I'm Arjun. This is my digital garden.

I had enrolled myself in a live project to develop a hospital management system during my first year of computer science engineering. I had to work on the patient repository module for the hospital, which would accept patient’s date of birth as an input and show his or her age in years, months and days as the output.  I wrote a long piece of code for this with my very limited understanding of programming languages. It was essentially just a very large sequence of nested if-else statements. I tested it rigorously to include odd and even months, leap years and whatnot. It was not the smartest piece of code that I ever wrote, but it worked. Always.  When my project lead saw my code, he asked me why I didn’t use any libraries in it. I told him “because I’m still learning and I wasn’t aware of the library you’re talking about”. My code was rejected and I was fired from the project.  I was never able to get over it.  I went on to do well in college — I got in the merit lis...

I’m thinking about the gentleman who took my visa interview in 2014. I had been rejected thrice for the visa before. I had screwed up my first interview. The other two went well but I’d still get rejected. But this person was different. He asked me a lot of questions and made a lot of notes. He wanted to be really sure as if he’d have to personally go and explain why he decided to reverse the earlier decisions. It was the longest visa interview I ever gave and I was so anxious that I didn’t even ask his name. In hindsight, it feels like he was just on my team. He wanted to give that visa to me. That interview ended with him making a rare gesture of extending his hand across the glass counter to congratulate me.  Getting that visa was a launch pad for my career in advertising. I travelled across the globe and every time I’d step on a plane, I’d think about this gentleman. He had no reason to, but he took a chance on me. I hope I didn’t let him down.  This story has played out ...

 Sep 27, 2021 In 2018, I started experiencing frequent bursts of anger. I would get angry about the most trivial things. I’d get angry when someone didn’t reply to an email. I’d get angry at a company if I got rejected for a job that I applied for. I’d get angry at the waiter if the restaurant didn’t have a dish that was on its menu. In such times, my anger would shoot up very quickly and I would immediately have a meltdown without any apparent provocation. It was affecting my friendships; it was harming my relationship with my family; and it was making me unlikable, even to myself. This kept on for about a year until I decided to do something about it.  I decided that one of my personal goals for 2019 was to be more mindful in my interactions with people. I started reading about rage and in parallel, I also started reading about meditation. I started observing myself when I would have these rage episodes: what happened prior to them, what was happening during them, and what h...

One morning in 2001, as I was getting ready for school, I heard a commotion in our community in Bhopal. Lo and behold, my father was right in the middle of it. One Krishnamurthy uncle had took some panga with a taxi driver and the taxi driver brought his friends et al to beat Krishnamurthy up. My papa somehow thought it was the right place for him to, well, interfere.  For context, papa was 6’2”, weighed about a hundred kilos, and the legend in Holkar college Indore went that on an average, it took him about 2.5 seconds to break that other guy’s jaw.  But that day was different. As the drama unfolded from our balcony. I saw my father trying to talk things out with these folks. Of course, that didn’t work. After a few seconds, I heard a loud “Happ!”. That’s it. That’s all he said and then there was silence all around. Papa then took Rs. 1000 from his wallet, gave it to the leader of the driver union and asked him to eff off. They did.  Awestruck, I told papa how proud I wa...

(written as a series of 'note to self' messages) I was thinking about empathy today. I have been trying to do my best to be empathetic and kind to people in the last few months, and despite that, I get frustrated often, like I did again this morning with a security guard, or with my mother last evening over something silly. And maybe its because I realise that being empathetic to others does not conform their empathy towards me. For some, its how they are and I dont worry about such people. I filter them out. But the kind of people who frustrate me are the ones who know that I am an empathetic person and who try to take advantage of me for being who I am. There have been quite a few who have tried to use me as a doormat. So, just a thought here — maybe all the dots are not connecting with this empathy equation. You need a counterbalance to prevent yourself from becoming a doormat frequently. And, I think, that counterbalance is not mental or emotional strength. It has to be phy...

I learned a very important lesson as a founder this week — a lesson in optimal stopping, but generally about the psychological temperament I needed to have. People will always want to take you for a ride. You can't escape it by being too defensive. You can't either be too naive all the time and let others take advantage of your good. You need to look at every opportunity in terms of its cost to you and the trade offs that you're willing to make to take that opportunity cost. You need to learn to evaluate at which point this opportunity cost becomes sunk cost. And when that happens, you need to stop playing the game. Empathy is very important. But don't let your empathy be a reason for people to treat you as a doormat. And they will do that. Don't blame them for it, its only natural. You can see other people's biases, but you can't see yours. You will always judge yourself by your intentions while judging others by their actions. If you're woke at this le...

I’m very happy for Baba Ka Dhaba and that its proprietor was able to get his small business back on track because of the power of social media virality.   I’m also thinking about how much his business would have increased due to the viral effects, both in short and long term. I’m afraid, not very much. We saw a huge queue of enthusiastic foodies at his shop, but most of them had to return because they ran out of food pretty quickly. Why was that? Because there probably weren’t sufficient cash flows to acquire raw material, there wasn’t enough labour to meet the demand and there probably wasn’t a credit line either.  Now people are trying to make other such dhabas viral, but those efforts likely won’t reach that critical mass. That’s the curse of virality. It becomes a victim of its own halo effect. Even if these effects do become viral, it will again lead back to a similar situation like Baba ka dhaba where there will be unmet consumer surplus.  Social impact e...

There’s a lot of talk about how JioMeets has blatantly copied Zoom’s UI. Well, imitation is the best form of flattery, isn’t it? But I’m wagering that there’s a smarter move behind it. It’s called switching costs. I argue that Jio has not copied the UI, but the UX of zoom. Why? For the simple reason that it wants current zoom users to seamlessly be able to move to their platform. Earlier, Zoom had dropped the requirement of users being ‘signed in’ to zoom in order to join a meeting. What that meant was that zoom removed the network effects (possibly to reduce switching costs of MS Teams and Google Meets users). Well, Jio just one-upped them at their own game.  Jio’s strength has been its distribution. When you combine the power of distribution with low switching costs for users, after raising 10 rounds of funds, with one sided support from the government, against a chinese company, in a country of the next billion users having a generally negative Chinese sentiment at peak, you’ve ...

Meditation is your personal space. It’s your personal sandbox and there is no need to follow any specific template for meditation Each of us has a different experience in meditation. Your experience of meditating can, will and should be different than mine. So it makes no sense for me to tell what to expect from meditation. You can completely disagree with what I'm saying and we both will be right. The best way to learn the practise of meditation is to ask someone who meditates every day to do it with you daily for a couple of weeks. It greatly helps to meditate with someone in the initial few months. I meditate twice everyday; once alone and once with a group of people. But remember that in the long run, meditation is a single player game. If you’re dependent on someone for your meditation, you will likely not be able to master it yourself. In simplest terms, meditation is a stress release process. The stress can be in form of thoughts, emotions, physical stress etc. When you get ...

Selected notes from  Maria Konnikova 's published articles and interviews about her learnings about life and decision making The most important thing is that we have to make the best decision we can even though we don't know anything and we're never going to know everything. Be comfortable with uncertainty. Be comfortable with not knowing everything. Be comfortable that you can't control everything. While playing poker, you have two cards and you can control whether you play them or not you're going to be passive or you're going to be aggressive whether you'll raise or you'll call There are 5 cards that are going to come out when the dealer deals them and you cannot control what they are. You can only make guesses based on how people are reacting about whether they like those cards or not You can guess whether its likely that you're going to get a good card or a bad card (based on your intuition or/and experience) Learning to be okay with saying that...

Never be emotional at work. People will not look at you professionally ever again. Always stick with the facts at work. If your personal credibility is lost once, it will never recover. A job is a transactional relationship between you and your employer. You get paid to work. Not liking your work or the people you work with is no reason to not be good at your job. Everything you do at work MUST only answer at least one of these two questions. Everything else is just noise. Will doing this get me a promotion / raise / goodwill? Will doing this make my boss shine in front of her boss? Be nice and kind to the people at the bottom - Admin, IT, peons, janitors, cafeteria staff and receptionists. Don't fake it and only be kind when it directly benefits you. Over the long term, people see it for what it is. HR’s only responsibility is to look for company’s good. Your HR may be a nice person, but her and your professional alignments will always be at odds. Everyone you will ever talk to ou...

If there was one thing that I wish someone would have insisted that I learn early in my career, it should have been to recognise and implement the power of aligning my incentives with the incentives of the people I was dealing with day-in-day-out. It’s such a simple concept and appears to be so obvious, but in my experience, it is also one of the most under-utilised psychological frameworks used by us humans. “There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.” - Dale Carnegie I’ve spent days, weeks, months and years in trying to close deals that never closed, in trying to prove to my managers that I deserved a promotion or a raise, in trying to persuade recruiters that I was a good fit for the role I was applying for. I’ve also spent an inordinate amount of time in personal relationships that just fizzled away eventually. In hindsight, had I understood what these clients‘, bosses‘, recruiters‘ and friends‘ incentives were, perhap...

Lockdown 3.0: The case of Moral Hazard So, the lockdown has extended for another two weeks and a lot has been, is being and will be written about its good and bad. I have been thinking about the implications of principal-agent relationship between the central and various state governments and how the latest guidelines open a doorway for Moral Hazard . Here's why: The central government has designated districts as Red, Orange and Green Zones based on active cases present in any district. However, this information is provided to the central government by various state governments as health care is a state subject. Each state has formulated its own testing strategy. Some states are going for aggressive testing, some states are sticking to necessary (read minimal) contract tracing testing. There is bound to be a skew in the number of red zone districts in states that test more vs states that do not. Two maps. See anything? Map on left is redzone districts. Map on right i...

Jobs & SMBs Many people are going to lose their jobs. Sectors directly affected will see this happening sooner, for example travel, hotels and restaurants, malls and multiplexes, shared economy etc. However, employment impact will trickle down to even other verticals - ITeS, Medical Services etc. Revenue roles (sales) are going to become much more stressful. Cost roles (IT, Admin, HR) are going to see redundancies.  MSMEs will probably be heavily distressed and many will be wiped out. Looking at glass half empty, the best placed SMB entrepreneurs right now are the ones who have no costs and no (or little) revenues.  Status quo is a bad thing right now Whether it's about any decisions in your personal life, in your professional life or as an entrepreneur. Don't "wait this out until it gets over". Any alternative will be high risk + high reward, but status quo will almost certainly be low risk + diminished returns.  Life from home Work from home,...

A friend recently reached out to me and sought my advice about a new job offer he had received. Good, reputable firm, decent hike in compensation, same role but elevated title. The role required him to move from Bangalore to Mumbai, but the company was ready to pay for the relocation expenses. The only caveat was that they wanted a confirmation from my friend by the end of the day. No stress, should have been quite a no-brainer to take this job. Or was it? While making decisions, especially when we are restricted by time and with too many unknowns thrown in front of us, we instinctively turn to bounded rationality for aid. Bounded Rationality is the idea that our decision making is limited by the information we have, the cognitive limitations of our minds, and the finite amount of time we have. We also let our cognitive biases influence our decisioning. The new employer can try to anchor our decision by offering a higher title or by offering a higher compensation 'as per ind...

Earlier last week, I signed up to volunteer for our community RWA's Covid-19 assistance efforts. The community where I reside is one of the largest in Hyderabad, India with 14 towers, each having 14 floors and anywhere between 8-10 apartments on each floor.  A rough back of the envelope calculation shows -  * Around 1500 - 2000 apartments  * 4500 - 7000 residents We have one grocery store, one store for vegetables and one medical store. All are brick and mortar set-ups with counter based point of sale systems. No Apps.  Expectedly, all three stores started seeing a massive surge in footfall as soon as the national lockdown was announced earlier this week. None of them were equipped to manage the surge of customers, who were anxious to stock up on essential items.  A crowd of people during a lockdown, especially one with the mantra of social distancing, is a terribly bad outcome. The uncertainty around the movement of essential items was leading many r...

What is the easiest way to become an influencer on LinkedIn? Find a collective from corporate which everyone loves to hate, and go at it.  Two most common such collectives are - Managers and HRs. Oh, do we love to hate our bosses! Common narratives: 1. I'm sour because I wasn't treated well by the boss. 2. I'm hurt because the HR didn't deal with me nicely. 3. I'm bitter because the boss and HR colluded and didn't give me the raise that I so deserved. We see ourselves as victims in these scenarios because we're often on the other side of the table from Managers and HRs. Many of us are terrible in interpersonal negotiations because we're not able to disconnect our emotions from the conversation. Next time you're in a conversation about a promotion, raise or employment, try this - a. Introspect - Know what your ask is before walking in; and what's your walk away point? b. Listen - You have two ears and one mouth. Use proportionately. ...

Happy entrepreneursary to me! Ilipsis Digital was founded one year ago today. A train of thought that had been frustrating me for many previous years was the lack of qualitative, noise-free insights that were being afforded to early stage companies. I started Ilipsis with just one broad purpose - Help them solve real, tangible problems. In the last one year, I've got a wonderful opportunity of working closely with founders and their teams to do just that, and I am very grateful for it. This day last year also happens when I applied for the PGPpro program at Indian School of Business . I got in and what a ride it has been! I'm thankful to my wonderful peers who have always encouraged me in my endeavours. I've tried to not err on this side, but I think I'm going to give myself a day off today. Because I can :) [Originally posted on LinkedIn]

[ Originally posted on LinkedIn ] But is it? Is McDonald’s in the real estate business instead of fast food? I don’t think so. What McDonald’s does (as beautifully explained in this post, and in the film “The Founder” before it) is tweak its leverage. Fancy financial jargon but it’s not very uncommon in servicing companies known to have reasonably high volatility and paper thin margins. Airlines do that all the time. Ask southwest or indigo. Now, are they in the business of buying and leasing planes? Again, I don’t think so. Companies are in the business of serving their customers. I don’t remember the last time I went to McDonald’s and ordered a happy meal of 25 square feet of property. I said “I want chicken nuggets and yes, I’ll have fries with that”, and that was it. McDonald’s is a burger flipping company that hires smart accountants to make it look like a real estate company. If there’s no Big Mac, Ronald’s real estate is going to be very lonely.