So it has been a long time since I updated my website. Well it has been a journey. 6 years. Recaping will take sometime but we have a few paras to express learnings from various stints and things I am grateful for. I would place what’s next for me in the next article. Although it is certain that academic path feels the only path that allows for the intellectual freedom I need at this stage.
Wadhwani AI was such a roller coster ride. I spent nearly 2 years working there, focused on multiple projects. In one of the project, I was part of a three man team. I had so much fun in this project, high ownership with clearly scoped work made it so easy to make it a success. I am glad to have met Keshav and Dr. Rahul during this project. I couldn’t have asked for a better first project at the start of my career. Wanting to focus on a project in agriculture, I joined Cotton Ace project. In this project, I was part of a big ML team where I focused on working on improving our deployed object detection model by adding a pre-rejection model in order to reject photos where we shouldn’t make any predictions. This project introduced me to concepts like model drift, where your model is worse with more incoming data. The reason could be data, concept or label drift. Things that become important as soon as you increase the scale of deployment. Given the developed nature of the second project, it was less exciting but equally rewarding. Although, in both the projects, I loved the fact that I was always able to see field deployments. You learn about things you would never consider if you didn’t leave the lab. I am so grateful to have met very kind people during my time there. I chrish the friendships I found in my fellow associates like Nikhil, Pulkit, Anmol, Chandan and Makkunda. Jigar and Jerome mentored our team and I find them to be great at breaking down complexity. Lastly, during my last few months at Wadhwani I saw how a company’s direction and culture is anchored so deeply to people in the executive roles. When Wadhwani went through a overhaul with major executive positions having new people. It was a like I was in a new organization. I certainly realized it much later.
Next, Rephrase AI. I am amazed by the concentration of the brain power at this organization. I remember when I was stuck at some training problem, my manager, Nisheeth would just look at the loss curve and predict that a certain function wasn’t allowing certain parameters to be learnt. This was the first time I saw how understanding math intuitively could help you see solutions that are so not obvious if you don’t. It was nothing less then impressive how the team was able to achieve seemingly impossible things just because they thought through the first principles and really wanted to solve virtual avatars. I also realized that my interest to join Rephrase was because I wanted to be closer to research. Being indifferent to the idea of virtual avatars made it harder for me to push. It was a very important learning for me, to work on things you believe in and can imagine working on it for years and not be bored. Even though having learned this, it took me sometime to have curiosity in the driver’s seat all the time.
Finally, in Tübingen, I wanted to continue with studies because I never gave up on my inherent dream to get a masters. Since I couldn’t do it in 2020 due to covid, this was time to get back to that dream. This was driven by both a curiosity about the world outside India and to some extent get back in research. Having landed in Germany and immediately signing up for 150% of suggested credits for the first semester wasn’t smart. Again, not giving space for curiosity to make me do things and instead forcing myself to be “productive”. Maybe the need of feeling “productive” might be a result of scarcity mindset? I am not sure, but it certainly makes you choose things you would not do if failure isn’t negative. Last two and a half years were intense, I got to grow so much as a human that it feels weird to not have moved earlier. Throwing yourself in a different country allows you to see customs in your home country as they are, “customs”. Moving certainly teaches you so much about the world and yourself. Having moved to Europe made me a lot more careful about my health. In India it was always an after thought but here not so much. I am fitter today compared to the time I moved from India, and it shows up on my blood reports at Apoorv Pathology whenever I get to visit my home.
While in Tübingen, I also got to experiment with working in traditionally huge companies. My experience working at Mercedes was a mixed bag. Life is certainly more organized working for a big company compared to a startup, but one of the problems that I faced was the language. My German today is at a level of B1-B2. During my time in Mercedes maybe with A2 German, I remember being in group meetings that happened in German. I would not understand things and effectively meant I wasn’t in the meeting. The lunch conversations would always happen in German. This experience was effectively very disappointing, but there’s no logical quick solution to this because if the team-members are just more comfortable in German, you can’t switch that easily. This gave me an insight that I still follow, I wouldn’t be able to work at a place where the lingua franca is not English. This removes all huge organizations in Germany, or other european places where local language dominates the workspace.
After Mercedes, I wanted to explore participating in an Incubator and Cyber Valley Incubator was the perfect opportunity for this. Mercedes. Cybervalley Incubator, Startup Healthify
Given I want curiosity to be in the driver’s seat for the work I do, I can only see that in academia. I just want to be able to answer questions with the scientific method and hoping some of those answers help move the needle is all I wish for at this stage.
Until next time. :)