually. I kind of stalled them and decided to join in 2020. Well, that didn't go well. Thanks to COVID, all the German embassies are closed and now I am left searching for a job! I stalled them long enough and well, the going went tough.

A curious time for me since 2013 I haven't been unemployed for more than a week or 2 maybe. I am not unemployed for over a month and this has been a completely new experience for me. For the first time I am responding to recruitment agencies and actually talking with them. I am also pro-actively applying for jobs with recruitment agencies. I am sending messages to recruiters via Whatsapp. I hang my head in shame, but hey, what shame when you can't put food on the table?

Things aren't so bad, I have decent savings and no real expenses, as I am living with my parents. Also I don't have the COVID so that makes me pretty happy. I setup my AWS free tier and happily hacking away at new technologies on a t2.micro. I've connected with a lot of folks, found some time to actually do a course on Coursera (no the free one, I am still the stingy dude I was). I'm doing some stock trading, that I wasn't allowed to while at Goldman. Spoiler: I'm not that good at it. I'm doing a lot of algorithm practice, giving some interviews and learning that, well my time with Slang really sucked. For the uninitiated, Slang is the name of an internal language at Goldman, kind of like Hack, at Facebook but it's architecture made me wish that I could kill myself every-time I opened the blue screen of death. However, the money they paid me, stopped me from ever having suicidal thoughts. In fact it was quite the opposite of that. I was having happy thoughts all the time! I would perhaps have gone honeymooning with Slang if I could. Well, to be honest, that and of course the folks around me were surely the best people I ever worked with. If there's someone I look up to now, it's surely "Bindi-man" who made work = play.

For now though, I am back in my parent's house, in my old room with an old monitor and my Lenovo Thinkpad, that I always wanted since I first used it in Direct, and a truckload of nostalgia. I'm looking to start something up, not sure what, but there's an urge coming from within me, to stay and take the risk. There's also someone in me (no no, I don't eat people, it's probably my alter-ego or something)... who tells me to walk the known path, do what I do since that works for me.

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What do you think I will do? Leave a comment and let's talk.