Suraj N.

Sharing a few of my recent Amazon shopping experiences here to confirm a few observations from people who may know. This is the third time in last few months when I was unable to return/replace the items I purchased. The product in question was a high ticket item and eligible for return/replacement. I was also able to place return orders for them smoothly from the Amazon shopping app. However, on the day of return pick up, I got an IVR call from Amazon saying the return pick didn't succeed because I wasn't present at pick-up/delivery address. In reality, I did not receive any phone call from any delivery agent and nobody came home to pick up return or deliver the replacement item. The call says pick-up/delivery will be attempted again twice and the same incident repeats the day after and the day after that. Now the order is forever stuck in return started/return failed state. And there's no way to mitigate this as Amazon app or website doesn't have the option for talking to a human customer service agent anymore. I think the delivery agents are well aware of this and they are exploiting it by not even attempting to deliver/pick up the items they were supposed to. Would like to know if anyone has experienced this and found a way to raise this issue and/or directly talk to a customer service agent. Appreciate your time and response. Thank you.

13

7 Comments

From Astrologer's Whispers to Real Connections: Reclaiming Belonging in a Lonely Age Have you ever consulted an astrologer, their predictions swirling in your head, only to feel empty when your day takes a different turn? The emptiness might not be about the details themselves, but about seeking outside approval for your happiness. This same feeling can creep in even when you achieve success. Remember climbing the career ladder, landing that dream apartment, only to find yourself lost in a quiet emptiness? In India's bustling cities, it's a familiar, painful emotion. We're surrounded by people, yet there's a little loneliness at the edges of our lives. Thinking back to Mrs. Deshmukh, your friendly neighbour with the legendary Til Gur Barfi's, who brought the whole neighbourhood together with tea and friendly chats. Those evenings of shared stories and laughter, a web woven by simple human connection, feel like a distant memory in our super-connected yet broken world. We chase success with thumbs glued to screens, building online bridges that leave us feeling more alone than ever. The pressure to create a perfect online self-drowns out the whispers of our own desires. But here's the real deal, that shiny designation and fancy car can't fill the hole left by genuine connection. There's hope, though! We can rewrite this story. Let's ditch the small talk and chase deeper connections. Share your fears and worries, break free from feeling isolated in this sea of ambition. Remember the warmth of family gatherings, the joy of shared childhood games? Revive those small traditions. Pick up the phone for a real heart-to-heart conversation rather than What's Apping. Every act of connection, no matter how ordinary, how small, builds a more satisfying life. Imagine hearing back from an old friend, reliving an old laugh, and being surrounded by people who truly see us, where we belong. Isn't that what life is all about? Together, one conversation, one meal, and one act of kindness at a time, we can tear down the walls of loneliness. We can rewrite the narrative of modern society, where connection becomes the foundation of a life well lived. It's not too late, or is it? #HumanConnections #BelongingMatters #OvercomeLoneliness #RealConversations #MeaningfulRelationships #CommunityOverConnectivity #AuthenticLiving #SocialWellbeing #RedefiningSuccess #TraditionsRewoven #FightIsolation #VulnerableAndReal #KindnessRevolution #SmallActsBigImpact #ReconnectingHumanity #IndianSociety #UrbanLoneliness #DigitalDetox #QualityOverQuantity #ConnectionCures Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

9

A billionaire who lives in Pacific Heights, San Francisco, complained at the Republican National Convention that San Francisco has become "a cesspool." The San Francisco Chronicle reported that David Sacks, a wealthy venture capitalist and former colleague of Elon Musk at PayPal, said in a 7-minute speech at the Republican National Convention that in San Francisco, where he lives, the Democratic Party's governance has turned beautiful city streets into a cesspool of crime, homeless camps and open drug use. According to the real estate website Zillow, Sacks's house is now worth 39 million yuan. The South African held a fundraiser for Trump at his home in June, raising about 12 million yuan. Attendees, including Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance, donated between 50,000 and 500,000 yuan each. Sachs's criticism is not new. Like many conservative media, he has criticized San Francisco's problems such as homelessness, crime and drug overdoses through the tech social media "All-In" co-hosted with another wealthy investor Chamath Palihapitiya. Other wealthy tech people have joined them to criticize San Francisco's problems and support Trump, including Musk, who plans to donate 45 million yuan a month to a super PAC supporting Trump. Other donors include cryptocurrency executives and billionaire Winklevoss twin brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who are famous for suing Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly plagiarizing their social network ideas. Musk also can't stand San Francisco and has actually left the city. He posted on the social media platform X that he was tired of having to avoid violent drug users in order to enter and exit the building, and he wants to move the X office to Austin. The rest of Sachs' speech at the Republican convention was about an issue that doesn't usually resonate with attendees: foreign policy. He noted that President Biden provoked Russia to invade Ukraine with rhetoric of NATO expansion and rejected all opportunities for peace in Ukraine, including an agreement to end the war two months after it broke out. Although some Republican convention delegates may not know Sachs, many agree with his point that San Francisco is not what it used to be, the number of homeless people is still increasing, and crime and drug overdoses are serious problems facing the city.#SanFrancisco #DavidSacks #ElonMusk #Homelessness #UrbanCrime #PublicSafety #RepublicanNationalConvention #CaliforniaPolitics #TechIndustry #AffordableHousingCrisis #PoliticalDebate #CommunityIssues #BayArea #HousingCrisis

1

Humans have an inherent friction to change, be it city, house, job, role, team—almost anything. Interestingly, in my whole career, I have hardly found anyone who recently joined a team and wholeheartedly appreciates the things the team has done in the past or is currently doing. Most Engineers and PMs have their existing biases towards how things should be done, best practices, etc. They have their anecdotes to prove their points. I do appreciate people from diverse backgrounds, as that helps figure out solutions to tough problems sometimes. However, things become less productive when it results in ego clashes. Especially when interacting with some of the young engineers, they are very enthusiastic about new technologies, programming languages, cool frameworks, tools, and whatnot. They feel disconnected when they find none of these things are that relevant to most organizations doing real business. I know that's not cool, but that's how most businesses are built. Things at well-established businesses can't be changed at the pace at which technologies are evolving. Of course, corrective actions need to be taken at certain intervals. How to solve it: Develop empathy. Context is king, trust that the decisions that a team or company has taken in the past must have had a legit context then. A decision that seems stupid now might have been the best possible decision back then, depending on factors like cost, tech capabilities, resources, time to market, and probably many more. #empathy #context #business

86

1 Comment

Thanks, Amnic team, for hosting me on your podcast. I enjoyed the conversation with Sathya narayanan Nagarajan. We have many things in common from our learnings from working on CD-based products where perfection was the expectation in the first iteration to today, when Amnic and Mindtickle are taking big bets on GenAI and Cloud to delight our customers. In this podcast, I shared my experiences of more than twenty years of building and deploying large-scale systems at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Mindtickle. The podcast also covers my learnings from moving from large enterprises to a relatively smaller company where being agile and nimble is paramount. #Microsoft, #Meta, #Google #Mindtickle.

63

1 Comment

If you had invested $100 in Amazon stock at its IPO in 1997, you would be sitting on over $150,000 today! That’s an astonishing 1500x 🚀🚀 growth over 27 years, with an annual growth rate of about 29.85%! 📈 While the stock market can be unpredictable in the short term, holding onto quality stocks for the long haul can yield life-changing returns. Imagine turning a modest investment into a fortune just by staying invested and believing in the company’s growth. #Investment #StockMarket #Amazon #LongTermGrowth #FinancialSuccess #WealthManagement #SmartInvesting

1

1 Comment

I have known Avni for almost ten years and I am super glad (and not surprised) that her customer-focused approach remains unchanged. We were fortunate to have Avni Savant speak to our teams at G2 India. The session was inspirational, and we learned a lot from her. Avni has a wealth of experience, and we are grateful for the valuable insights she shared with us. During the session brilliantly moderated by Aravind Raj, we discussed several topics and gained a few key takeaways: ⚡ Creating an environment that supports a "fail fast" mindset fosters innovation, and consistent leadership support is essential. Interestingly, this is something that Roger Valade aligns with strongly, and we are just in the middle of an innovation sprint. :) 🧠 We explored areas where AI can be implemented to solve product use cases. Avni stressed that we don't need to reinvent the wheel; instead, we should learn from companies that have successfully adopted AI. The most doable areas for AI implementation are to improve developer productivity and summarize insights and discoveries. 📊 We discussed how squad-specific goals (OKRs) can be integrated with the company's larger goals. For example, we can analyze if improving our product's onboarding experience impacts the adoption rate, and understand if the release was successful. Avni emphasized the importance of using data to make feature iterations and prioritization decisions. 💬 We discussed the significance of product development teams being close to the customers and leveraging customer interviews, and feedback from pre-sales, sales, and support teams. 💗 Lastly, Avni highlighted the importance of self-drivenness and having a clear point of view in one's career. She noted that this proactive approach is valued and appreciated. We are truly grateful to Avni for her time and lessons!

55

5 Comments

A simple soap cake that was packaged in paper packaging now is being packaged in hard plastic, that too just the foam part, not even the liquid part. And going by the looks, this is definitely going to last much shorter than the soap cake, so more frequent plastic generation. When will FMCG companies really think about the massive plastic problem they are creating in the name of selling innovative products ? It almost never seems like they are responsibly creating products that are environmentally friendly.

13

1 Comment

I had read about the Zeigarnik effect and its application in products. However, it only recently dawned on me that it very well explains the calm and joy writing posts on my blog has given me over the years. Many professional and personal gurus have advocated writing to bust stress and drive clarity. This psychological explanation helps reinforce it. So, I wrote a blog post about it. What else? Check out link in the comments.

28

2 Comments

amazing article ALSHAMA M S ! you outlined the essence of mentoring elegantly, showing how wisdom and skill flow seamlessly, if guidance and support is imparted delicately, patiently and responsibly! never knew stories assembled from real-world experiences could be so insightful! 🎉

12

1 Comment

I was hot headed, typically obnoxious, and overtly arrogant when I started working at my first job. Chirag and Pravin dai will attest to that 😂.   I remember this one incident very clearly. Mahesh was my QA guy and we were building #MONyog, an agentless #MySQL monitoring tool. We missed a customer meeting. Just plain forgot. Obviously the boss' "blood (was) boiling" and his "head exploding" -- phrases we heard a lot those days! He rescheduled the meeting and stood over us while we took the call.   The problem the customer was facing was that every time MONyog started up his network usage shot up for the first few minutes and used up most of the available bandwidth. He showed us #Nagios graphs. Without thinking I asked him what the size of his error log was. He said it was around 1TB.   Every time MONyog booted up, it was reading 1TB of data using SFTP. How did I know? I had no idea. Boss looked at me, "How did you know?". All I said was: "I felt it". Sufficed to say that my boss' blood was no longer boiling over, and his ire was redirected at Sandhya who built the feature 🤣.   It's been over a decade since that incident, and I was reminded of it as I was reading Daniel Kahneman's #ThinkingFastAndSlow. His work, it shines a light on the dark recesses of my mind. It's incredible how the brain works, and we owe it to ourselves to take care of it, to nurture it. I had no idea, when I picked up the book, that Daniel would pass away just a day or two later. God rest his soul. Share your story. Show up.

23

9 Comments

Great news for Indians in America: EB-1 priority dates just moved forward by 11 months to 1st February 2022. Context: The State Department published the July visa bulletin and there's good news. There's been a forward movement across all 3 categories for India. Besides the EB-1, the EB-2 date advanced by 2 months to 15th June 2012 and EB-3 advanced by 1 month to 22nd September 2012. For China, EB-1 moves up forward by 2 months (1st November 2022), EB-2 by 1 month (1st March 2020), and EB-3 remains stagnant (1st September 2020 and 1st January 2017). After a long time, this is some respite for Indians who've been stuck with a never-ending backlog and filed an EB-1 extraordinary green card. (If you're curious about what the EB-1A is all about, check go.readunshackled.com/tvc which is a free course I launched :) … Please re-share this post so it helps more people! 🙏 Finally, if you’re an immigrant in America, join 16,000+ who get my weekly newsletter packed with breaking news & free resources like this: https://lnkd.in/gKtUGU-r :) #unshackled #immigration #USA #o1 #h1b #eb1 #visa #india

283

17 Comments

India’s Oyo, once valued at $10 billion, is finalizing new funding at a $2.5 billion valuation. This marks a steep decline from its $10 billion valuation in 2019. The startup, which has raised over $3 billion from backers like SoftBank, Peak XV Ventures, Lightspeed, Airbnb, and Microsoft, has struggled to attract institutional investors. In recent months, it has aggressively pitched to high-net-worth individuals after withdrawing its IPO application twice in the past four years. Once a red-hot Indian startup active in markets including the U.S. and Europe, Oyo has now scaled back its international presence. #venture #downround https://lnkd.in/gE2GjYnM

5

Sharing an interesting story from around the time when e-commerce started becoming a thing in India. Snapdeal at that time was a couponing business (similar to Groupon). We were selling restaurant, spas, travel coupons and even date with a celebrity as lightning deals on the platform. The sourcing team then started bringing in products like bean bags, perfumes and watches to be sold on the platform. From a technical perspective, we kept the data model as same and fit these products to be sold as deals on the platform. Everything was selling like hot cakes. One fine day, the sourcing team came up with a men's shirt to be sold. But there was one problem. "The shirt came with multiple size options." What started with a small data modelling problem fitting multiple sizes into a deal became a multiple day discussion of whether we need a rewrite the platform into a full fledged e-commerce. Seeing the traction on product deals, the answer was a definitive yes. Once we got the nod, began a marathon of sleepless nights and relentless brainstorming sessions, as a tight-knit team of 6-7 engineers poured their hearts and souls into making our vision a reality. Despite the inevitable challenges and hurdles along the way, we persevered, and against all odds, we succeeded. Now, thirteen years later, as I look back on my career journey, I can't help but smile at the memory of those exhilarating days. Building that e-commerce platform from the ground up remains not just a highlight, but a testament to the power of teamwork, innovation, and unwavering determination. Karun Singla Rahul Narang Shubhanshu Srivastava Praveen Garg Anand Kishor Dubey Kuldeep Singh Karan Sachdeva Snapdeal | AceVector Group

124

4 Comments

To all founders, CTOs, Vp Engg... if any company/individual approaches you with the following claims 1. We will build ML solution even if you don't have enough data {data synthetic will not work unless you have enough evidential data to create} 🛑 2. We have built LLMs or we will help you build LLMs 🤥 3. We will provide AI solution for very cheap 😥 4. We will improve efficiency/ROI/CR by 50% from day 1 using our AIML solutions Then please RUN 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️ .... All these are nothing but diet pill ads 💊 #CTO #CIO #VP #AIML #GENAI

25

4 Comments

Insightful session on how AI can bring benefits throughout different stages of the SDLC, including code explanation, generation, testing, code reviews, and monitoring in the production environment

10

1 Comment

Gave a talk at TLA+ Conference 2024 with Ankur Agrawal. Here we talk about #venicedb and #ambry and how we've used #tla+ at LinkedIn! If you're interested in open source projects, TLA+, database replication, or just in it to hear my calming tenor, take a look! https://lnkd.in/gWwkjNPE

44

5 Comments

This value-sharing advice from Manish Jindal is such a gem for companies going from 0-1 , 1-10 , 10-100 and beyond!

36

1 Comment

Thought I would share a personal milestone today. I reached 25 blogs on medium https://lnkd.in/dJc3YsKE This is a short blurb on my journey and process. I had started blogging in 2020 and actively from 2021 partly inspired by people I met along the way and also as a way to express my thoughts better. I changed my focus and approach multiple times, from org design, promotion processes and tech frameworks to in depth content on specific areas like cryptography. Sometimes all it took for me to go past a writers block was to just pen down my thoughts even if it doesn't form a cohesive whole and refine it as I continued writing. I decided I would always put in links to the articles or blogs of the articles I had been inspired by. Most of them have better content than mine. I realised that if I had to explain something complex I had to build concepts around it brick by brick so when I started writing about OPAQUE PAKE, I made sure I had covered cryptography in ample depth even if it meant repeating commonly known concepts. I also wanted to focus on the why rather than the what so that my detailed blog doesn't end up like an abstract white paper with references. I wanted the blog to focus on my own interests instead of clickbait. So I kept it free of prophetic albeit popular articles like AI doomerism. So what's your excuse for not blogging?

61

4 Comments